Had you asked me about a few years ago if I prefer to buy comics as they come out - or prefer to get them in trades, I would have readily said 'comics', and I would even say that there's no real value add to trades - well, except for the fact that you have the story in one sitting (although there are trades that have multiple releases, so even that is not always true).
Flash-forward to today... specifically my post-Ondoy (i.e. heavy flood waters typhoon), and you ask me that same question, and I would say I appreciate them both - though perhaps the comics still win out a little due to the fact that trades are normally months - if not years behind the current story.
Aside from the fact that trades - specially the hard-cover types, turn out to be better protected, thus more durable and have better quality paper than when some of the stories they reprint have, I better appreciate them because they allow me to re-collect the stories (at least, the really good ones) again.
Take for example the two trades at the bottom of the picture - both written by Roger Stern in the '80s, and definitely story arches I liked back then. Yes I had the comics, but the flood did damage them. Now, with these trades out, I get to enjoy the stories again. Oh yeah... and no need to worry about comic book spine damage either.
One other benefit of trades... those stories you missed - maybe because you had limited budgets and had to forego a title or more (like Superman)... well, these trades give me a second chance to get them. So yeah, I'm getting fond of these trades. As it is, I've probably got around 20 of them already. Will I - at a particular point in time, just opt to collect trades and forego the individual titles coming out on a monthly basis? Three years ago, I would have said that such was an absurd idea. Now? I might give it some thought.
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