The page count math on Batman: Hush blew my mind

I was rereading my old trade paperback of Batman: Hush last weekend and noticed the original issues had 22 story pages each. But the collected edition has 128 pages total including covers and extras. I sat down with a calculator and realized the story is actually only about 110 pages of actual comic content. That means around 18 pages of ads and backup material got cut when they made the trade. I always assumed trades kept everything, but now I check creator credits and original issue numbers on every collected book I buy. It makes me wonder if other classic story arcs like The Long Halloween have the same kind of page math hiding in their trades. Has anyone else worked out the original issue count vs trade page count on their favorite runs?

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shane_fisher3719d ago

My buddy Mike bought the Absolute edition of The Long Halloween thinking he was getting the whole story plus a ton of extras... turned out the main story was only 13 issues but the book had like 370 pages of covers, sketches, and script pages. He sat there one night counting every single page with a pencil and paper because he was so annoyed... finally figured out the actual story was only about 260 pages, which meant nearly a hundred pages of filler got packed in to make it look bigger. He still brings it up whenever we talk about trades, saying the page math never adds up the way you think it should. Now he checks the issue numbers printed in the back of every book before he buys it, just so he doesn't get burned again. I never woulda thought to do that myself but after hearing his story I started doing the same thing with my own collection.

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