A new trade caught my attention as I filtered through Amazon searching for release dates to the War of Kings trades. A trade collection titles “War of Kings: Warriors” will ALSO include the WofK: Darkhawk 1 and 2 and WofK: Ascension 1 to 4 run along with the web-released singles (later in printed issues), WofK: Savage Sword of Skaar, and WofK: Warriors 1 and 2.

Is it just me or is all this kind of redundant and unnecessary? THREE trades contain the Darkhawk portion of the epic Marvel space event–I should be happy about this right?! I’m not.

War of Kings: Darkhawk contains the correct linear story of Darkhawk’s involvement; it starts with the Darkhawk miniseries and is followed up by the 4-part Ascension conclusion. A story in its entirety from start to finish.

Then a few months later the Ascension trade is to be released which flips the sequence of delivery giving us the Ascension 4-parter first and concluding with the Darkhawk 2-parter. How does this make any sense? Not only that but it’s CHEAPER than the trade entitles “Darkhawk” which features… DARKHAWK. Does the Darkhawk collection give us anything new? Any bonuses worth the price jack? No… it does not.

So doesn’t this kind of demean Darkhawk as a property? Even if Marvel is setting up a smart marketing strategy to hook the NON-Darkhawk fans out there… aren’t those fans just going to be pissed that the last 2 chapters of the collection become sequentially pointless since they already know how it ends?

When I came across this info I was left reluctantly wanting to pay the extra couple bucks for the collection bound in proper sequence. Marvel kinda taints me a little wrong inside though. I innately feel it’s more harmful to their Darkhawk property than helpful, that’s all.

That was a few long long months ago. This week I come across a THIRD friggin trade?!? The WofK: Darkhawk trade has barely even been on the market and they’re coming out with a third option set to release at the same time as WofK: Ascension in June… sigh… this third trade will be the most expensive of the three but will contain 3 other issues from the space opera. I own all these in singles, but for a few more bucks, I prefer to own as many of the War of Kings stuff in trade as possible… thus reluctantly forcing sales of the WofK: Darkhawk trade to reduce by one.

I just can’t help thinking the entire War of Kings collection is going to be a nightmare to collect now and I’m going to be forced to research the fine print of what singles are collected lest I pay for repeated issues throughout the entire trade run.

Summary of Redundant Trades:

  • War of Kings: Darkhawk – Collects War of Kings: Darkhawk #1-2, and War of Kings: Ascension #1-4. Price = $19.99
  • War of Kings: Ascension – Collects War of Kings: Ascension #1-4, and War of Kings: Darkhawk #1-2. Price = $14.99
  • War of Kings: Warriors – Collects War of Kings: Darkhawk #1-2, War of Kings: Ascension #1-4, War of Kings: Savage Sword of Skaar, and War of Kings: Warriors #1-2. Price = $24.99