The book is better

I've said this often of movies, but the same is true of comics.

I recently read the new Gambit series in its trade form, and while I liked it as a series of issues, I definitely liked it *more* as a collected whole. 

I think part of it is the immediacy of the story. you don't have a month in between pieces to forget details of what happened, slip out of the mood the previous book had put you in, etc.

But I also think part of it is pacing. A good comic should end on a beat that makes you want to find out what happens next, but with individual issues it incites that feeling and then laughs at you for weeks. The collected book definitely feeds into a sense of immediacy, helping it feel like everything's happening on a realistic timescale.

Sometimes I swear I'd be better off  by just waiting for trades.... but then how would I know what to get *in* trades? :)