Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!
In case you haven’t heard the news, Marvel Comics is planning to raise the price of their single-issue titles from an already hefty $2.99 to a wallet-breaking $3.99. That’s $3.99 for typically 22 pages of story a month, very rarely delivering a comic that’s really worth that much.
Let’s break it down: Usually, every week I get about five to eight single titles, roughly paying about $25-$30, if I’m lucky. Now, with times tighter than Prince Namor’s swim trunks, I haven’t bought comics in about three months. When things get better financially, for both me and the country, I was honestly pretty excited to get back to it. I really do miss reading the adventures of my four-color friends, as lame as that sounds. But, with a cover price raise of even a little ol’ dollar, I’m looking at spending about $40-$50 a week — more than $160 a month — on comics. Not to sound like a grumpy old man, but that’s an electricity bill, some groceries, some gas and maybe my Netflix. If I’m lucky.
Sorry Marvel, but as far as my finances go, it’s clobberin’ time, and you’re the first to get the rock-encrusted fist.
With this price raise, I will officially stop buying single titles. Like I said, I haven’t bought comics in three months, but even before that, I had to totally stop buying indie titles — they are usually the most expensive books as it is — and as much as I do like to support independent authors and artists, the cover price is just too much for experimenting. I made the tough decision to stick with the big two, Marvel and DC, reading the heroes that I’ve always been most comfortable with, with a cover price that I was (sort of, but not really) comfortable with.
But now, I’m just giving up everything altogether. I’m sure this is going to be the way for a lot of regular Friends of Ol’ Marvel, especially with the upcoming total economic depression (and believe me, it is coming). It’s going to be a time of growing up for many comic book readers. For too long, we’ve been in a state of arrested development, continuing our childhood through our fandoms (and let’s not forget the action figures, conventions, etc.). We haven’t really had anything to make us put away “childish things.” But now I guess it’s really time for us all to grow the fuck up. It sucks, I know, but when it comes between eating a carrot and buying that $100 copy of ABSOLUTE CAPTAIN CARROT, hopefully your survival instincts will kick in. Hopefully.
Now don’t feel bad — it’s not your fault. Marvel has effectually shot itself in the foot. Like the mega-million budgets for many of today’s Hollywood films, Marvel has pumped so much money into hiring the big “stars” for its books, with very few actually delivering and living up to their name. In my opinion, many of the best comics I’ve stayed with over the past few years have been the low-key, under-the-radar titles with lesser-known writers and artists. It seems that more freedom equals more entertainment.
Those big names always seem to come in with big ideas that have gotten way too out of hand in the past few years. Look at the recent CIVIL WAR or SECRET INVASION storylines: They crossed over into just about every Marvel title, not only interrupting already established storylines, but — if you weren’t buying all 28 crossover titles that month — making you completely lost. So very lost. Can we effectively agree that it’s about time to put a moratorium on “events”?
Also, no matter what anyone says, kids don’t read comics. At all. Why would a child spend $3.99 on a single issue — wherein you can guarantee they’ll have no idea what’s going on — when, for a few bucks more, they can get a toy of some sort (which usually comes with added features, like a trading card or comic book itself), or, if they’re really good, a video game that they can actually interact with? What can they do with a comic book? Read?
Sure, when you and I were little’uns, we read those funny books voraciously, and they were an easily dropped 50, maybe 65 cents. No big whoop. But kids today don’t get Spider-Man from SPIDER-MAN comics — they get him from cartoons, movies and toys. Superheroes are such an established, regular part of the modern American mythology that I’d be surprised that this next generation even knows they originated in print.
It’s adults who read SPIDER-MAN, and it’s adults who have money, and it’s adults — so beaten down with everyday life, such as inflation, paying bills and whatnot — who will pay $2.99 for it. They don’t know better not to. And Marvel knows this. And Marvel has taken advantage of this.
Believe it or not, it doesn’t need to be this way. According to inflation figures (figuring in everything from paper to printing) from Rich Johnston’s Comic Book Resources column “Lying in the Gutters,” comics should be dirt-cheap. In 1977, a 30-cent comic should have cost 30 cents. Exactly. In 2008, a $2.99 comic should cost … wait for it … $1.09.
Yep, one dollar and nine fucking cents. Sorry, Spidey, there’s no way around it: That is greed, pure and simple. Doctor Doom would be proud.
I guess the big question is this: How can Marvel save itself?
Dropping the price to a fair $1.25 — even $1.50 — would be a start. You can believe they’d sell more copies at that price, just out of curiosity alone. And, when you think about it, would Marvel really lose that much money? It may sell X amount of copies for $3.99, but chances are it’d sell twice, three times that amount at $1.50. The money itself would equal out.
Speaking of printing, I would also go back to old-school newsprint. Drop this whole glossy paper BS. If people want that, and want to pay $3.99 for it, order up a small print run of “prestige format” comics for the shops, like in the ’80s. Everyone else, who actually reads comics, would be happy with newsprint, and I, for one, would look forward to just the smell of the books alone. (Ahhh … that’s the way comic should smell.)
