I think the fix to comics pricing is for the shops to all gather like Brian Hibbs (of tilting at windmills is trying to do) is trying to do.

If all of the shops were under one umbrella. Some kind of committee, they could then go to the publishers with a much larger voice and demand comics lower their prices. I don't know if that would work, but it seems like as good a solution as any.

Yeah, not buying stuff from your shops says nothing. Shops not buying from Marvel, DC, or Diamond says a ton.

I do believe that people shouldn't support a product they don't like though. It won't change anything, but at least you'll have peace of mind.

Two thoughts on factors affecting comic pricing:

If ads are sold on the basis of circulation, as they are in magazines, then comics circulation has dropped since the 1960's. According to comichron.com, Superman averaged 800,000+ sales in 1960; DC's top seller in January 2007, All Star Superman, sold a tenth of that figure. Plus, I'm sure the demand for Sea Monkeys, X-Ray Glasses, 132-Pc Roman Soldiers, and Grit has plummeted.

Secondly, as people have mentioned, the paper and coloring methods are better, which results in a better product that holds its value as a reading object. I have a lot of older comics printed on newsprint that look bleached and faded, and comics from a similar era printed on better paper that still look brand new.

Nice thought, but it still wouldn't work. Marvel, DC and Diamond comics (the lone distributor for comic shops) have all repeatedly demonstrated that they don't really give a shit about the local stores. Marvel & DC believe that the big retail outlets are where the money is at, and I don't know what the hell Diamond is thinking - they seem to be dead set on destroying their own business.

What big retail outlets have more than a token comics rack?

I agree, but that seems to be where the big two are focusing on. Maybe they believe that they can break in to the big stores and leave the comics shops behind.

They certainly don't do anything to try and help the comic shops, the place that would logically be seen as their bread & butter.

I agree that they are more concerned with catering to Barnes and Noble and such, but as of right now monthlies only exist in direct market comic shops. Maybe 90-95% of monthlies are sold in comic shops (BTW I'm also counting online places like DCBS and Milehigh as "shops").

If a large portion of them could get together, I really believe the big boys would have to listen to them. If one store decided to stop selling marvel because he didn't like the return policy/no overprint business from a few years ago -- Marvel wouldn't feel that one bit.

If a couple hundred/1000 of stores spoke with one voice, they would be taken much more seriously.

Granted, this might not work either because these stores have costumers they need to service (who love Marvel and DC) as well as bills to pay, but maybe if the shops had a larger voice they could be more preemptive about this shit.

Look at how Wal-Mart is able to totally dictate price on a lot of the products they sell. I'm not saying comic shops should be able to say "I will only carry comics if you sell them for 75 cents!", but they could be like "Look, $4.00 books are crazy, what can be done to keep them under $3.00?". Maybe they could have kept the price of countdown the same as 52?

DC and Marvel may act above it sometimes, but they need the monthly market. They just happen to wield the power right now so they can act like they don't.

I realize this is pipe dream talk though.

I pretty much quit collecting comics just as the new paper and coloring methods was becoming the norm which is just about the time prices started skyrocketing. I may not be of the mindset of current collectors who are willing to pay $3 for each issue, but I would rather put up with newsprint paper and have comic books so affordable that the average kid can afford to collect them which, in turn, just might make demand skyrocket accordingly. I'm thinking that it may be nice that current comics remain looking brand new, but what would be the use of that, if comic book values (which is pretty much dictated by demand) never rise to make it worth it. I know I myself may consider getting back into comics if prices were closer to $1 or $1.50 an issue.

As for the argument that kids nowadays would not read comics given that they have so many other distractions (video games, movies, Pokemon, etc.), I don't agree. Stick a Spider-Man comic in front of any kid and they would be very interested in reading it or at least flipping through it especially given the popularity of the movies. If Harry Potter can carry such a huge fanbase among the kids of the world, then I believe comics can do the same. Not the knock the trend of comic books nowadays being geared towards the older crowd, but I believe if some titles can be geared towards people of all ages and include the young, readership can increase. Think about it. Comic books are best suited for kids. I know when I was a kid, I loved reading anything with pictures in it because that's how kids think. As an adult, its appeal is far less.

