Comic Book Resources

I wonder if this also isn't a factor in why it's hard to sell people on superhero titles that don't have A-list heroes, big name creators, or the property of being an event. You don't want to get hooked on yet another series.

It's almost a relief nowadays when I dislike a series or its change in direction; "okay, less stuff to buy."

Cool article. I'm with you on dropping the quality of the monthlies; I've been of the opinion for a while now that the monthly floppies should essentially be adverts for the trade. But it seems like there's a significant portion of readers who are monthlies-only, and they'd probably feel that they were getting shafted in that instance.

Comics are getting pricier and pricier, and yet I keep buying more of them. More the fool me. This is why I've switched to mail order. Far cheaper. I should still drop a few books, but...

Happy birthday.

Basically, it comes down to DC and Marvel counting on addicts, which is never a good thing.

I disagree. It comes down to DC and Marvel milking the addicts for all the money they can get out of them, which is a slightly different thing than "counting" on them.

It seems like the business model for both DC and Marvel has shifted from monthly periodical publishing to copyright/trademark shepherds. As such, the evergreen trade paperback products have become the stable revenue stream, the movie and other media rights have become the jackpot to turn to for large infusions of cash (for Marvel) or the justification for why the parent company keeps you around (for DC), and the monthly periodical market is there to subsidize the evergreen trade paperback revenue stream. They know that they can get some portion of the audience to buy these things monthly. That portion of the audience pays an inflated price in order to get it "now". The rest of the audience forgoes immediacy in exchange for a lower price point (and a more convenient package). Standard monopolistic pricing.

Monthly superhero periodicals now almost solely exist to milk money from the hardcore fanbase. Which is why the focus has turned to "events" that ramp up the value on "immediacy" (the "got to get it now" aspect) and why DC has specifically been trying to do things to increase the "value" of that immediacy for purchasers (like not collecting 52 until it was completely finished, for example). The monthly periodicals aren't the intro product anymore - trade paperbacks are for the most part. So it's more important for the companies to have a lower price on the trades to draw in new readers. Monthly books are for the already initiated, and as such don't need to have a lower price point.

When I was a kid, a comic book and a can of coke were each 50 cents. Now, the can of coke costs 75 cents and the comic book costs four dollars. What the hell happened?

I think color is a big factor in the price of comics. Even with computer coloring, you still have to pay someone to color it, and then pay someone to print it in color. So that's part of why manga can produce books more cheaply per page. Of course, someone presumably has to translate the manga in the first place. But then again, that means that most manga are also technical reprints. So, I dunno.

I greatly prefer comics in color. When I read Akira I made a point of seeking out the old Epic Comics colorized series even though it was harder to find and more expensive than the then-recent Dark Horse editions. I might be interested in the new collection of John Byrne's Next Men, except that it's in B&W, and besides I still have the old collections (which are in color). I made a point of seeking out the first printings of the early volumes of Fantagraphics' Prince Valiant collections because they had better color printing.

All of which means, yeah, I'm willing to pay for the production values which I, well, value.

If you believe in it, the inflation calculator claims that a comic book which cost 30 cents in 1976 (such as this one) should cost $1.14 today. Of course, comics in the mid-70s were printed on extremely crappy paper, with extremely crappy printing values (color bleed, etc.), and were also considerably subsidized by advertising. Today's comics have much higher production values and fewer advertisements (excluding the "house ads"). And print runs are smaller, which diminish economies of scale for the publishers.

Is all this worth an additional 60% premium for the consumer? Well, would you rather go back to four-color comics printed on newsprint? Or perhaps have no monthly comics industry at all?

Your mileage may vary.

But they have pretty pictures that look like they take forever and a day to draw.

Happy Birthday, Greg!

Monthly superhero periodicals now almost solely exist to milk money from the hardcore fanbase. Which is why the focus has turned to “events” that ramp up the value on “immediacy” (the “got to get it now” aspect) and why DC has specifically been trying to do things to increase the “value” of that immediacy for purchasers (like not collecting 52 until it was completely finished, for example).

Jer, this strikes me as exactly right.

The floppy periodical business sold to the direct market has problems, but the trade paperback business is actually growing. DC and Marvel are charging a premium for regular readers demanding that periodical titles come out more, or less, on-time and in-continuity. Both of those things do, in fact, add cost.

Yes, comics do cost too much. But, I'd kick and scream if the companies started publishing the monthlies on lesser quality paper. In fact, I get really annoyed that I pay the same money for Vertigo books as I do for DC and Marvel books, yet they're printed on inferior paper. Honestly, what gives there?

Basically, to compensate for costs, I do a few things. First is I divide my comics into "must read the next chapter as soon as it's out" and "looks really interesting but I can wait/it reads better collected than in single issues." This is probably the hardest step because obviously I'd love to read everything as soon as it came out. But I can't afford that, so oh well.

Then, I only allow myself a set number of ongoing titles, tpd/graphic novels, and mini-series a month, and if I want to add a new one I almost always require myself to drop a title I'm already reading. Events I'll allow myself some extra room if I'm particularly excited about the story or (and most usually only due to) the writer. Case in point, I intend to buy Final Crisis because I am a huge Grant Morrison fan, and in August I plan on buying the Director's Cut because I'm also an aspiring writer so any insight into the creation process of one of my favorite writers is well worth it for me. I'll also be buying most of the one shots (and the two shot) for Final Crisis, but I'm staying away from all of the mini-series, waiting for those to be collected if the buzz is good on any of them, but good luck to those books because I have a long back-list of titles that have been collected that I'm looking to buy some day and I just don't see any of the Final Crisis mini's rising to the top of that list while they're still relevant.

