Being a (serious) latecomer to the comic market I must admit my general loathing of these multiple book crossovers.
In hindsight, perhaps, with the trade on the shelf one can enjoy the story in its entirety (Knightfall being the only one that I have gone out of my way to read), yet I face the impending annoyance of the current Nu52 Batman (Snyder) story branching out and coalescing in the near future. Now, I want to read Snyder's story. I enjoyed his last 10 issue run on Detective Comics before the Nu52, and I want to read his further take on Batman. I'm sorry, but I'm generally (and in some cases WHOLLY) uninterested in the remainder of the Bat-Franchise that makes up the 52, so I'm annoyed that I might miss series story beats when they start continuing the Owl-myth in, say, Batwoman. Now, I can hope that the "missing parts" will be simple "add ons" that can be missed, but given the way the Nu52 are being constructed I fear this is unlikely.
Now, ironically, I am highly interested in where the Animal Man/Swamp Thing cross-over is going, yet this appears to have ben planned from day one between Nu52/Snyder/Lemire, and I appear to have been fortunate that I enjoyed the authors' work prior to the Nu52 to buy them regardless.
I guess this is why I have enjoyed the self contained books (either independant or from the Max/Icon/Vertigo prints) from authors with a singular vision, rather than the regular DC/Marvel stuff.
The thing that makes the pair of Marvel/DC universes so daunting and so unappealing is the years of history, written, re-written, over-written, ignored and timestamped. I simply balk at the notion of having to read 300 issues of 10 separate books just to get up to speed and would much rather dive into a more user-friendly comic landscape.
It's the reason I decided to pick up a few of the Nu52's. A new set of continuity that I won't got TOO lost in. Thus far the books I have chosen have been easy to dive into, no prior knowledge required. And then of course you have Grant Morrison writing Superman again... and for all the #1's calling of "A new fresh Superman", I can see the ever-dense and mytho-bound storytelling coming to the fore again, just like it did with All-Star Superman, which completely lost me in its clear reverance of, and lust to, inject as much of the Super-obscure into the story that it all flew over my head.
Oh well... Animal Man, Batman, Swamp Thing and Wonder Woman have so far been quite pleasurable reads... we shall see where it all goes.
Hugo - comic novice, ignore me
