Does anyone think there will be a price increase in comics this year? With gas prices extremely high again I suspect the comics will be raised soon. My guess is 3.29 a book across the board, if they really want to be greedy they will go to 3.49. Watch how fast comic shops close after this mistake...

most paperback books are only 5.99...if comics raise again, they're done.

Same for me. I ususally read them on the can too. Hadn't thought of it that way however. The next price jump will force me to make some tought decisions. Do I continue patronizing my LCBS? Do I go mail order? Do I slash titles or do I quit altogether?

It's inevitable that at some point comics will go up in price. When they do, you can bet I will trim my pull list to compensate. I get a discount at my LCS, but I still spend upwards of $40 a week. If they jump .50 or $1 in price then I'll have to be a hell of a lot more frugal.

I stopped buying comic books because they were too expensive years ago. A one-day "boycott" won't work.

Went to a comic book store for the first time in a long while to actually buy something. My 3 year old is currently obssessed with the Saturday morning cartoons Krypto The Superdog and the new Legion of Super-Heroes.

He got some free comics on free comic book day and has actually treated them decently (for a three-year old), & looks at them all the time. I stopped in to pick up some Krypto but they only had one issue. Bought it but to my shock it was $2.25! Wow! How do kids get into comics nowadays? Since I made the trip there, I bought him the new Legion comic as well as a cheap ($1.50) back issue of The Batman Adventures. 3 comics for a total of $6.54 after tax.

I then saw people there with stacks of comics, picking up their various new releases, and can't imagine the price people are paying for comics each week or month. One problem...school is out but the only people there were adults. There was one kid who was around 12 but everyone else there was in their 20's to 40's (with many having uber-geek comic conversations about powers and stuff).

When the current generation fo comic buyers die out, will that kill the business? I went to two comic book stores and neither seem to cater to kids at all. I mean nada. One at least had a small kid's corner that had a handful of new and old titles for kids but the other I went to was depressing. It was full of expensive statues, toys, graphic novels with nothing for kids. One of the guys there was very condescending to me when I asked if they carried Krypto. It is a comic book store for god's sake.

Anyway, just a littled shell shocked at how pricey & anti-kid these places were. Has this transpired due to the "collector's" mentality? Is it like taking a kid to an antique shop now? Afraid they might bend a corner, scratch a page or try to take a comic out of it's (gasp) plastic bag to look at it?

I don't think it's the collector's mentality... that was much more prevalent in the 90's, and I'm sure it's what turned a bunch of people (who still have boxes of Spawn #1 in their basement) off to comics altogether.

Price, as discussed earlier, is an issue, as is all the other distractions kids have these days. I still think there's hope in manga, though... go to any large bookstore, and there are dozens of kids sitting on the floor reading manga. That doesn't help the bookstores, or even American comics any, but there you go.

Hey, brianluvdvd, I understand what you went through and I share your pain. Why is the comic book industry making almost no provision for including kids when there could be quite a market there? You can still have the titles you have now, but at least create new ones that are geared towards the younger crowd. You don't need your high-caliber artists and writers on those titles, but just make them enjoyable and cheaper for God's sake so kids can afford them. Your son wanting a Krypto comic book because he enjoys the TV show should be no surprise whatsoever for comic book companies. I wish they would expand this more to include a lot more titles. And try to get these titles into more than comic specialty stores. Make them cheap enough so that they can be sold in supermarkets, newsstands, even your local K-Mart or Target. Getting "new blood" as someone have mentioned should be a priority for the comic book industry if they want to survive.

As for people who spend a fortune every month, I totally understand the mindset also. I used to be one of them so many years back. Collecting a variety of titles just for completion sake was one of my faults. It wasn't till prices got so out of hand that even with a decent-salaried job, I chose to simply quit altogether. Still, I miss those old days of collecting though, but unless they lowered prices, I would never think about going back.

consoleman...you made a good point that I forgot to mention. Why the hell can't you find a comic book somewhere other than a comic book shop? When we were at Wal-mart & Target the other day, I looked for some for my kid and neither place carried them (and these were the "super" stores).

You don't see them at grocery stores or drug stores anymore and if they do have them, they may carry at most 5 or so titles. Book stores don't carry them unless they are in trade paperback form. They vanished from gas/convenience stores long ago where they were so prevalent for many years. Hell, do newsstands even exist nowadays?

Will the industry also kill itself by making them so inaccessible as impulse buys? I can remember my Dad impulse buying me many comics growing up as we were walking out of drug stores, gas stations, grocery stores. If I was ever sick and he or Mom had to get me some medicine, I always knew that they would walk in with several "surprise" comics to make me feel better.

Some of my fondest memories of childhood was racing my bike down to the local drugstore after school and thumbing thru the many racks of comics and leaving with several in hand. Geez...I sound like an adult.

I think the major players should have one or two titles each geared to kids at a sub $2 price, and try to push these into the mass merchants like Target and Walmart. Give them good talent and make them good books that perhaps even comic completists will buy, maybe even taking a small loss on them. But if they don't keep kids excited about comics, the industry will continue to shrink and die someday.

Same here. I still have vivid memories of riding my bike thru the back streets of Vienna to the local 7-11, where I would spend $2 and take home 10 comics.

The gas protest is simply stupid and doesn't work at all. You hit the mark though. Can't afford or don't want to spend a lot on comics? Don't buy them.

Personally, I wait for trades on most of the books as they are a better bang for your buck.

There's some signs of publishers understanding what they're doing. The Runaways TPB is $7.99 for example. That's a better price point than a lot of others trades that run much higher.

But paperback books aren't that cheap either. The old-style ones might still be $5.99 (or the stuff that sits in boxes at the supermarket) but most new large-format paperback books are above $10.

Aren't the Runaways TPBs in the manga format (I don't know, I've been collecting the awesome hardcovers)?

As far as value goes, I wonder how the Essential tpbs are doing... they're not in color, but they're pretty darned cheap.

They're in the "manga" format in that they're smaller, but they still read left-to-right and they're in color. The print quality isn't what you might expect from a graphic novel but it's definitely readable.

Yeah, I agree with some of the posters here. It woud only hurt your LCS. They have already paid for the product. Diamond has already gotten their money by the time the books hit the shelves. They really wouldn't care if you bought the books 3 years from now. All it would hurt is the small business owner. Ya just gotta get with the times and realize that ad space is expensive and ergo so will the books.

I hate the smaller sized trades. I really wish MJ loves Spider-man would come out in a collected trade that looks somewhat half way decent.

There's an oversized HC that reprints Mary Jane #1-4, Mary Jane:Homecoming #1-4, and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane #1-5. Cover price is $24.99 (ISBN: 0-7851-2610-4)