And because of that, they’re doubly worthless. Too many copies are printed for them to retain their value as collectibles, but they offer very little entertainment value in single issue form (and even less with alternate covers). Most single-issue printings are a waste of paper.
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@AlexanderKnox Variants are something I’ve never understood either. (I do own copies of Superman 75 and Adventures 500 Platinum, but that’s Superman nerdiness and you can yell at me about loving Jurgens later)
You have a print run of 100K and you do a 1:100 cover just so…what?
You can create scarcity? So shops order more copies?
I miss buying a comic, reading it for fun, and discovering it was valuable later. Why would I drop $100 on a comic that came out this month?
I bought all my comics newsstand in the 80’s and 90’s at the stand across the street from my school. Now newsstand is more valuable because there were fewer comics printed with the barcode on the cover? They’re identical in every other way, but the ugly barcode makes it worth 40% more? We didn’t have variants so we’re retroactively creating them for the back issue market? 
I grumble. Sorry.
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I also bought almost all of my comics in the late '80s / early '90s. I had to ride my bike about a mile to the comic shop. My very first comics came from the grocery store, from my mom. She bought me a couple 5-packs of Marvel.
I’ve tried to introduce my kids to comics. I’ve got this image in my head of sitting around the kitchen table, reading together with a small pile of comics. But every time I take them to a comic shop, I can’t help but feel I’m getting royally ripped off. Now they’re older teenagers. They both have a small collection of about 20-30 comics. When I was their age, I had about a foot locker and a half full. I’d mow a lawn for about $20; and I’d turn that into about a dozen comics.
But today? There’s simply no way a 12 year old can afford comics. A parent can rationalize a $60 video game, because it offers dozens of hours of entertainment. And you can trade it in towards another game. But $60 worth of comics? At today’s prices? No way. A parent simply can’t justify it.
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Exactly! When I started reading Flash as a kid (issue 8 in 1988) was just $0.75. It went bananas pretty quickly. From 88 to 93 the same title increased in cost by 50%.
I guess that’s all well and good, but I definitely don’t remember my chores allowance seeing a 10% annual increase for inflation.
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They absolutely are, but I don’t know how the industry can survive any other way. As others have pointed out, the cost to produce comics is high and the market seems to be continually shrinking. I doubt any comic company could stay in business selling books for a buck or two. The major comic companies are now owned by bigger companies that use the comic characters to make movies and television shows. If they looked at the actual comics as loss leaders and a proving ground for future blockbuster movies, then they could probably sell them pretty cheap. Marvel, in particular, could probably afford to give them away–if they counted the movie profits into the equation. I don’t see that happening, though, and the creators deserve to be paid a fair wage for their work.
Another big factor is the margin built in for the reseller. I believe (but could be mistaken) that resellers pay about half of the cover price for the books. Their profit is important, but certainly is a major factor in the price. Now, DC/Marvel could sell the digital products at the same price they sell to resellers, but that would likely be the final nail in the coffin for comic shops.
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@Bill-Em I can understand the argument for physical issues. Production cost is up. Sales are down. Except sales aren’t all that down.
I also used the 1988-1993 time period on purpose. Price per issue went up 50-75% at a period in time when comics were selling more than any other point in history (by revenue).
Since more accurate tracking became available in the mid-90’s the most orders in a month took place in August 2016. The highest dollar volume was just a few months before that. Based on sales data alone it’s hard to justify the pricing. Comics have less cause for being more expensive right now than at any point since 1995.
Unless they’re paying creative talent way more than I’m assuming.
With digital you can’t justify the cost at all. Digital removes the cost of production entirely. So, why is a digital comic the same price as a physical comic?
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I didn’t mean to sound callous with my digital argument. If the markup is for comic shops to make earnings, well, that seems like a bad business model. I’m sure there is a lot of overhead for shop owners (I’ve spent hundreds of hours shopping and working in shops, but this doesn’t make me an expert at all).
It’s someone’s livelihood. Bookshops are failing all over the world as people move to digital.
It’s not ideal. In fact it sucks. I love physical stores, but…
I bought all of my comics from a newsstand growing up (it’s now gone, but because of retirement). I didn’t know what a comic shop was. In fact the idea of a comic shop is a relatively new thing (the first one in my hometown didn’t open until 1989).
The old model allowed the vendor to make money selling issues at a significantly lower cost. If the price is because of the comic shop model; it’s not going to matter in the end.
If you can’t make comics affordable to children and you can’t make them more available (like they were for many of us older readers), then you’re looking at a medium that won’t exist (physically) in twenty years. It’s already become far to niche.
Heck, I honestly prefer digital now. I think it’s @TurokSonOfStone1950 who has eyes even worse than my own. I wonder if I could easily read titles in print anymore. I’m struggling with my hardcover LoSH Great Darkness Saga hardcover presently.
