I was going to do a favorite trade paperback post but the Amazing Spurlock beat me to it. Yet coming up on March 16th through 22nd our stores will be having our buy 2 get 1 free trade paperback sale. It is not my favorite sale because that is the back issue sale but it does rank a close second. This sale is a great way to get caught up or even try a new series. What I would like to try to get across is there is a cornu copia of trades to look at and I am trying to give people a path to find what they want/need. Remember this is my opinion so please feel free to talk to your manager at the store you shop at. Also try to talk the employees as well. 
1. FILLING IN THE REST OF THE SERIES YOU STARTED. You have volumes 1 through 4 of Saga. You can buy volumes 5 & 6 and get volume 7 for free. This sale can help finish off a series you have not had the time to finish and you save some money. You can also pick up the next volumes of 3 different series you are reading.
2. STARTING A NEW SERIES. You have 2 trades you want already and the third is free. This is a great time to try something new and different. You may have heard of a series and you waited until it was out in trade paperback. A buddy has recommended a series. You heard the employees of your store talking about a book. This is a great sale to pick one up it could be free. You could look at our Top 50 trades for some hints. In Naperville we recommend such series as East of West, Invincible, Kaijumax (a personal favorite), Revival, Seven to Eternity, and more. With a variety of employees, there is a variety of opinions and tastes.
3. PICKING UP THE EVENTS FROM MARVEL AND DC. Marvel and DC always have events that “change” their perspective universe. Usually there is a main mini-series that has the bulk of the story and some ancillary series that deal with specific characters. This sale is a great time to get caught with those events. You could buy the main series and the couple of tie ins with characters you like. With Marvel you have Secret Wars (both series), Civil War (both series), Secret Invasion, Spider-Verse, Siege, and War of the Realms to name a few. DC also has Crisis on Infinite Earths, Kingdom Come, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, and Heroes in Crisis to name some. This sale is a great way to catch up on those events you missed.
4. LOOKING FOR STAND ALONE STORIES. Some people do not want to get invested into a series or the yearly events. There are plenty of graphic novels to choose from. You could do 1 each for Marvel, DC, and Indy. There are plenty of one trade stories that come from Marvel and DC dealing with their particular heroes. Yet sometimes some people want to get away from the super-hero genre. That is where Indy and Vertigo/Black Label come in. Independent trades give you a wide variety. There are sci-fi, horror, and fantasy stories. There are real life stories as well. There are some biographies that have been made into comics. There are some neat books like Tetris Games People Play , Pride of Baghdad, and Is This Guy Real. Sometimes a story that is not connected to something else is nice to read. Fulfilling if I may say so.
5. PICKING UP THE CLASSICS. Both Marvel and DC have reprinted a lot of their older material. Marvel has a series called Epic 
Collections where they reprint the books in numeric order not story order. The Amazing Spider-Man vol 1 has Amazing Fantasy #15 with issues #1-17 and Annual #1. It is a great way to read books that you may not be able to afford in the original or if you owned the originals you do not want to read. DC has been reprinting their Golden Age material which is crazy expensive in the original. They have been doing both Batman and Superman in chronological order. They have also been reprinting Silver Age books like Flash and Green Lantern and Bronze Age Teen Titans. This sale can get you some classic stories and save you some money.
6. PICKING UP BOOKS FOR THE KIDS. There are many books for young readers now. A lot of them are only in graphic novel form. So this sale will be great for you to pick up some books for the kids. There is Avatar the Last Airbender, Scooby Doo Team Up (a personal favorite), to Smile and the Baby Sitters Club. It is a great way to get them to read. Also a great way to get them off their phone, computer, or game system. It is a win-win. They are reading and you save some money.
These ramblings of mine are just recommendations. Most of you probably have a game plan when it comes to one of these sales. Yet some of you don’t. Some like to go in and find the one trade they need and experiment with others. I just wanted to give advice to help. If I have helped one or two people with their decisions then I call it a win. Buy what you enjoy, enjoy what you buy. Above all, keep reading comics.
Thank you for reading my ramblings,
Mike
