The Cost of Comics & the End of Part Issues.

I have recently being buying the odd comic here or there, usually early issues for inspiration and was getting depressed about the expense of comics now.

In Australia the stores take the US dollar prices and then add a mark up and tell you it's coversion of the USD.

So a $2.99 comic in the United States will cost you approximately $6.95 an issue.

A $10.00 larger issue will set you back $18 of $19.

These are for your normal sixteen page part 1 of 6 story arcs.

So I have been very selective about what I have been purchasing.

THEN...

In Brisbane, in the city there is a comics shop called Daily Planet.....

I went in on Saturday and they have a little sign on there tables saying

"ALL BACK ISSUES $1"

I'm like "What tha!?"

So I pick thirty titles , these are $10 and $15 comics and pay my thirty bucks.

I get my piece of heaven, I don't ask questions, I'm out of there.

I come back on the Sunday and $1 all back issues again.

I go up to the counter and ask "Whats happening , are they closing this store down?"

the Answer

"Nobody buys these single part issues anymore so they are getting rid of the old stock"

I'm stunned.

I go back to the tables and pick out 45 more titles and Pay for them and I'm very happy about this.

Another Brisbane Comic Store owner is in there buying comics for $1 and boasting "We don't need America" that is he doesn't need to order from them anymore.

The thing is, that I there is no way I would have purchased that many for the price we have on them.

People are waiting for the larger final combined issues.

This is going to change comics soon I feel. For the better I feel. The short format stories are limited in what they can convey in sixteen pages.

The quality of the art and story lines though are remarkable however.

There is so much great art and writing out there and people are missing out on it because of the high cost.

[edit on 13-11-2005 by Grimholt]

Yep i agree that why i buy comic annuals or even borrow them from the library
i'm such a cheapo

Trade paperbacks and Hard covers are defiantly increasing in sales. Marvel knows this (I'm not a DC fan so I can't speak for DC) and they are making more trade paperbacks now than they ever had.

Not so long ago you could pick up a trade paperback for a handful of big stories and that was it.
Now you can find just about every issue in a trade paper back.
They sell the monthly book and when the sixth issue comes out they make a trade paper back of those six issues.
I like it I'd much rather read a 132 page trade rather than a 22 page comic. 22 pages of comic material can be read in only a few minutes and then you are waiting a month for the next part.

Look at the Japanese comics (manga). You get something like 180 pages in each book. To my knowledge there are no 22 page books sold in Japan (unless they are American.)
The thing is the average comic book reader is 24. After surviving the comic industry in the 90's (perhaps the worst time for comics) we have come to realize our comics are not going to be worth that much in the future. There are not many comics after the 70's that are worth that much.
I can totally understand that comic store selling back issues at $1. Wizard magazine probably has most of them priced at $2 anyway. To the comic retailer they are just taking up space and not making money. Time to liquidate.

Anyway I feel I'm rambling .

My final statement:
Trade paperbacks are the future.

WOW! That's incredible. Yet, I remember when comic books cost only ten cents! I'll never forget when DC comics went up to twelve cents (followed closely by Marvel). For a kid those two cents were downright inflationary. But then the reality of world economics hit and within a few years the price skyrocketed to fifteen cents and then twenty cents an issue.

The day comic books hit thirty cents an issue was the day when I realized that I would have to get a "real" job to support my comic book addiction. That was also about the time when "The Detroit Triple Fan Fair" -- the worlds' first comic book convention -- began (about 1968 or so). That's when I started to support my "habit" by becoming a "dealer" -- a comic book dealer that is.

It's funny to reminisce but, at the same time, I have to consider that comic books stopped being "fun". It became a business and livelihood for many. On a personal level, this also meant that comic books "lost their innocence" and, ultimately, caused me to lose interest and, ultimately, comic books lost their appeal. Still, I have to wonder, will comic books survive as a mainstream medium or will it become relegated to specialty stores and conventions?

I don't feel it is mainstream at all any more.

Though that does not bother me too much.

The movie "Unbreakable" was very inspiring I felt, it captured what I loved as a kid reading comics and hearing the villian in the movie describe comics as a reflection of mans morality through art was golden moment to me.

I will pay good money for a good graphic novel but not for the inflated prices of part issues we see today.

Originally posted by Grimholt
The movie "Unbreakable" was very inspiring I felt, it captured what I loved as a kid reading comics and hearing the villain in the movie describe comics as a reflection of mans morality through art was golden moment to me.

I have to agree with you Grim, the movie Unbreakable did capture that sense of wonder, hope and awe that I loved as kid myself. And, to be honest, I also felt that the villains' description of comics was a notable moment. It's nice to know that there others out there who have had the same love for the comic book medium.

While I still love the medium and I do enjoy graphic novels, I don't have that same affection for a medium that has stopped, for all intents and purposes, being accessable to the kid in all of us.

A little while ago I was in a comic store here in Brisbane (not the Daily Planet, mind) and I saw a young kid eagerly searching through back issues of his favourite comics. His eyes lit up as he took a collection of comics to the front counter. Of course, the clerk then pulled out his fabled "guide to how much comics should cost" and then proceeded to charge ridiculously enormous sums for each of the issues. The way that poor kid's head sunk when he was told how much the comics would cost just killed me.

Where I grew up, comics were an escape. I would go down to the local second-hand book store with my mate and we would purchase single issues of The New Mutants and X-Men for less than $1 each. Comics gave us an escape from the banality of growing up in a small bush town. In truth, I don't know what we would have done if we had not had access to comics. So to see a new generation of kids being effectively denied the joy of cheap, easily-consumable comics makes me extremely angry. How are kids supposed to enjoy reading comics when an issue costs over $5? Ridiculous.

For myself, I find I cannot read single issues any longer. Graphic novels are the only way to go, in my opinion. I usually get through a decent-sized graphic novel in about an hour or less, so single-issue comics would be essentially pointless. Now, having said that, there are a surprisingly large number of graphic novels available at council libraries. You should check them out, Grimholt, the Brisbane City Council libraries have a wide collection of great comics. The only problem I have with them is that they are placed in the adolescent section of the library, which can be a problem when series which are intended solely for adults are picked up by kids because the librarians don't realise that not all comics are for children. Normally I would find actually saying something about this to be a bit geeky, but there is no way young kids should be reading comics such as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Sin City.

Of course, I'll still pay for those graphic novels I either cannot obtain through the library (such as the Preacher series) or wish to read over and over (such as the Sandman series). But, for me, the days of reading single issues are long gone. I just wish they weren't gone for kids as well.

Originally posted by Jeremiah25
the clerk then pulled out his fabled "guide to how much comics should cost" and then proceeded to charge ridiculously enormous sums for each of the issues.

WTF.
There has to be some law against that. If the comics were marked at some price that is the price they should be selling them at. I would never return to that shop after that.
Man that ticks me off.

I remember a few years back I went through a comic store's back issue bin and found an X-men comic. It was the first appearance of Jubilee and it was marked well below the value shown in Wizard Magazine. That day I bought around 5 back issues including that one. At the cash register the guy looked at that X-men comic and said 'woah that is a pretty cheap price' and continued to ring my books.
The price marked is the price you pay, not only in comics but in any retail store. That poor kid got taken advantage of. That comic store does a dis-service to the industry. Comics needs more young people to become fans.