I even have no problem paying $3.99 for big event comics every now and then if the story is there and they give me that nice, glossy cover on slightly harder paper than the pages are printed on. But again, they can afford to do that for the All Star books for $2.99, so what gives there? Is it because those books will sell high, guaranteed? If so, why not price the books that don't sell high and are printed on lesser paper a little cheaper ::cough, cough Fables::?

And finally, to offset the cost of comics, I make my friends buy comics. About a year ago, none of my friends were buying comics. Since then, I've gotten three people back into comics and introduced two others to the beautiful world of comics. Now this is cool when we're all reading the same title and I have people to talk to about my love for comics, but it's even cooler when they buy titles I don't have the money to fit into my budget and I can borrow their issues and trades and decide if the comic in question is truly worthy buying myself, or if it's just good enough to continue borrowing.

But yeah, I too find myself more relieved when I should be when I read a bad story, and more upset than I should be when I read a new good story. That's frustrating and counterintuitive to deny myself so many stories or cut them off before they had the time to really develop, but it's better than living on the streets with only my longboxes for a makeshift shelter.

Spurgeon's a Gloomy Gus, isn't he? He seems to take it for granted that nothing can be done to solve the problems he lays out. I, for one, am more interested in reading people's solutions than their assessment of the problem.

Jer said:
"Monthly superhero periodicals now almost solely exist to milk money from the hardcore fanbase. Which is why the focus has turned to “events” that ramp up the value on “immediacy” (the “got to get it now” aspect) and why DC has specifically been trying to do things to increase the “value” of that immediacy for purchasers (like not collecting 52 until it was completely finished, for example)."

Which is exactly why I have gotten further and further away from Marvel/DC books and spend most of my money on manga and indy books. When I read the mainstream superhero books, I feel less and less like I'm getting my value for my $3-4. The constant "event" comics which solely exist to perpetuate the cycle turned me off even more. After about 2 months of sticking with Countdown, I realized it was time to get off that trainwreck and not buy something just because it MAY be important to the punch-em-up superhero universe I had been following, regardless of how crap a comic it is...

I agree with a lot of things mentioned here, especially Jer's and Dean's comments. However, at the risk of sounding naive, I want to add that I don't mind the price that much for a couple of reasons, even if the book is only a 3 or 4 minute read. I'm in grad school, which takes up most (re: all and then some) of my time and comes with a fair amount of stress, so I enjoy non-time consuming rituals. Walking to the comic shop each week is a ritual. Buying a comic is a ritual. But laboring over dense stories is what I do for a living, so when I buy my comic, I want some pretty colors, some lively action, and some witty banter. Hence, I'm attracted to things by Peter David, Fraction or Brubaker.

I read a lot of comics in trade paperback. Our public library is well stocked, and I actually buy one from time to time, but I actually appreciate the "gotta have this now even if it costs an extra dollar" feeling. I briefly feel like I'm part of something larger than myself. It's the same reason I go to midnight showings.

All of this being said, I only buy 4 or 5 comics a month, so maybe my perspective on the price is a little different. 15 or 16 dollars is what I spend on beer in a week.

Yes comics have gone up in cost over inflation since the '80s, but production quality has also risen. Better paper and more advanced art techniques do cost more, as well as the economies of scale being worse for us because they aren't as popular as the late '80s and early '90s.
I also disagree with the time argument that a lot of the old timers make. Yes it takes longer to read a silver age comic, but most of the time I don't enjoy it more. That increased time is spent reading unnecessary exposition and description, as well as clunky dialog. I prefer Moon Knight (vol 3) #1 to almost any silver age comic because even though I read it in around 5 minutes even slowing down to animate the action in my head it's 5 minutes of emotion and action that manages to leave me feel fulfilled. The only time I've read a modern comic and not felt like I got my money's worth was when it was a terrible, terrible story (Loeb's Wolverine: Evolution) or one issue each arc of a Daniel Way book that always feels like nothing happens.
On the topic of manga, the main reason I don't read it is because I prefer to pay more for a high quality paper color comic with large pages than a digest sized black and white comic on rough paper.
In short, yes comics are costly, but there is no way to change that without being detrimental to the final product.

Two points I rarely see mentioned when discussing the price of comics:

1) If the average comic sold 200,00-400,000 copies, as it did 30-40 years ago, comics would certainly be cheaper.

2) Until the mid-80s or so (and especially pre-70s), most comics pros were essentially indentured servants. Now the Marvel/DC guys make a pretty decent living.

As such, the evergreen trade paperback products have become the stable revenue stream, the movie and other media rights have become the jackpot to turn to for large infusions of cash (for Marvel) or the justification for why the parent company keeps you around (for DC), and the monthly periodical market is there to subsidize the evergreen trade paperback revenue stream.

Brian Hibbs wrote about this once, and apparently this is incorrect thinking.
The trades do bring in more money, but stores, and I suppose publishers, need the monthlies to provide regular cash flow, as trade buyers don't come in as regularly as the monthly crowd, who often come in every week.
Trade buyers tend to spend bigger when they come in, but they can't be counted on to come in regularly, as their is no need for them to do so, and the pendulum hasn't swung far enough yet for a store to just rely on trade sales.

Happy B'day Greg!

I, for one, am more interested in reading people’s solutions than their assessment of the problem.

Most of us that write about comics have been thrashing around in print trying to FIND one for a couple of years. If he's a Gloomy Gus, he's got company.

I don't think it's as bleak as he paints it for comics as a whole -- COMICS are doing a fine job of shifting to the book-publishing model. Lots of indie creators are having really good luck with it. The manga explosion has shown a very real solution in terms of format if only U.S. publishers had the balls to try it. Comics, narrative told in the medium of words blended with pictures, are fine and dandy.