I long for the days when comic books can have huge mass appeal again for both young and old. Those comic book conventions of those days 20 years past were the greatest and I wish those days could come again. And, yes, I long for the days when my boxes and boxes of comic books can be worth something again. They still hold great sentimental value to me, but it would be wonderful if they could return to the monetary values of years past.

So to those big comic book companies (Marvel and D.C., I'm talking to you), if I have to return to the days of newsprint paper, even put up with weird ads so that comic books can be affordable again, I would gladly. Both for myself and my kids. Hopefully my ideas aren't too off-the-wall especially for those who are current collectors. If I could work on the marketing team of a big-time comic book company and work to change things, that would be a dream job.

The thing I don't understand is...Everyone says the "new paper" is so much more expensive...but exactly how many free comics were given away yesterday? How much do you honestly think they cost to make...3 cents each?

IMO the comic shops WANT the comics to be this expensive, they pay close to 50% of cover price to they make 1.50 on each book. Nice little profit, if books were $1 each their profit would be crap...I think the comic shop owners absolutely love when cover prices are raised.....

NO, comic shop owners do not want the prices to be expensive. If they buy all these copies of something that doesn't sell, then guess what, they're stuck with a crap load of product they have to throw in a discount bin in hopes to just make 25 cents back.

Plus, with comic prices cheaper, people probably buy more titles. Which means you can get them interested in trying new books and possibly picking up back issues or trades that they wouldn't have bought otherwise.

The comic book market just isn't what it used to be really. With the internet and TPBs constantly being released the price of a single issue has gone up to cover the cost of production and product really.

I'm thinking a company like Marvel is making moderate profits from their comic books. The way they make their money is in licensing stuff to movies, tv shows, and toys. Look at how many indie publishers went the way of the dodo and how many titles have been consolidated? I just don't think there is a lot of money in publishing comic books but I could be way off base with that assumption.

I've had this discussion with others in the LCS numerous times. My own opinion, and it may not be popular, is that the monthly comics should be treated as disposable items, printed on newsprint, with a lower price. The better paper and color reproduction should be reserved for the colelcted edition of the book. Most collectors I know store their individual monthlies after the first reading anyhow, and get a collection for revisiting the material.

Why would you say this? It makes absolutely no sense at all. Simply economics would tell you that if the retail price of a comic is raised, so would be the retailer's cost, their discount doesn't change with the rising price. And no store sells every single comic that they order. For every 1 issue they sell out of, & make that enormous $1.50 profit you say they love, there are 5 issues of a comic they are eating the profit on just sitting on a wall collecting dust. As so many people seem to forget, stores order their comics 2 months in advance, so ordering is quite often a guessing game of what would sell & what won't. Trust me, not even a store like Midtown comics, "absoutely love when cover prices are raised".

Yeah, somehow I don't think all LCS's are just rolling in the dough because they get such a tremendous discount on comics... with rent, cost of business, and all the risk they take preordering stuff two months in advance that they can't return, I don't envy them at all. I do see a little of what you're saying, though... if the cover price were lowered and the absolute profit per book were thus lowered, they'd have to generate twice as much sales, probably more so considering shipping. So a drop in prices with the same relative discount would probably hurt the LCS unless it generated a lot more interest in comics immediately. So they're not gorging on the bigger prices, but I don't think they'd want to see just a universal price drop without at least some buildup and advertising, etc.

I still think other distractions are a valid reason. Sure, if you give a kid a comic book, or if you make them insanely cheap (I don't think 1.00 to 1.50 is doable, even with cheap newsprint) some kids will pick them up. Will they go out of their way (to an LCS) to do so, though, on a monthly basis for such small bits of story at a time?

I really wonder how Viz's US version of Shonen Jump is doing. They're selling a monthly anthology at bookstores of some of the most popular kid's manga (most of which has had at least some exposure on TV), for pretty cheap (average magazine price). I know this is all translated, black and white material, but I think it's on pretty cheap newsprint, and Viz then goes and collects them in collected volumes anyway.

I was also encouraged when I walked into a local Borders the other day, and found a rack full of comics. Didn't know they did that anymore. Of course, all of them were bent out of shape and I doubt anyone would buy them in that condition... I think they're able to return books to the publishers, unlike the LCS, though, so it counts as exposure. They also had a pretty large graphic novel section that included non-manga books, which I also haven't seen in a while. Of course, there were literally dozens of kids sitting on the floor reading... manga. Who knows how many buy them.

