I think we've had this discussion before, but I don't think "floppies" can go away... they're basically subsidizing the collections. If they did go away, we'd either have much more expensive prestige books or ads in those kinds of books. So somebody's gotta support the monthlies...

I think Marvel's stance is to delay the printing of the collected tpb by making it available as a "premiere" hardcover first, which is usually a little more expensive than the individual comics. Of course, they still collect pretty much everything they publish, so I almost always wait for collections with them (and they seem to do the opposite with the Ultimates line, collecting several tpbs into large hardcovers).

On the other end of the spectrum are DC and Marvel collecting older comics. I'm interested in stuff like the recently released Excalibur collections, and the DC Legion ones, but they price them so it comes out to something like 3 bucks an issue, and most of these are available in quarter bins. Of course, I'm still getting the Legion one...

I was interested in a couple of comics in the last year, but since I'm not a regular buyer, I wasn't able to get the first issue. I saw subsequent issues everywhere but I wasn't interested in starting in the middle. So now I'm not going to bother with my local comics shop, I'll just buy things when they come out in trades or not at all.

It seems to me like the system is kind of screwed up when you're shutting out casually interested people. When I used to be into comics more, I started out casually interested and ended up buying more and more.

How are they shutting you out because you didn't find out about a comic from issue 1? If you were interested in it, and you liked the issue you picked up, there are back issues available. Readily available. It's not like they shut you out from buying those.

It was The Dark Tower series. I noticed on this forum that it had come out a couple of hours after it came out. Went right to the closest comic shop, of course they had none and didn't really expect anymore. I didn't pick up issue 2 when I saw it at Barnes and Noble a month later, or issue 2 and 3 when I saw them at Pike Place Market a bit after that. I might read it as a trade, but I'm just not going to bother with the floppies, since the few that catch my interest will probably be gone before I get there anyway.