Really popular, widely-anticipated and heavily-promoted periodical comics might hit 200,000 copies with a first issue, but those types of numbers usually aren't sustained over even a brief run. I doubt a reprint of even the finest Golden Age or Silver Age work, even priced competitively, would ever do that well. More expensive book collections don't sell in small numbers only because of the higher retail price -- there's just not a very large audience for this type of material these days.

And when you're selling small numbers of books to that small audience, it can become more difficult to cater to the unusual needs of the material (in this case, publishing in an unusual size). I'd fault DC, as a publisher, for not even thinking twice about the possibility (I know of the institutional inertia there), but I can certainly understand the practical restrictions.

(What's ironic is that you'd think it'd be easier for a larger publisher, with greater resources, to take those chances -- instead you find it's a smaller publisher, like Fantagraphics, that seems closer to the heart and soul of the work and is much more willing.)

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