I agree that kids have more distractions than ever, but they also love collecting things. Just look at how much is spent on Pokemon and Yugi-oh stuff and you can see how much can be gotten from the kid market alone. I'm also only pointing to the kid market because I think comics are more suited for kids and teens because adults are less inclined to want to read things with pictures in it. Make them affordable, and you just may have a big, big market there.

I agree on two of your points. Does it seem like on a per issue basis, there just doesn't seem to be a whole lot happening? I collected comics over a decade again, and it seem like comics have more happening per issue back then than they do now. I only base this on recent visits to Borders where I got to flip through some comics. Most of the artwork is just beautiful, but almost nothing seems to be happening. Just a lot of talk and posing. Full-page spreads seem to be so much more common now than back in my day when every page always have multiple frames decreasing how much is happening even more.

You underestimate the cost of paper and printing. I don't know what the cost to produce a comic book is these days, but I would bet a month's salary it isn't 3 cents.

There is less happening in each issue... part of it has to do with comics becoming more like movies in storytelling, part of it has to do with the proliferation of splash pages, and part of it has to do with wanting to collect stuff in trades for future sales.

I agree targeting the kid audience is the way to go... not only because they're more susceptible to reading stuff like comics, but because otherwise the audience will always get smaller and smaller... new blood needs to come in. I always though the Yugioh and Pokemon stuff was more based on social interaction, though... collecting a deck that could beat your friend's deck, stuff like that. To look at another collectible hobby that has seemingly lost the kids market altogether, I don't think baseball card or other sports cards are as big as they once were (I could be wrong).

Yes, I guess you're right about Pokemon and Yugi-oh cards having a lot to do with social interaction. Still, as a kid way back in the day when comic books were the biggest things to collect, that was the big source of social interaction as everyone brought in their big piles of comics, talked about them, sold and traded them. That was back even before comic values started ballooning and everyone starting putting them in protective bags and keeping them in mint condition. Comics were so cheap back them, that was do-able. Nowadays, you won't find kids having that kind of luxury. Comics are just way too expensive.

With paper and printing costs being such a big cost for comics, it would be great if they came up with a different media to put it in. A cheap means to get comics out digitally (and I don't mean reading comics on a computer which can be a real drag). Hopefully, they'll think of something which doesn't also entail spending a few hundred bucks on a handheld book device of some kind also. $50 maybe, or maybe they can get it downloaded to read on a PSP or a DS or something like that.

This is a few years old, but a pal of mine who self-published for a while wrote an article on the costs involved.

The point he makes sure to hammer home:

I'm sure the bigger companies get sweeter deals, but still...

Yup. They called it Marvel Fanfare and the first two issues (in a four issue story arc) were drawn by Michael Golden. If I remember correctly they cost $2.50 an issue back then, which seemed insane at the time. I was able to talk my mom into getting them for me as I would take good care of them and it would be a hobby. She had no idea how much I ended up keeping my end of the bargain. Still am to this day.

Personally I've got no problem with the price. I just buy stuff that I'm sure is worth the money. I don't follow characters (except Hellblazer and B.P.R.D./Hellboy) but I do follow artists and some writers. I just see it as part of my monthly budget which usually comes out to $80 to $100. And I'm able to pick up pretty everything on the shelves that I like including the odd TPBs here and there. That budget might seem excessive to some, not so much to others. This is my absolute favorite medium of entertainment and to me it's worth it. I also feel like my favorite artists should prosper and hope the publisher pays them in accordance to the profits generated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Fanfare

Marvel Fanfare was just over twice the prevailing price of comics at the time: $1.25 in 1982 when comics were around $0.60 each and $2.25 in 1992 while most other comics were $1 each.

comics are expensive...yesterday I bought 3 comics -- $10.00

that is nuts

Nice. I might have been getting them confused with back issue prices. What I do know for a fact is that I whined to my Mom to get me Moon Knight number one for $2.50 when the series was on #18. That's gotta coincide with the first Marvel Fanfares. That's when I got the sickness.

I get a 20% discount at the LCS, and I'm definitely slashing titles at the next price bump ($3.25 or $3.50). Since I usually read my comics during a bowel movement, those movements are getting more and more expensive lately.