But when you confine the discussion to serial monthly superhero/adventure books, my God, it's horrible. You can barely fill a good-sized baseball stadium with the entire North American readership of Superman, one of the most recognized and beloved fictional characters on the planet Earth. Look at the numbers Heidi puts up on the Beat once a month. Most DC and Marvel books are doing somewhere between 20,000 and 60,000 a month -- and that's to retailers, that doesn't even mean the actual sell-through... just the books sitting on the shelf WAITING to be bought by a reader. Those are abysmal numbers.

The only real solution is the one no one wants to hear. Change the entire publication model. Stop trying to be magazine publishers and be book publishers. Retailers that can cope with that will survive, the ones that are depending on the addicts will fold. Some of them are folding already.

The thing of it is, if anything Spurgeon is understating the case when it comes to costs. I work around a lot of printers and I can tell you that prices are continuing to skyrocket, and four-color process magazine printing is the single priciest KIND of printing to do. The basic economics of survival when costs go up require either that you cut corners somewhere else or else raise the price and pass the cost along to the consumer.

Right now we have a consumer base that's clinically insane as viewed by an economist. We don't WANT the cheaper format. We don't WANT the convenient package. We want things in a package that no longer fits the market and hasn't for decades, for no good reason other than that it's the one we're habituated to. People complain that they want it serialized, they want it on Wednesday. Any change to that rhythm, any time someone tries to change American comics from a seven-by-ten serialized booklet, they lose their shirt. It's deranged.

Hard not to be gloomy when you take a step back and really look at it. My gut feeling is that the superhero publisher that really took a chance and just went all-book format would be rewarded, that the loyalty to the characters would outweigh the loyalty to the format; but we've spent decades training them NOT to take a chance. You can hardly blame them for not trying it.

As a Canadian, I don't have a problem with the current cost of comics. For years the average cost of a $2.99 title was $4.25 cdn, went up by about two dollars if it was $3.99. I think three bucks is a fair price for a comic that, if it's well done, will give you ten minutes of enjoyment, not to mention being a collectable and something you can re-read if it's part of an arc. That said (and speaking of arcs), I think Marvel and DC should start packaging titles that are nothing but arcs as graphic novels. I have no problem with Ultimate Spider-Man or Wolverine: Origins, but they're extremely unsatisfying reads because they're set up as arcs and really don't work in the monthly format.

The big problem I see with the price of comics is their cost in retail outlets. I was at Chapters the other day -- think a Canadian Barnes and Nobles -- and pretty much every $2.99 title was at least fifty cents more. DC books were $3.65 and Marvel $3.99. The least expensive books were the Bongo comics, the Archie titles, and the Johnny DC books, which is fine if you're appealing to a young reader, but a kid who's 12 or 13 and is looking for a superhero title has got to be more likely to buy a magazine with a higher page count for the same cost as a 22 page comic or rent a video game.

Have a good day.
John Cage

My gut feeling is that the superhero publisher that really took a chance and just went all-book format would be rewarded, that the loyalty to the characters would outweigh the loyalty to the format; but we’ve spent decades training them NOT to take a chance.

I'm not too sure on that one... I'd say it's possible, but you'd have to have a hell of a lot of overhead to get it to work, because I think you'd have to be putting them out for a couple of years - without knowing if it would work - before the current crop of customers switched over.

If anything, comic readers have been trained to expect this format as the norm, as any deviation of it hasn't lasted, and it always switches back to this model, hence a reader can't be blamed for not dipping their toes in as they've been taught that it won't last.

Future Comics was about to try it, but they went under before implementing it.

You Americans should have a socialist economy. That way you could raise the gas-prices and use the profit to cut the prices of comics.

If I was DC or Marvel I would start publishing weekly comic books, printed on cheaper paper, and with much simpler coloring (or, on some titles, no coloring at all). They could be cheaper, and give readers much more story for their money. Today there are artists who draw one book a week, and writers who write one book a week, because they work on four different titles at once. If some of these were to focus their efforts on one weekly title instead it would mean four times the amount of story per title, much more accessible to those who are not already buying a cartload of titles every week. Huge twelve issue trades could be released once every three months, making it easy for new readers to catch up.

I would also do my best to break with the whole system of comic book publishing, and try get the weekly comics on sale in supermarkets and newsstands in addition to (or instead of) comic shops. I think it should be possible to get a lot of media attention to something like this, both in entertainment magazines ("Superman challenges Heroes on Tuesday nights"), economic papers ("revolution in comic book publishing"), and all kinds of conventional papers (because, seriously, everyone loves Superman, and most would write about it if someone did something only slightly new and inventive with him. Even Norwegian papers reported the death of Captain America for Christ`s sake!).

This is surely easier in theory than in practice, but it is a sound theory goddamn it! I bow to those who have knowledge of the printing costs in America and all that, but surely there must be ways to produce cheap comic books?

The first trade is 10 dollars. That’s 5 issues for 10 dollars, mind you. If you bought these 5 issues in their original format, you would have spent 15 dollars (more or less). Why on earth would anyone buy these in single issue format, I ask?

I've started asking myself that question many years ago and answered it with "well, not me anymore". Besides the fact that it's cheaper (which boils down to a bigger comics budget!), it's also a better reading experience imo. The ads are gone, and you can put it on your bookshelf which makes it a lot more likely and easier to read again. Who honestly digs his way through his old shoeboxes of comics a lot to re-read a story? Comics become a lot less 'disposable' in a format that resembles regular books more closely.

I occasionaly pick up a one-shot every now and then (like Scott Morse's Batman/James Gordon comic a couple years ago or Jim Mahfood's What Huh? for Marvel) but have basically been a strictly trades reader for something like 8 or 9 years now, I've never regretted that decision.

