Comments on: LOUIS’ SERIOUS ISSUES >> Make Mine Paid Bills!

By: Tom Hronik

Tom Hronik — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:07:41 +0000

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.

By: bluerosekiller

bluerosekiller — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:23:43 +0000

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?!!

By: RP

RP — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 05:58:18 +0000

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.

By: Allan

Allan — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 00:42:16 +0000

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.

By: Rod

Rod — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:57:45 +0000

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.

By: DJ

DJ — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:38:59 +0000

Honestly, most of the people I know torrent Marvel / DC books anyway. Why aren’t the big companies selling their stuff digitally yet?

By: Chadwick H. Saxelid

Chadwick H. Saxelid — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 16:58:47 +0000

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.

By: Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 16:25:05 +0000

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.