Xiroteus

It became quite hard to justify when there are cheaper forms of entertainment that can last for hours. When I did buy video games I would wait until they drop below ten dollars. I still love the comic format and find cheaper ways to purchase them now days. When you grab something so thin which ends up being $4.25 after tax one may feel that's a bit too much. Just running in like that would also mean most series would be at the start, middle or end of an arc so that doesn't work as a one off. Personally I find a nice hardcover with a complete story at Amazon prices is much easier to take.

taffer

Yeah, and instocktrades.com is even cheaper. Trades there are about $9 or so. For a six-issue trade that's only $1.50 per issue.

Funny that I say "only $1.50" when 20 years ago that was getting to be pretty freaking expensive...

I wish I could get into trades, but I can't for a couple reasons. I need my monthly "drug fix." The bigger reason though is I hate HATE gutter loss. Gutter loss is what gets lost in the middle of the book due to the nature of the binding. That just bothers me so much, especially for double page spreads, since the effect it tries to achieve is completely ruined by the binding. Some artists like Francis Manapul on The Flash use a lot of double page spreads. I can't even imagine how irritating it must be to read The Flash in trade format.

Xiroteus

Gutter loss is something that bothers me as well. You think they would design around that. Since I have to keep everything I own as perfect as I can I hardly can open most trades without causing damage so hardcovers work out a bit better. That is something the single issues can really show. They lay flat with no loss at all.

I started monthly when comics were around the $1.25 - $150 range and was not thrilled once so many hit $2.00. Then to $2.25 and that's when the HUGE jumps started. $2.99. It appears jumps now will be close to a dollar, I wonder what will happen if regular issues hits $5.00 anytime soon. Even if it's ten years from now that will be too soon for many people.

Even if a hardcover came out to the same price as the single issues it would feel like a better purchase to me based on the format.

taffer

Yeah, the stapled binding of single issues really works best since it allows the comic to lay flat. You can't really staple a trade though.

Gutter loss would actually be easily to prevent. They could easily put a border on the inside edge of the page, so all that would be lost would be border.


DC and Marvel have frequently been doing double sized issues for double the price. They may just keep doing that instead of raising the regular price to $5 anytime soon.

Marvel also double ships many of their titles. So a $4 comic from them actually costs $8 per month. I quit Marvel in the 90s and am strictly DC now. I couldn't imagine buying a lot of double shipping titles. I already spend enough as is.

Xiroteus

I had the same thought as it would allow for all art to be shown.


That just reminded me of when titles like Superman and Spider-Man had four series and it really was week to week. You could never buy just one of the series since the story lines continued into the others. It was kind of ridiculous that they should have just had one series so people could keep track easier.

taffer

Yeah, they also had quarterly titles that were released on the fifth week of the month's that had five weeks.

Superman then used the "triangle numbering" which was a good idea so you would know the correct reading order. I loved the triangle era, at least up until the electric blue garbage in the late 90s.

Also, DC is going to be doing a weekly Batman series next year called Batman: Eternal for Batman's 75th anniversary. That's just what we need... another Batman title... and a weekly one at that...

Xiroteus

It made sense for what they were going for at the time. It really was a weekly Superman title with different names.

Oddly enough that's when I started buying Superman monthly. I also started Spider-Man monthly during the clone saga.

Every time they try and streamline some titles they just end up with a dozen Batman series again. X-Men having several series made sense when it was about different teams while Batman, Superman, Spider-Man etc.. really don't require six series a month each.

taffer

The Clone Saga is when I quit reading Marvel.


It doesn't require that many series, no, but the market supports it anyway. Its really more the consumer's fault. If people refused to buy so much, then the companies would quit producing so much. People want Batman, so DC keeps giving them what they want. You can't blame DC if people are actually willing to buy a dozen different Batman titles per month.

Xiroteus

I was one of the few that would have been fine with Ben Reilly being Spider-Man because I knew both for about the same amount of time since that's when I started reading monthly. I also liked Ben's Spider-Man costume a LOT more than peter's. (Not the Scarlet Spider, the later one tat ended up being used for Spider-Girl)

Can't blame them at all. They are a company and you are sure going to release series that sell more then ones that don't. It's always nice to have a little variety yet one really has to move beyond Marvel and DC to get that.

slop101

I had those early Valiants too, and I did pretty much the same thing, only instead of the mid-west, it helped fund my '94 trip to Paris. Parisian girls are the best!


Wanted to point out, that OoP hardcover collections are similarly volatile.