One of the biggest factors in the cost of comics is the cost of originating the material. Daniel is right in that the superstar artists of today make more money than their historical counterparts, but this is true all the way down the food chain - comics have gotten more expensive to produce. Switching to cheaper paper or simpler colouring is not the answer because the page rates for the pencils, inks and colours are unlikely to change (and colourists are paid by the page, not by how many colours they use on it).

The current system of "monthly" floppy and eventual trade exists to split the high costs of originating the material as many ways as possible - which is why Marvel now has quick hits in high-end hardcovers as well. Once the material EXISTS, its relatively inexpensive to churn it out in as many bookstore formats as possible - and the more different audiences can be tapped to buy the same set of material, the better the publisher's return.

The reason why Marvel and DC are unlikely to switch over to all-trades, all-the-time at any point soon is that its prohibitively expensive to pay an artist in advance for six-seven issues worth of material, with no guarantee that the publisher will see a return on their investment. Say what you will about the success rate of 'new ideas' at the Big Two (and it is low), but at least they do try out new characters and series, or revamps of existing properties on occasion. Just as an example, but would Marvel have committed to the entirety of the Annihilation saga if they hadn't been able to test the waters with the tail end of Thanos, Drax and the Annihilation Prologue one-shot? Switching to trades would in all likelihood compact the market down to sure hits - Spider-Man, Batman and Superman...

Marvel and DC (or at least Marvel, DC don't have the greatest record recently) are also less likely to 'cut corners' and hire cheaper artists (usually from outside the US and UK) in order to bring their overheads down. A company like IDW, using artists and colourists from Argentina or Brazil, then printing their comics in China and having them shipped over by sea, benefits from a dollar still strong in overseas markets. You don't get the 'names', or often the quality, but you do trim your margins down to the point where an independent book can be barely profitable.

Basically, manga (and to an extent, the self-contained graphic novels published by Oni, Top Shelf, etc.) benefit from their 'auteur' nature - they're personally-developed stories put together by one or two creators, essentially under their own steam. Nobody has to pay the health insurance of an artist scribbling away in his lonely garret - the pages are delivered to the publisher, the artist gets an advance and a cut of any future profits, but it's incredibly unlikely they get a page rate. Which is why so many independent creators have a sideline in 'real' careers, advertising, commissions, or sales of original art.

All of which is a really long, rambling way of saying that you're not really paying for the format, you're paying for the material. Vertigo can afford to take the hit on a cheaper per-page rate in the trades because a) the art probably cost less than the 'superstars' playing in the DC sandpit and b) they've already offset a percentage of the costs involved in its production with the sales of the floppy. Even if they don't make a profit, they've still paid for enough of the origination costs that it works out cheaper than originating a 96 or 128 page graphic novel from scratch.

Comics are a dollar -- where I get them -- the back issue boxes. There are hundreds and hundreds of comics I've never read, all at low cost just waiting.Eventually, the comics being published today will make it to the same boxes.

People don't pay cover price for the comics themselves -- they pay a subscription to a social club that allows them to be "with it" on all the newest developments in comics, so they can chat it up on the internet or with their friends.

Give up the club, and the comics are cheaper as back issues.

I've all but stopped buying new comics. I tend to get the UK Marvel reprint editions by Panini - they're about a year behind the US, but you'll get 3-4 comics' worth for £2.50, the price of a standard Marvel or DC over here. Plus, there's often cool backup stories from the 60s, 70s and 80s. I don't particularly care about being behind on the stories, especially when more and more comics are shipping late...

I remember once when you told me to buy more comics because I was waiting for the more affordably price trade, so it makes me smile to see you realise the economics of purchasing single comic books. I used to think that I should buy more comics so that I could blog about them (see comment from Boredyesterday), but now only buy comics I can't wait for or want to support in single as well as the trade (e.g. Usagi Yojimbo) and have given up on being an up-to-date comic book blogger (not that I ever was). I have gone even cheaper in my quest to read comics, by reading loads of collections via the library.

Btw, happy birthday Greg, from someone who is a year older (if that helps make you feel younger).

>>When I was a kid, a comic book and a can of coke were each 50 cents. Now, the can of coke costs 75 cents and the comic book costs four dollars. What the hell happened?

I've made the same observation (except my example starts when comics were 12 cents & cokes -- which of course came in bottles, not cans -- were a dime) several times over the last couple of weeks, only to be told in so many words to sit down & shut up, because so-&-so just got through paying $4 for a can (at, it turns out, an *airport* in "San Francisco* ... talked about a skewed model!).

Actually, that can of coke (that I can't drink anyway because of Crohn's disease, but whatever) costs $1.25 here in my building, & yes, in my mind that's about what a comic should cost. Of course, cokes would cost 2 or 3 times that, I'm sure, if they sold 1/10th as many units as they used to & could only be found in speciality shops ... which is to say, if the manufacturers were run by idiots.

Sticking to the metaphor, it's as if the comics companies looked at the New Coke debacle of 20 or so years ago, thought "that's the way to go!" & stuck to the approach, except when they were worsening it. Somehow, they got a few dozen thousand other idiots -- me included, at least for the least 3-4 years -- to go along with them.

Those commenting on inflation are missing something: the cost of paper has risen significantly faster than the rate of inflation as well. Compare the average cost of a paperback book in 1980 to one today to get a rough idea of the scale and that's before the quality improvements that have already been mentioned. It's a crunch that all publishers have been feeling and given the way publishing is done these days it wouldn't surprise me at all to find that it is much cheaper to print TPB's than it is monthly pamphlets.