The biggest thing I would do, though? Get back to what matters: the comic book — not the “superstar” writer or artist. Get contract salary men, who love the fact they have the fucking privilege to work in comics, to go nuts on their assigned titles. Hire both new guns out of school and old-school legends — especially the ones that time (and Marvel) have conveniently forgotten — to do your dirty work. I guarantee that Marvel, by injecting this into its books, will see itself in the middle of a new renaissance.
Will Marvel do any of this? No, of course not. And it’s sad. It’s sad to know that this may be the final thing that forces Marvel — the Marvel that we know — to go the way of Bucky Barnes. Sure, it will always have their movies — which I will always be first in line for, natch — and kids will always have their cartoons and video games, but the word bubble has finally been popped. Possibly for good. Sorry, gang: The bad guys have won this issue, and it looks like there no “to be continued” to save it.
Exceli — oh, never mind … —Louis Fowler
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Very sad. I quit collecting comics around 1980, when they were still about 35 cents, and I was buying ten titles a month – or more! It was getting out of control then, and has been going down hill ever since.
Yes, very sad, but very true. I’ve pretty much decided to make the leap from buying/reading the serials to going for the trades…and buying said trades from an online retailer (like Amazon) is somewhat more inexpensive than buying them at the local comic shop.
Currently I spend somewhere between 100 dollars a month at the comic book store, buying comics for both myself and my son. But if I didn’t buy comics for my son, he wouldn’t be reading them. He spends his money on video games.
My comic book shop owner told me that sales of the serials keep the costs of the trades reasonable, and only serials that sell well get converted into trades. I don’t know about that. To quote Sheriff Hoyt from the TCM remake…”I smell BS.”
Although the major comic conventions, such as Comic-Con and Wonder Con, might escape the coming death crunch of the ecomonic slow down/collapse, the smaller fan conventions are definitely going to evaporate, or simply return to the small, informal gatherings of friends that they began as.
I’d always heard the opposite to be true: That it’s the sales of the trades that keep the singles alive. Oh, well. Either way, I don’t buy singles unless they’re one-shots or highly unlikely to ever be collected.
Honestly, most of the people I know torrent Marvel / DC books anyway. Why aren’t the big companies selling their stuff digitally yet?
I’m dubious about the $1.09 figure, because–from what I’ve read–it seems to take into account the costs to produce the books, but not the size of the audience willing to pay for them. The amount of non-trade comic book buyers in 1977 figured in the millions, but now is a much smaller pool of people, which could go a long way towards explaining the supposed discrepancy. It’s also interesting to note that if you read a lot about the history of comics, you’ll find that editorials like Louis’ here appear every time there is a price increase in the monthly titles. In one of his books Mark Evanier suggests that in his experience even the most dedicated of fans have their limits, noting the case of a friend who stopped buying comics when they made the mind-boggling leap to $0.25 an issue. In the same essay he also suggests that comic book fans are notoriously cheap.
I’m totally fed up with the price points in the industry, too. The TPBs are ridiculously priced for what you get, and the new single issues cost an equally unreasonable amount. I think Louis hits it one the head here when he brings up paper quality etc. being big factors. I was happy to buy “prestige format” books back in the day for extra pages, glossy paper and a square binding, but today’s production methods are waaay to fancy for a typical funnybook.
If you want to save some cash, though, there are always great stories to be found among the cheap back issues. LEGION OF SUPERHEROES back issues are normally cheap and have great stories (Keith Giffen’s issues are my favorites); VIGILANTE and AMERICAN FLAGG also fall into this category.
Like Tom Johnson , I gave up collecting comics back in ‘79 or 80 when at 18, I’d decided that I’d rather spend my money on girls & beer. Which wound up with mixed results in that I wound up getting laid & having a lot of good times, but on the other hand, it caused me to sell my collection for just a fraction of what it was worth back then. A collection that if I owned it now & sold or auctioned it off properly, would likely buy me a very nice home. And then some.
In the decades since then, I’ve been very tempted on many different occasions to begin buying/reading/collecting comics again, but the financial commitment always factored in on me not doing so. And, those times were a while back when comics were still only somewhere between a buck or two.
Now?
It’s completely out of the question at three bucks a pop.
Now they want to raise the price to FOUR bucks per single issue? That’s just insane!!!
It’s already pretty much an elitist hobby due to the prohibitive costs involved in maintaining a collection & now they’re going to increase it by a huge percentage?
Are they TRYING to kill their print business?!!
Louis Fowler is on target like always, but he might be a little late–it looks to me as though Marvel has been doing everything it could to kill its comic book business for some time now, with the price increase just the icing on the cake. If I ever wondered whether or not I should start reading the Marvels again, the question was answered once and for all by the “One More Day” storyline in the Spiderman books. Mephisto changes history so that Peter and Mary Jane were never married–brother, I kept hoping I’d find out that this was somebody’s idea of a joke. It never happened, obviously. To realize that they want us to pay an extra 33 percent for idiocy like this is absolutely incomprehensible. It was fun while it lasted but it’s just about over.