The first printing of the New X-Men Omnibus was going for around $500 for a while (which really isn't that big a mark-up when you consider that the cover price was $99; that's like a $1 cover-priced back-issue going for $5), but as soon as it had a reprint, it dropped back down to $100.

slop101

My go-to example of the potential awesomeness of trades is Walter Simonson's Thor Omnibus.
It collects almost 50 issues and, when it was still in print, could be had for around $75, which comes out to $1.50 per "issue". A very nice deal, considering it's an over-sized hard-cover, with no ads, nice paper and extras. And this one had a nice new re-coloring that made it look better than ever.

Earlier Omnibuses suffered from some gutter-loss due to the pages being glued into the spine.

But for the last few years (starting with that Thore Omni, I believe), they've been stitching the pages into the spine, which not only keeps the pages from falling out, but lets the book open completely flat, with no gutter-loss.

brayzie

^First Flash comic that I bought. Great introduction to the character in my opinion, as well as being one of the few DC comics at the time to make use of the "zero issue" concept.

I remember as a kid getting into the speculator mentality. Wizard Magazine was really hyping up the buy and sell craze with their monthly price guide and their "what's hot" section. I bought Turok #1, Bloodshot #1, and just about all of Image's #1's. During that time I spent alot of money on comics that I didn't even enjoy reading.

That said, I stopped caring about the worth of my comics a long time ago. I don't even have the majority of them in bags and boards. I just like to pull them out once in a blue moon and enjoy the stories, remembering where and when it was that I first read them.

fujishig

That Flash #0 comic is part of the run I was talking about previously, that will either be given away or thrown away. It made me sad to go through the comics of my youth, with so many great stories, but just no space for them and no outlet for them to go to (the only ones I picked out of that collection to save were the Impulse intro issues).

For anyone interested in the industry, I highly recommend Brian Hibbs' monthly column, Tilting at Windmills:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=column&id=28

He also has a forum/commentary site here:
http://www.savagecritic.com/

He's just one retailer but he gives great insight into where he thinks the industry is, what the problems are, what the challenges are, etc.

Of particular interest is his breakdown of Bookscan numbers:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?p...ticle&id=43773


Do kids read comics. The short answer is, no, at least not in truly significant numbers and not going to the comic book store like we did. But look at the popularity of things like Dork Diaries and Captain Underpants, which are basically comic-style illustrated novels. I don't know how well Bone did in the Scholastic subs but I hope it did really well, since I remember those book clubs as one of the ways I got a ton of books as a kid. If you think about it, kids get a very early start with comic-book like books, because, at least in my family, all of those childrens books are illustrated short stories. They don't flow panel to panel like comic books but there's a natural introduction there; the problem is, who's going to introduce them to it, who's going to buy it for them, and how do you find the content that's suitable for them? Most comic book stores will order kids books in small quantities, if they do at all, because kids don't come into the store regularly. Only a dedicated comic reader will pass on a love of comics to their kids (like my mom did to me), and those are dwindling. But I read my 4 year old the Disney Fairies comic collections, the Carl Barks duck trades, and others.

There's been a lot of talk about the death of the "floppy," but trades would and could not subsist without them. The people spending the money on individual issues drives the creation of the collections. It's not just advertising revenue, since as others have noted a lot of ads are now house ads anyway; it's driving that collectors mentality, making sure there's a regular feed and keeping them on the hook, because when you lose one, you lose them for a long time, if not forever. In my cynical mind, the constant drip also keeps the fact that some comics are subpar from being a realization until it's too late. When I was collecting monthly comics, I would collect some not because I was necessarily enjoying them to the point that they were worth the money, but that I loved the characters, and I held out some hope that someone would come along that would do wonders with them; so as soon as I was ready to drop, hey, shiny new creative team and storyline, let's keep going! Some collect to keep their collection complete. But as soon as you get off of that (as the new 52 did for me by resetting and removing my beloved characters), you're free.

Original Graphic Novels don't do nearly as well as trades. Some of it is because they're usually pretty self contained, and the comic reader wants at least the illusion that the issue they're reading counts. Some of it is because it's not a regular monthly drip like we're used to. The creators have to spend months and months without any revenue coming in, without any feedback as to what they're doing, hoping that it'll do well. Sure some of the higher ranked creators can do it and have it be an event. But how many OGNs have you bought recently, as opposed to monthly comics? So I don't see how we can move to that model.