I have little doubt that if DC or Marvel could lower the price they would for one simple reason: they need people to buy more books so they can increase their advertising revenue. If Marvel could lower their prices to two dollars it would equal more people buying their stuff which would mean higher advertising rates. They're not stupid; they know how fragile the market is and how every push for another penny out comics readers may be costing them more in the long run. They're not trying to milk a fanbase; they're charging what it costs them to stay in business.

I dunno ... I'm sitting here at work & can't really check the price of a paperback from 1980 (of which I have, I'm sure, probably 100s in my book room at home). I do know that when I was a kid paying 12 cents or 15 cents for a comic, the average pb was around 60 cents, then 75 cents.

The 15-cent comic is now, what, $3-$3.50. That's 20-23 times what it was back then. Is the average pb -- "pocketbook"-sized, that is, not trade -- $12-plus? Or is is closer to half that?

The latter, I do believe.

The comparison I've always heard made was that comics were in the same ballpark as an ice cream cone or a slice of pizza. Right now comics are not that far off. The problem, as I see it is in value, not cost.
Single-issue comics have less and less value, like an ice cream cone that is all cone with a teaspoon of ice cream. Too many comics are written for the trades, leaving less and less for the single issue. In the old days, a Fantastic Four six issue story meant Galactus or Dr Doom. Now it could be six months of the Frightful Four.
Writing for the trade has destroyed an important writing tool, pacing.

Sure, David, throw my words back at me! Nice. I haven't been waiting for the trade on a lot of books because the trades weren't appreciably cheaper than the singles. If Vertigo is going that way, why should I buy the singles? I want to support something like Scalped, but if the trades are that much cheaper than buying them in singles, there's not much incentive for me to stop waiting for the trade.

I noticed this pattern about 10-15 years ago. Since 1960, comcis have roughly doubled in price every 10 years or so.

1960 = $0.10
1965 = $0.12
1970 = $0.15
1975 = $0.25
1980 = $0.50
1985 = $0.75
1990 = $1.00
1995 = $1.50
2000 = $2.50
2005 = $2.95
2008 = $2.99

These prices were taken from the covers of Detective Comics on the GCD. Your mileage will vary from title to title, but this will give you a snapshot.

As you can see, it's well within the pattern for the a-list hero to be at $4-5 by 2010. That it's only at $3 right now is a little behind schedule. Yes, I agree that the value isn't there in comparison with the read time, but it is what it is. I fully predict an average price of $4 in 2010 based on this pattern alone.

In regards to your question about why they don't make the trades on nicer paper and charge more... they sort of already do that, but differently. They put a lot of things out in hardcover first, and the HC has a cover price $5 more (usually) than the TPB. Then the TPB waits another six months or more, after the HC release, before being released.

Marvel seems to do this the most with their "Premiere Hardcover" program, but DC does it some also. The weird thing to me is that DC's HC's are proportionately far more expensive than Marvel's.

Thinking about overhead and the difficulties of persuading publishers to try an all-trade format, it occurs to me that the new animated direct-to-DVD programs from both DC and Marvel are interesting test cases: Ultimate Avengers, Superman: Doomsday, those projects. I'm betting those sold a hell of a lot better than a monthly comic, and to non-comics readers. What would be the result, I wonder, of DC putting, say, an all-original Superman trade out with that kind of marketing, in those outlets? They wouldn't do DVD numbers, but I think it would be worth trying.

The only real solution is the one no one wants to hear. Change the entire publication model. Stop trying to be magazine publishers and be book publishers. Retailers that can cope with that will survive, the ones that are depending on the addicts will fold. Some of them are folding already.

Greg, the advantage of switching to a publishing model that is more like books is that it gives superhero publishers something to promote to the mainstream press. Marvel and DC have been so focused on each other that they have missed the battle for new readers entirely. 'Harry Potter' books sold millions of units. I really do not see the distinction between him and ... say ... the X-Men. It is the same basic premise, right?

Yet, Marvel would be doing back-flips if a single issue of the X-Men sold one percent of a "Harry Potter" novel. Oh, and the novel sold those units in a format that is a lot more expensive than $2.99. This is an unfair comparison to a degree, given the magnitude of 'Harry Potter' phenomenon. However, there are some instructive contrasts between the dying comic periodical business and a serialized novel (or movie):
1. In other forms of serialized fiction, you are in the hands of one creator. Imagine the hype surrounding "All-Star Superman", if it were only released in book format after Morrison and Quitley were done and you knew that Grant Morrison was the only person authorize to write Superman stories in comic format. It would be a big, big deal.
2. The schedule is dictated by the creator, so they have the time to go back and re-work things. It is not an accident that the biggest name in comic writing essentially left the mill of periodicals over two decades ago. Alan Moore only puts out "LOEG" when he feels like it. Why is that so unthinkable for corporate owned properties? Am I alone in my preference for one great Superman (or Batman, or Spider-Man) story every couple years over dozens of mediocre ones?
3. There is a beginning, middle and end to the story. People jump up and down about continuity, but let's be frank: it is pretty well impossible to write a good periodical story in-continuity anymore. Too much has happened to Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark over the decades. If Tony falls off the wagon, then it is a big deal, right? No, it is not, because Marvel would be foolish to let him do anything that breaks his story-telling engine. However, if Matt Fraction were the only person allowed to write 'Iron Man' stories for comics, started the character over at zero and then Tony fell off the wagon .... well, Fraction could have Tony slam into the side of a mountain and die. No one else would be coming along behind him to 'fix' it. It would be the end.

Don't you think it's comparing apples to oranges with the Harry Potter/X-Men thing? A novel and a monthly comic are two wholly different monsters.