Just saying the future of the industry isn’t in saving comic shops (sadly). It’s depends on making the material appealing and affordable enough to continue attracting lifelong readers who jump on at an early age. That’s my thinking anyway.
I hate to see shops fail. I hate to see print comics fail more. Right now the trend seems to be major revenue from hardcore collectors. It can’t survive on that forever.
Maybe I’m wrong. I get it wrong a lot. It’s just what I see regionally.
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You are correct
Comic Stores need half the cover price to cover rent wages and other expenses, before they can even a profit. Also their comics are non returnable, which makes them order fewer copies which makes is much more likely that casual.rraders without a pull list will miss issue especially unexpected big sellers because of a crossover.
Digital has none of that
But we are told digital is only.10%.of issues bought, so going digital only is not feasible.
But most floppies have only a little bit of story in each issues as the story takes six issues minimum for trade purposes.
Miss an issue and then what do you do.
I think we lose a lot of fans that way
Read a title and not understand what is going on. A particular problem for new readers or readers unwilling to read the prrvious issues just before reading the current issues.
Old comics, even.the 32 page ones had complete plots in 6 or 8 pages and sometimes three stories in.an issue.
I thought the new trades for kids would help but the characters are mostly unrecognizeable and therefore not good gateways to the standard titles.
Comics may survive by selling games figures and other merchandise but the comic book.single issue is unsustanable at the current price
I buy most titles for completeness but more and more i feel i need to give up titles like Batgirl.and Red Hood who at the very least need editors who care about readable stories, since the writers don’t.
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I know. I just finished reading Azrael and I absolutely loved it. Mostly because other than NML and Contagion, it was self contained. Most issues were stories that were resolved in an issue or two (a couple of trilogies).
Every few issues his own internal thoughts catch a potential new reader (or forgetful reader) up on what has been happening. It’s a highly underrated series to me, and a very good example of how comics should work.
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Comic sales have gone up every year post 9/11.
Gone are the days when Superman sold a million copies a month, but so have the distribution channels.
I still think going to a digital and limited print model may work. Focus the physical releases on the collector’s market, and make the broad distribution digital at a reduced price. If it is true that retailers are getting them at 50% cost. And if the printing of a book is 50% of the wholesale cast. That means a $5 book is only costing, $1.25 to make, make it digital for $2.00 and see what happens to the market.
Yes, it’s going to hurt the LCS but that may just be an unfortunate side effect of the digital world we live in. Look at what’s happened not just to “mom & pop” brick and mortar stores but even large, regional or national chains with Amazon and ebooks.
There will be fewer shops and maybe those focus on collectors and back issues. That was the model in the 70’s, but that also meant only having one LCS in all of Orange County, California.
And say what you want about the silver age, but they were great at single issue, 23/24 page stories, so you could jump into a book at any point, there was continuity, but it was mostly forward facing. Because issues were stand alone stories, you might get a reference to a previous issue, like a villain’s last appearance or a very brief plot synopsis of the previous issue or appearance, but that was mostly it.
Trying to force the economic hand of consumers with 12 different crossover titles just isn’t working.
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I don’t follow things well enough to know much about sales trends. I know that I read somewhere about comics selling hundreds of thousands of copies many years ago, and now the best sellers seem to only sell about 50,000. I think I even remember seeing sales on books being just like 15,000. Based on the number of people and man-hours needed to create a single comic (most artists can only do one book a month), there seems to be a fairly high floor for the cost of most books. I could start doing math (and, in fact, did), but it was too boring to read and I have too many gaps in my knowledge.
Again, I think the publishers’ desire to not run local comic shops out of business plays a big factor in the digital pricing (basically doubling the cost). Is this the right approach? I don’t know. It seems like it is a very difficult problem to solve at this point. Superheroes have never been more popular in pop culture, but the vast majority of people never even see a comic book on a shelf, let alone purchase one. When I was a kid, they were in every grocery and convenience store. It gave everyone a chance to see and buy them. Finding my first local comic shop was an amazing experience, and I’m sure it had some benefits to the comics market for a period of time. I would assume that people that consumed a lot of comics going to these specialized shops put a big dent in grocery/convenience store sales. I don’t know how large of a role that played in them going away from those markets (as opposed to, say, comics just becoming less popular), but their disappearance from these outlets certainly have reduced the visibility and potential for overall sales.
