Why is it that in this day and age, some comic book trade paperbacks are still missing issues?

I first ran into this annoying problem in the early 2000s, when I found some Starman trade paperbacks on the cheap. When checking the indicia to find out which issues each volume contained, I was surprised to see that many issues were missing, seemingly at random. In truth, the excised issues were simple one-shot stories that didn’t factor heavily into the core Starman tale…but that’s not the point. If I’m buying trade paperback collections of a series, I want the entire series, not bits and pieces! (The Starman problem has been corrected in the omnibus editions…but I can’t afford those.)

The same thing happened when I was catching up on Green Lantern Corps. I discovered that issues #21-22 were never reprinted. This makes no sense; the story in those two issues featured Alpha Lantern Boodikka, and she’s been increasingly important as the book’s moved forward. It’s possible that these two missing issues will be reprinted along with the current “Revolt of the Alpha Lanterns” story, but then you’ve got issues being printed out of order. The Green Lantern trade paperback Rage of the Red Lanterns has this exact problem: it reprints Green Lantern #26-28, #36-38, and the Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns one-shot. But what about issues #29-35? Those were reprinted in the Secret Origin trade paperback, which came out before the Rage of the Red Lanterns collected edition. Stupid, isn’t it?

Speaking of which, I was thinking of picking up a few Green Arrow collections, starting with Kevin Smith’s “Quiver” storyline from 2001. Well, screw that: not only is that series of collections missing random issues here and there, but two of them actually got printed in reverse order. Volume three, Straight Shooter, contains issues #26-31. Volume four, The Archer’s Quest, contains issues #16-21. That’s just lazy.

“Best of” collections are exempt from this complaint; by their very nature, they’re designed to pick and choose from the best stories a particular comic book has to offer. But for numbered collections of ongoing series, there’s no reason why we can’t read every issue in the order in which they were originally published. This is especially important nowadays, as the average price of a comic book is around four dollars. Many fans buy some series solely in trade paperback format (in my case, Invincible and X-Factor). If issues are missing, then we’re not getting the entire story, rendering the entire process moot.