Instead of following the book publishing model, I wish they'd go back to the comics model. Instead of these over-produced slick publications with all their celebrity creators, expensive printing processes, and paper that will last a thousand years if stored in the outhouse --

I want cheaply printed (1 staple is enough, newsprint, smaller color pallet), starving artists (so many artists want to break into the medium, so who works the cheapest? If they want respectable pay, let them work in a respectable medium), disposable stories. Rags.

>>Today’s comics have much higher production values and fewer advertisements (excluding the “house ads”).

The question *has* been raised recently, I believe, at least obliquely ...

... but what *is* the biggest do-nothing job in comics? Editor or DC/Marvel ad salesman? If the people filling either "position" make more than minimum wage, someone is wasting money hand over fist.

Am I the only one who wasn't surprised by the Casanova ending? I kinda expected it, was hoping Fraction went a different way. Oh well.

Comics cost so much because.....

.

.

they have to pay artists so much money now.

.

As evidence, notice how many books are weeks, even moths late, yet the artists never tie from starvation. They make so much money doing 5 or 6 issues a year that they don't have to draw 12 issues a year to survive.

Somewhere above a the point was made that the readers of Superman now wouldn't fill a baseball stadium. That got me thinking maybe one key point is being missed here (at least with my take on things) passion. I'll skip baseball and compare with football (or 'soccer' grrrrhh) in the last few years the cost of going to the footie has gone up incredibly, possibly even to the extent that its comparable to the comic book increase. It now costs £40 to go see Liverpool Football Club play (cost of the ticket alone I'll leave the other expenses aside) for 1 1/2 hours. About the same price per minute of 'entertainment' as comics. Now the footie can raise you to glorious heights of joy, or that same £40 and 1 1/2 hours can be spent making you feel as miserable as you possibly can. Same with comics... kinda, the extremes for me aren't quite as great but the principle stands. So what makes me take the risk and cover the cost. Passion.

People are fans of comics in a similar way they are to sport. You only have to go look at a few forums and say you prefer Marvel to DC, or suggest its a good thing that Spidey has forgotten Mary Jane to see the level of passion involved. Thats why we pay stupidly high prices for comics, cos we care. Lets face it even if we're getting better value from a trade its still not great.

Why is the cost so much higher. Well like the footie the costs are that much more than they used to be. To get a weeks football out of Steven Gerrard (substitute you're own sporting hero here) costs £100,000 +. To get a page of finished art from artist X costs another stupidly high figure. How have the costs been driven up, cos the fan base is passionate and demands more. The more it pays the more it demands and there the more comic companies or football clubs have to pay to meet the fans expectations and thus the cycle continues.

How does this model maintain the industry. Maybe and I'm just guessing it the diversification (spelling and grammar I apologise for I'm doing this in a terrible hurry at work). With the footie you can choose not to watch the match live but might subscribe to a TV that plays the clubs stupid money to show the games. You'll buy the shirt, the socks, the DVD and the pencil case. With comics some will trade wait, you'll buy the action figures and stick up the poster. The comics these days are a means to an end in may ways I suspect.

There's diversity in the format we get comics in, the floppies and trades are well discussed, but what about cheat black and white digests (showcase presents etc), the various experiments with online delievery, the child friendly digests. The companies are trying to find more and more ways to expliot their properties and get people who see the movies to handover more. I know cos I've seen it if a kid has just seen Spidey and is screaming for some more spidey a parent may well buy a nice black and white Essentials for £10 and 500 pages and that kid could well get hooked, discover his comic shop and start helping us maintain the ridiculously expensive world of floppies.

Also people seem to over look the international market. Is one of the reasons Manga is so cheap (production quality aside) the fact its reprint essentially here (I'm peddling a bit here). People (myself included) get hung up my the Diamond figures but that is only part of the revenue from a given book. What sells 50,000 in those figures may well be seen in one form or another by 1,000,000 people around the world (complete and utter made up figures by the way).

Anyway my point is sure it costs a lot to read a floppie but man oh man to those few of use in the stadium the moment that The Flash hit the back of the net - oh man was all that cost worth it (ouch carried the methaphor a little too far there didn't I!)

When I buy a magazine, it is crammed with ads--oftentimes more ad pages than article pages. I would gladly buy comics with more ad pages if it meant a price reduction. Actually, I would probably buy more comics because I try to limit myself to about $15 when I visit my LCS and I usually go a couple times a month.

A lot of people are arguing back and forth about whether or not reducing paper quality makes a difference for a publisher. I happen to have a relevant anecdote to share. Take it as you will.

As a writer I technically work for a lot of different people, but I've worked the longest as a small publisher called Double Jump Books that does video game related material. The biggest projects are the strategy guides, followed by a quarterly mag I'm not too involved with anymore.

When I joined the company about three or four years ago, we used absurdly high-quality color stock for guides. Individual pages were shiny and glossy, and we got a lot of praise from other industry sources and fans for it. Now, using this paper raised production costs of a guide tremendously, more so than paying the writers. Because feedback was good, boss stuck with it.

As time went on, the glossy paper in guides created whole new suites of problems, even as people still said they loved it. Many of our guides found their way into the hands of teenaged players who'd treat them roughly. Constant stress of use paired with the paper's weight caused pages to fall out. Because paper cost raised production costs so much, the boss had to be extremely cost-conscious when picking new projects to work on. At one point we were doing as little as three or four projects a year, and it was devastating when something we did got attached to a game that didn't sell (since strategy guide sales are ultimately expressed in terms of attach rate).

The boss saw the writing on the wall and lowered the quality of the paper stock last year. It was still much nicer than the near-newsprint quality our competitors used, but lighter than our original stock and non-glossy. Since this paper wasn't as heavy, pages falling out of binding became a far less frequent complaint. Since it was cheaper, the boss could afford to take on riskier projects.

