One of the reason's Shonen Jump does so well is that they're providing 250+ pages of comic for $5. Even if you buy it for one series you're still getting about 40 pages of story; and the odds are pretty good you'll read a few more. The readers are exposed to all sorts of different stories, which lets the company experiment and develop new audiences. (Who'd have thunk a series about a guy playing tennis would sell almost 40 of them compiled books? No robots. No fight scenes. No superpowers. Just tennis.)

Wolverine Origins #28 (Nov 08) $3.99 nine regular ads, three Marvel ads
Mighty Avengers #15 (Aug 08) $3.99 two regular ads (covers), eleven Marvel ads

No access to Marvel Adventures.

And that's $3.99 US/CAN.

Dark Horse? Star Wars Empire #2 (Oct 02) $2.99 three regular ads, five Dark Horse/Star Wars

If you really want to gauge prices, take a long running mainstream title like Fantastic Four or Action, and plot the prices. Adjust for inflation. Compare to other magazines, like Time or the New York Times.

Remember, DC Comics is a Time Warner company, WB advertise for free in DC books.

You're sure about that? I agree it wouldn't make a difference overall for Warner but I'd imagine DC still charging other Warner subsidiaries because they would get some crazy slanted figures in their rapports if they didn't.

"Hey everybody, you guys did great this year with all those free ads you hustled! Except for you DC, why aren't you charging people for you ad space? Jeez, are you guys just hating profits or sumpin'?

My conclusions:
- paper cost seems not to be a problem in Belgium, do American comics use different paper? I think not...
- marketing strategies of American comic book publishers seem to be non-existant...

Just my view on the matter.
But yes, at 4 dollars a comic, I will drastically limit my purchases as I have still not won the lottery

Whereas Checkmate #28 sells for $2.99, has ten pages of WB ads and two pages of other advertising.

Curiously, Haven: The Broken City #9, from October 2002 sold for $2.50, had three WB ads, and nine ads from other advertisers.

So, either WB is buying more ad space in the comics, or fewer advertisers are buying ad space in DC titles. That may factor into the economics of issue pricing. Fashion magazines such as Vogue could be given away for free, as the advertising supports the production costs. But then readers would not think it as worthwhile as the other magazines, so Vogue makes a killing.

Given the trend towards trade paperbacks, do you think fans would care if the paper quality was less glossy? Would sales suffer if a title was failing, and DC decided to encourage sales with a lower price and cheaper paper? What if DC printed two editions of the event books... one limited variant with nice glossy paper and stiff (even embossed) covers, and one general old-school newsstand edition? Would some readers buy both?

I buy the occasional comicbook off the rack. About $20 a visit, but sometimes less. (I work for Barnes & Noble, so I buy my trades there at 30% off, or more online.) Almost everything is something outside the superhero genre. I've kicked that jones a long time ago. I still read superhero comics, but there's very little new stuff that interests me.

I didn't think the industry was necessarily dying, but the big two do seem to be doing a lot to kill it.

Important? Secret Invasion?

Please.

That is an event book, meant to part us with our money.

As opposed to those other comics they give away for free you mean? It's a buisiness, no reason to get peeved at the fact they're having another blockbuster event. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

They now need to think of comics not as a revenue stream, but actually as a advertising budget. A marketing department. A leafleting campaign.

Get the money from the films, T-shirts, dolls, etc. Keep the ideas flowing by producing cheaper comics that more people can buy.

In my particular case, I saw my subscription discount go from 20% to 10% to Zero in the span of a Year and a half. Then my sales tax went from 5.5% to 7%, so I left.

I think I would've stayed with them if they'd kept their 10% discount (on account that I enjoy visiting the store every Wednesday and talking shop). But everything now a days is too expensive; and comics just don't seem as essential or fun as they used to.

And well, to make a long story short, I switched to an online service and even with shipping, I'm saving about 38 to 40% on comics.

The sad thing is that, even with all those savings, my pull list has shrunk from 27 books a month to around 18. The interest just isn't there. Plus, the secondary market is so0OO HUGE! That even if you "missed" something, you can still buy a used trade for 50%-off!

I bought the Hardcover Planet Hulk, "Used-Like New" from Amazon (shipping included) for $20; Red Hulk 1-6, I got from Ebay for $9 (which also included the shipping). That's like $1.50 an issue.

So what I'm trying to say is that... if prices go up, a lot of stores could go under, and a lot of fans may leave.

And those that stay may decide they want to sell what they "don't like" or "need" in order finance future purchases. That means that DC & Marvel's stake in the "secondary market" will also shrink.

In other words, there's the possibility that the ratio of fans switching from Monthlies to Trades will not be on a 1:1 basis. A weekly fan lost will not necessarily translate into "a fan of the trades" gained, because there's the possibility that they will be buying another fan's trade; and not a brand new one.

That said, I'm with Jazzbo. If the big two are making the same amount of money they were making a year ago, they should concentrate on market growth, count their blessings and leave well-enough alone.

In today's economy... if it's working, don't fix it ('cause chances are, you'll FUBAR-it for For Ever!)

Raising the prices of the comics is a short term gain at best. The better long term, and possibly even short term, option is to try to tap into the huge market of customers that watch the movies and tv shows, or read manga, but don't read monthly comics. The current comic book company mentality seems to be that the 100,000 or so fans that are currently buying comics are all there's ever going to be, so let's milk them for as much as we can. Raising prices is just going to lower the number of buyers, which then results in another price increase, which then results in less buyers, ad infinitum. Put some marketing effort into getting some of the millions of people that saw the Iron Man movie into trying out the Iron Man comic, and price increases are no longer a concern. It's frustrating to me, as someone who geniunely loves comics and wants to keep buying them, to see how short-sighted the comic publishers have been for the past 10 years or so.

A page count increase could help soften the blow for readers, but then that's less profit from the $1 increase for Marvel & DC.

I saw that the new GI Joe titles are at $3.99 the comic book. I don't now today if I will follow these series or not. They are only "classic" comicb books, not special ones after all...

The most disapointed $3.99 comic book I have bought is X-Men Ghost Box #1: 16 pages of story tied-in to the Asto X-Men series and an another story on an alternate earth. I feel that I am a dumb to have bought this title (and the second chapter too...).

For a $3.99, I've had the issue #1 of City of Dust from Radical Comics. What a difference! Prestige format, deluxe quality paper, 44 pages of story among a 48 pages comic book and most of all: no adds!

So why an Indy can do comic books at this quality that the two "bigs" can't?

Someone can explain this to me and to the other readers?