Two more things that I'll ramble about:

Digital comics can be dirt cheap; 99c an issue for recent issues is a steal. However, a few things work against it; there are those who refuse to go to digital no matter what. There are those who don't have a tablet, which is, to me, the preferred method of reading digital comics; I don't think I'll ever get used to reading them on a traditional laptop or desktop screen. Even though 99c is a relative steal, it's competing with a whole bunch of things that give way more value; apps and games that are often 99c or free, and free web browsing, etc. So even in that environment, the sale price doesn't seem so worth it. Sales are unpredictable. And most of all, you teach people to wait. Do I like that storyline? I'll wait until it's on sale, why would I buy it for 3.99? If it never goes on sale, something else will. You lose that impulse buy, you can lose that sale.

Second, manga. While the returns are diminishing, from the throngs of kids sitting in the aisles of the local Borders reading the ever expanding section just a few years ago, it did at least show that there was interest in that age group for a variety of storylines in comic form. Now some of it was due to just being a fad, but some of it was due to variety, and a "coolness" factor that comics didn't have. But again, these are basically just translated reprints; most of these had already long ago made their money in their native market, and as a result you can have an entire graphic novel in small form for less than 10 bucks. And it's not clear that these kids were willing to pay for the content anyway, since they were, you know, reading them for free on the floor of a bookstore.

PhantomStranger

I think manga and anime distributors have been hit very hard with the oodles of free content available on the Internet. Many of the companies have gone out of business in the past five years or have pulled back from the US market.

mrhan

A couple of years ago I found all five hardcover volumes of Battle Royale for $3 each in a used bookstore. Needless to say I picked them all up. Great read and way better than the movie or the novel.

Josh-da-man

It's a fad that died. 99.99% of anime and manga is unwatchable and unreadable.

BobO'Link

My take on the OGN is they are similar to Annuals that are not done by the "regular team" and feel more "disposable."

I've gotten to the point that I pretty much ignore "Annuals" as more and more they are not necessarily in continuity and are typically done by what seems to be new "creators" looking to get a foot in the door. While I don't begrudge anyone trying to break in it will not be supported by me with a overpriced annual that doesn't really add anything "new" to a character. Because of this trend I recently gave instructions that my file will not contain annuals unless I specifically ask for them.

For a OGN to get my attention it *must* be done by a "team" I recognize and respect *plus* be in continuity. That's fairly rare. I grew tired of the "Elseworlds" mentality that seems to pervade most OGN's as anyone can tell a (fill in your favorite character here) story that doesn't fit anywhere. It takes more storytelling ability to tell a story that *fits*.

fujishig

Oh, absolutely. Some of it has forced the industry to be better: simulcasts for anime, shorter or nonexistent lead times for manga, but there are still people who will just never pay for anime, or feel like if it's not cheaper, than they'll find other ways to get it.

Even legit services like Crunchyroll have probably hurt the industry quite a bit. In a way, anime in it's infancy here was like comics; there were very few ways to try before you buy. If you could, say if there were a subscription service for comics where you could read but not keep stuff, I'd say they'd lose a bunch of money.

TheBang

Yeah, the Gecko's guy is really, shall we say, penny pinching. But Gecko's usually has the best selection of current and recent issues, and decent selection of back issues.

Just down the street from them is Collector's Maniacs. They are usually good for current issues, but sometimes run out. Organization is bad though. And back issues are a mess, and not many of them.

Other Realms doesn't get enough new issues. Their back issue selection is OK.

Jelly's doesn't get enough new issues either. Their back issue selection is very large and old, as has been noted.

And that's all the comic stores on Oahu.

Supermallet

Comics might have to move to a subscription service like Marvel Unlimited. But they need to make the service comprehensive. You can't have issues 1, 2, 6, 10, 14, and 32 of a series.

mrhan

They were in the middle of reorganizing the store in Aiea when I was there last week. Lots of old books just lying around. I was there for a couple of hours just going through them and their prices on back issues are lower than the other stores.

fujishig

If they do that, like I said before they'll lose a big chunk of the guys buying monthly. There's a reason they have gaps, and a significant delay for "new" issues.

PhantomStranger

I think that will happen when both Marvel and DC finally give up on comic book shops. I suspect that is the future of comic books, differing levels of access to pure digital subscriptions with all back issues. Basically replicating the streaming video model.

davidh777

And in their DVD heyday, they could charge $20 for a volume of four episodes.

fujishig

Before that, they could charge 40 bucks for a VHS that had either sub or dub but not both. But it's not like they were making money hand over fist and just pocketing it. Some of the licensors just really overvalued their properties, and were faced with a market they were unfamiliar with; in Japan, buying physical media is almost prohibitively expensive, and is for only the most ardent of fans. Like comics, a lot of these shows were made to view once and then for the most part fade away, replaced by the next show; there's not even the concept of reruns for tv anime like we have here, since there's always some new content to replace the old.

People could say the same for mainstream comics.