Now when a guide managed a strong attach rate for a reasonably popular game, chances were it could absorb the costs of a failure and still leave behind a profit. Ultimately readers were happier just because we could do more guides per year, and many who'd claimed emotional attachment to the glossy paper don't seem to have ever actually noticed when we stopped using it.

Am I saying that switching to a lower-quality would necessarily help comics to the same degree? Well, no. I don't know so much about their publishing business. Given the paper stick woes I've been through, though, I think comics publishers could easily switch to a lighter, less glossy paper that still held up and absorbed color well without really offending the weekly crowd that wants to feel like they're getting a premium product.

I don't believe most people can really notice the differences in paper quality types until they're drastic, so everyone would still be happy-- and might be happier if the lighter paper lead to price drops, Marvel and DC able to take risks on a wider range of books, or just making it easier to keep marginal stuff like The Order in print longer.

Just out of curiosity, when did expensive, high-quality paper become pretty much the standard? I've mentioned before that I was out of comics from '79-'03 or so. I gather that "Baxter paper" stuff started coming on around, what, '83 ... what about the slick stuff that so many fans apparently would rather die than do without these days?

Ultimately readers were happier just because we could do more guides per year, and many who’d claimed emotional attachment to the glossy paper don’t seem to have ever actually noticed when we stopped using it.

i'm with you, Lynxara... i actually didn't notice that Vertigo had started using lower-quality paper until i saw people talking about it online.

I noticed Vertigo's paper quality only because I failed to notice a corresponding change in price.

Just an oversight on their higher-ups' part, I'm sure.

Just out of curiosity, when did expensive, high-quality paper become pretty much the standard? I’ve mentioned before that I was out of comics from ‘79-’03 or so.

Wasn't magazine-grade paper something Image trotted out first?

Oh, geez, something else to blame Image for? They put out some of the best comics around these days, at least in my estimation, but sometimes I think that to make up for their sins of the past they'd have to *give* them away.

One point I really liked was why comic readers are expected to pay the same cover price for a comic drawn by a hack fill-in artist and in which nothing really happens. Tom mentions that the sales numbers on these issues don't really drop which is interesting.

It's one thing to pay $3.99 for a well-written, self-contained story.

It's quite another to pay the same price for part three of a seven-part story. Unless the story in question is the next Great Darkness Saga or Kraven's Last Hunt, I'm leaving it on the shelf...and searching for a "done-in-one" that will give me my money's worth.

Oh, geez, something else to blame Image for? They put out some of the best comics around these days, at least in my estimation, but sometimes I think that to make up for their sins of the past they’d have to *give* them away.

I can't really blame Image. They were the newcomers who, by and large, offered flash over substance when it came to their stories -- glossy, computer-colored T&A -- and it worked out for them in a big way. What Marvel/DC offered was 60+ years of iconic characters, but they decided that they needed to offer glossy, computer-colored T&A as well. (Y HALLO THAR, 90's!) I might be misremembering, but I think Marvel had two grades of comic going for a while to see if the glossy paper would sell, and the glossies won out over the cheaper newsprint-type issues.

Dan Bailey said: "

I noticed Vertigo’s paper quality only because I failed to notice a corresponding change in price.

Just an oversight on their higher-ups’ part, I’m sure."

Actually, they probably went to the cheaper paper because Vertigo books don't sell as many copies. Maybe the cheaper paper is why the Vertigo titles don't get cancelled when they only sell 10,000 copies.

>>Actually, they probably went to the cheaper paper because Vertigo books don’t sell as many copies. Maybe the cheaper paper is why the Vertigo titles don’t get cancelled when they only sell 10,000 copies.

That occurred to me ... though supposedly where Vertigo makes its money is in the trades. And actually, if memory serves -- I could be remembering this completely wrong -- I think quite a few of the line's titles sell closer to *half* that 10,000 figure, which is sort of ... not good.

[...] are up about the high price of comics. Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter fires the first shot.  Greg Burgas at Comics Should Be Good lays down some cover fire.  Excellent points made by both men, but I [...]

Didn't Image start the current trend of high-quality paper, super-star creators, and more high-quality coloring for a higher price? Looking back at their letters pages, that was one of their big selling points.

what about the slick stuff that so many fans apparently would rather die than do without these days?

I first encountered it on a regular book with X-men, around #37 when they introduced 'X-Men Deluxe', where they upped the paper quality and the cost quite dramatically.
Apparently they still did lesser quality paper at the original price, but I couldn't find those, and I doubt anyone else could either, and so it then became the standard on the X-books.
Before that I only saw it on Image books, or on quarterlies.

I think Andrew James (see above) has probably summed up the problem best. While I do not know the specifics concerning overhead prices for comics, I do have experience in publishing. I am currently an editor at a small publishing company that produces textbooks and educational material for schools. While it is true that paper costs have risen, our single biggest costs are paying authors, purchasing images (photos, maps, graphics, diagrams, etc.), and paying for press time. We have cut our paper stock (both on weight and texture) to as low as we are allowed to go. We use the most inexpensive binding cost that we can without hurting the overall quality of our product. But at the end of the day, these costs matter little compared to the three expenses listed above.

Authors have to be paid for their work and most (depending on the product and the contract) receive royalties. While there are lots of royalty free images available, inevitably there are a sizeable number of images that must be paid for. Finally, there is press time. Most people do not realize that when you print anything (magazine, book, etc.) the bulk of that cost is not in paper or color ink, it is in reserving the use of the press for the time it takes to print your material. The initial cost of reserving a press is substantial, but it goes down the longer you use it. Therefore, the more of a product that you print, the lower the cost per unit.

