I was reading Secret Avengers By Rick Remender Volume 1 last week when I noticed it didn’t have a dust jacket: the colourful wraparound cover was printed on the hardcover. I’ve harped about dust jackets before and their complete uselessness in this day and age. Could my dreams of the big two dropping dust jackets really be happening.
Giddy with excitement I thought about who could possibly address my question, since I had absolutely no contacts at Marvel. One name consistently appears in Marvel collections: Jennifer Grünwald, Collections Editor. Twitter to the rescue!
So no wholesale elimination of dust jackets but a gradual decline. Nice to see things heading in the right direction.
I actually like hard covers with dust jackets. I usually take them off my books before putting them on the shelf so my bookshelf has that oldschool look to it.
If you take them off your books then what do you like about them? Seems like they’re serving no purpose.
I can go either way as they are now, but a great example of how hardcovers can be done is the method used on DC’s “Earth One” graphic novels or IDW’s Angel hardcovers. If I had to choose, I’d prefer the latter of the two examples.