I just love comics and to colour them. These Archie Comics are just fantastic. I just love these comics. I can Colour very well so please can you send me some colouring pages of Archie Comics on these e-mail addresses: minahilshahzad@rocketmail.com, cinderalla_nice@hotmail.com. Please Send me your e-mail addresess.

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?

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.

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.

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 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.

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

Because that’s just crazy talk.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.