And this is where we can make a clear tie to modern comics. Anyone who looks at the sales figures can see that over the last twenty years, comic sales are down. When sales are down, the publishers print fewer comics. When they print fewer comics, the price per unit increases. So in part, it is the dwindling market that is causing prices to rise.

Also, that a publisher does not receive $2.99 (or whatever the cover price) for their comic. That price is the retail price, the publishers cut is much lower. I am not familiar with what percentage that they receive, but if the retailer sells it at $2.99, then Diamond sold it the retailer for much less, and in turn Diamond purchased it from the publisher at a much lower price.

All of this is a long way of saying Andrew James is right when he says that publishers must continue to push the multi-format approach of floppies, hard covers, and trades. It is probably the only way to make the current market profitable for publishers. Cutting paper costs is not enough. Paying talent less or going with less recognizable names is also probably not an option in the current market. And if sales do not increase signficantly in the coming years, you can expect even more price hikes for the floppies.

The rising cost of comics, combined with the decreasing amount of dialogue within them, makes me seriously wonder why I keep buying them. I typically buy 12-15 comics a month, and even with my discount, I'm still paying about $40. And I'll read them all in about two hours. There are a few that I will re-read, but most will go into storage after having only been read once or twice.

Why not just read books instead? They're much bigger and cheaper, and one is at least as likely to get lasting enjoyment out of them as one gets out of the four or five comic books one could buy for the same price.

>>Why not just read books instead?

Trade pb or hardcover collections of comics, you mean, or ... or *books*? Like, with words but not pictures?

Because that's just crazy talk.

>>Trade pb or hardcover collections of comics, you mean, or … or *books*?

I mean actual books. A couple weeks ago I bought a 650 page anthology of Ernest Hemingway short stories for $10 bucks. It has really great, and I spent two weeks reading it. In comparison, it took me a whopping two hours to finish reading $40 worth of comics I bought this past month. I wouldn't spend $40 to watch a really good two-hour movie, why would I spend that much on comics?

I'm a lifelong reader of comics, but there comes a time when the cost isn't worth the benefit. Reading this thread makes me think I may have reached that point.

MIke --

Agreed. I was being sarcastic, of course. For better or worse, I'm in the same boat as you ... except that what you spend in comics in a MONTH, I spend in a WEEK -- actually, about 50 percent more than that, which actually rises to 100 percent or more once back issues & such are included in the equation.

I guess if I were one of these fans who can sit & gaze, entranced, at a page of wordless art for minutes on end, I might be approaching getting at least a decent fraction of my money's worth ... but I'm not. If I come across a page of action with no words, I spend about as much time on it as it takes me to turn the page, And the next page. And the next.

I do read books. I read a lot of books! But I loves me some comics, too.

I wasn't suggesting that paper costs are the only issue. I understand that the talent gets paid a lot more, too. One thing I do wish is that Marvel and DC would change their exclusive deals so that the person doesn't get paid if they don't do any work. That seems counter-productive, at the very least. I get that everyone gets paid more than they used to, and that's fine, but it does seem like certain people get paid far beyond their value. Are those Alex Ross covers making more people buy Batman? Can DC prove that? I don't know.

Unfortunately Greg I think those Alex Ross (or any other hot artist) covers do sale comics. I say unfortunately not because I think Alex Ross is a bad artist but because I dislike the idea that someone would buy an issue solely for the cover. But one only has to look at the recent April sales figures to see that this is true. I do not have the actual numbers in front of me, but I do know that Superman 675 outsold an issue of Action Comics last month (mind you that two issues of Action shipped and one of them did place above Superman 675). In recent months Action has been outselling Superman by a decent, if not considerable, margin. But Superman 675 shipped with an Alex Ross variant cover and low and behold it outsold an issue of Action. Since I cannot imagine that anyone jumped on Superman 675 because it was the last issue of Kurt Busiek's run, I have to assume that its outperformance of Action Comics was primarily due to Alex Ross's cover. It makes you wonder how much of the sales figures for any given are people buying solely for collecting purposes and not because of interest in a storyline or character(s).

One thing I do wish is that Marvel and DC would change their exclusive deals so that the person doesn’t get paid if they don’t do any work.

Which, unfortunately, would probably just lead to even more overenthusiastic "photo-referencing" to meet deadline and Marvel being sued by the King of Spain again.

Why not just read books instead?

Because all the artists suck, and outside of Stephen King and a few others, no one can stick to a monthly schedule ;p.

Seriously though, apples and oranges. Like, if I played basketball, but I got too old for it, you wouldn't suggest I take up waterpolo, would you? WOULD YOU?

To put current comic prices in some sort of perspective, look at the cost of greeting cards sometime. I recently paid $3.99 for a Mother's Day card. Granted it wasn't the cheapest one available, and there are plenty of additional intangibles involved, but viewed strictly from a price-per-page or price-for-reread-value perspective, comics come out way ahead.

oh rubbish doug . if your going to make a comment use your common sence .how many greetings card do you buy a month and how many kid buy greeting cards . the younger generation are the future of comics . when i was a kid i used to get 15 -20 a month for a pitance . it all ended in the 80s and has got worse . its all short termism as well . where is the industry going to be in thirty years when the current generation that was raised on comics starts to disapear ? i ll tell you where with ever decreasing readership . the only way forward is to make them accessable to children again . thats not to say you cant have the higher priced more adult form as well . but things like spiderman superman need to return to being printed on cheap paper and the old four colour format . what kids gonna pay 30 pounds ( 50-60 dollors ) a month for 10 titles when they can get a video game that ll last a lot longer than one afternoon . only a very spoilt one . it might not seam like it now but the industry is in big trouble . it has gone from a mass media into a cult media over 20 years . it cant be sustained .

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