My Spider-Gwen omni has a little of this but it is only I think one gathering of signatures is effected, so I won't worry about it. I had two copies of Severn To Eternity where the inner spine was glued too tight and the entire set of gatherings came away from the spine. The first I sent back. The second I fixed. I had to loosen away the inner spine from the outer spine first, so that the inner spine had the available space to be opened fully. Then re-glued the gatherings back tot he inner spine. All good now.
Yikes, what a pain, happy it worked out for you though. And yeah, I also had to fully separate the inner spine from all of the page bunches when fixing the Spider-Gwen omni. It can be daunting because it can feel like in order to fix the problem, you have to first make it worse 😄
@SuperFlyComicsGuy definitely. And there is a feeling you paid a lot of money for a broken product. But it is an easy fix once you have done it once, and it works well
Having this exact same issue with my Captain America By Ed Brubaker omnibus! Definitely going to take advantage of this process when I get the chance!!
I came back to this video since I've purchased some omnibuses... Something I learned is to inspect an omnibus when I get one to be sure it looks "normal." I got an omnibus that looked clearly defective from the factory, and I returned it for a different copy. The new copy looks normal. The bad copy had poorly "carved out" page edges that was more like a 90-degree notch instead of a smooth curve, and the "booklets" that get glued into the spine were way uneven like the pages were cut the wrong width and didn't reach as far into the spine.
P.S. Crazy as it sounds, I'm storing all my omnibuses on their side (flat) instead of vertical because I think it'll put less pressure on the spine over time. I read about this (and it was apparently confirmed by a librarian), and my experience with normal textbooks that are huge is that they develop noticeable sags in the spine from being stored vertically. So, for omni's, I'm keeping them in stacks, horizontally on the shelf. Probably no more than 3-4 high (but some people stack 5 high). EDIT: for clarity
I hope I don't need to use the advice in this video, but thanks! I just ordered some omnibuses and later read online that their bindings are bad. (No returns allowed either.) So, it seems I'm stuck with them. For years I've opted for trade paperback books over hardcovers when reading "normal" books -- why is it that so many comics fans like these omnibuses? They're heavy, awkward to bring anywhere, and seem to break a lot. Why not go trade paperback for comics? (Is it because you can't get all the issues without the omni?) EDIT: And to be clear, I think the omni's look GREAT -- if the bindings were made like normal books that don't fall apart!
I hope your books will be in good health for a long time! For what it’s worth, the vast majority of my omnis have had at least decent binding quality, but as with anything you do get a few bad apples here and there. I can’t speak for everyone, but I personally love the omni format because of the convenience - having a huge chunk of a run or story in the correct reading order all within a single book. Way easier than worrying about tracking down multiple trades, or even worse - organizing single issues 😄 Plus the oversized artwork is always a treat!
@@SuperFlyComicsGuy Thanks for explaining. The ones I bought have multiple stories / runs that would have required purchasing multiple trades each, and I usually don't need to take my books anywhere, so I don't mind the size myself :) I "break in" all my big hardcovers carefully, so I'll do the same with these and hope they hold up! Great point about the oversized pages!
You can also use a long toothpick or a smaller liner brush to apply the glue instead of a fat brush, it’ll just take longer. Alternatively if you’re brave, you can separate the glue further yourself to make space for your brush to fit 😋
Thankfully I haven't needed to do this yet None of books have started to break on me cept for the copy of the sale and love batman omni I have which looks like it got ganged up on in an alleyway
Hey thanks for the suggestion! I’d like to get some more omnis under my belt first before I dig into that topic, but it’s a good idea and I’ll note it down for the future. Thanks for watching!