I don’t even know how somebody new to comics at this point would even know where to start. You can at least see trade paperbacks on Amazon and what few general book stores remain, but it does have a slightly higher cost of entry (although, to the original point of this thread, not as much as you would think) and there is going to be less variety. To see individual issues, they have to wander into a local comic store (do most people even know they exist and can they even find one in their town?) or go digital. I am aware that DC has been selling some books at Wal-Mart, but I don’t know how much exposure that brings; it certainly only puts a limited number of titles in front of them. I don’t know what the general public knowledge is about digital comics, but I am not thinking it is terribly high. And, if we are honest, many local comic stores are not particularly appealing to many people, or even welcoming to all (see another thread here about sexist remarks).
What would happen if DC were to cut digital prices to half of the cover price. Would it increase sales enough to offset the reduced revenue? Would it kill all the local comic shops? Would killing the local comic shops kill the industry? I think those are all reasonable questions, and I haven’t got a single answer. I am glad it is not my problem to figure out, but somebody needs to. If the comics industry doesn’t start bringing in younger generations of readers, the market sis going to die with us old timers. At some point, they are going to price us all out of buying.
Sorry for all the rambling. I just don’t think it is a simple problem. While corporate greed has no limits, I don’t think that comic prices are just a matter of trying to get as much money out of people as possible.
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That’s a valid concern. The problem is that print isn’t doing well in any form. Digital will continue growing. LCS will be fewer in numbers. In that very thread about the a-hole shop owner she mentions two of three shops in her town aren’t reopening. I’m guessing that’s going to be pretty typical.
So, let’s assume you’ve lost half the shops in the nation by the time it’s said and done. That’s going to pressure publishers in a serious way. They’re going to be looking at all kinds of modes of distribution over the next few months. They don’t have a choice.
The future of the LCS isn’t in question. It’s failing. To keep prices high to keep them alive doesn’t make sense at this point. Your job is to ship units, not keep stores open. They can always backtrack a bit. Comics were completely excellent 40 years ago.
Less showy artwork means less expensive paper. Means less expensive cover prices. Means comics on the magazine rack in stores around the country.
If exposure is the issue then fix the exposure problem. If the problem with exposure is the cost of production then fix the cost problem.
Not every issue needs to be the comic equivalent of a BMW 7 series.
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My suggestions would be the following:
- Limit the printing of monthly books to bestsellers. Go digital-only for the low-selling monthlies.
- Offer some 100-pg. giants that bundle new stories featuring various semi-popular characters.
- Delay digital sales of monthly print issues by a month. Offer them at a lower cost than print.
- Delay digital sales of new graphic novels by at least three months. Again, reduce the cost.
- Limit digitization of trades. Favor compilations and crossovers over consecutive issue trades.
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A month of Netflix is like 3 or 4 comics. Any kid or teen is going to be like WTF? And not think it’s worth it
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I just read them on here. And manga on the Shonen jump app. Print is too expensive,especially when the issues are so short
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The paper isn’t the biggest cost in printing. With that said, back in the day artist could reliably do 2-3 issues a month. Jack Kirby wrote and drew the New Gods quartet of books, on a one every two weeks cycle. So art doesn’t lend itself well to that. Fine, let them work on graphic novels or find jobs elsewhere. Pretty much every other job is being asked to improve productivity including reducing time to market. Maybe this reality needs to hit the comics industry.
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Agreed. Jack was a god and one of a kind, but that’s a good point. There were plenty of artists on multiple titles when I was a kid. Jurgens would put out two a month. I remember him working on Supes and JLA at the same time.
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And it’s not like those Jurgens issues were bad,ether. Most people liked them. I liked them.
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When rebirth launched at those awesome prices, I was able to afford multiple books in my box. Now that they raised the prices up, I had to cut a bunch of titles. I want to support the company and the creators by supporting as many books as possible, but I am also an adult with responsibilities and bills.
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Going digital-only will kill the industry. Sure, production costs go down. But so does your ability to get new readers. In my opinion, they need ultra cheap floppies in places where parents and little kids frequent. Grocery stores, convenience stores, toy stores. Target, Walmart, Publix, Kroger, e.t.c. Pack the comics with short, 8 page stories. Short attention spans; lots of variety; lots of stuff to talk about during recess, around the water cooler, on social media.
Compare an old Adventure Comics (with two or three stores) to Naomi #3. There’s simply no contest.
“But the art’s better!” “But Bendis is a god!” “But the paper and the ink are higher quality!”
Nobody cares!
The kids at recess aren’t talking about paper quality. When I’ve complained about the continuity holes in Hawkman’s story, it’s never occurred to me that the older stories are worse because of the quality of the ink.
Digital-only, on the other hand, reduces your ability to advertise to nil. DC would need to partner up with Amazon or (who else?) in a major way. And that’s simply not going to happen. Therefore, DC will become more and more of a niche. And with digital, you remove your ability to cuontrol production costs, limit print runs, introduce collector editions, foil covers, e.t.c. The collectors love that crap. The readers don’t care, but the collectors do.
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