Up, Up, and Away... Comic Book Prices, That is...
An Editorial by Paul Steven Brown
November 3, 2008

Mainstream comic book prices appear to be trending towards an increase to $3.99 next year for a standard format issue and a recent posting in Rich Johnston's Lying in the Gutters column got me thinking about the implications.  It goes without saying that times are tough economically, not only in the United States, but in the rest of the world.  Unemployment is up and there is a serious shortage in "cash in hand" for many people in the middle class and the poor.  In other words, a lot of people have less money to spend on comic books or at least comics beyond those few titles that they can't live without.

Case in point, I've had to restrict myself down to my beloved X-Men related titles, the two Green Lantern books, and a couple of indie titles.  I plan on riding out Secret Invasion and Final Crisis, but once their done, my wallet will surely release a sigh of relief.  What makes this increasingly unfortunate for myself and my fellow writers at The Comic Addiction, is that we are now restricted to reviewing only books that we would pick up anyway.  In the past, I would make a point to pick up one or two titles that I didn't normally read to broaden my pallet and to have something new to review for the site.  Add the fact that most companies are becoming less and less forthcoming with advance preview copies, whether it is the finished product or a .pdf file, and you've got a review site and a podcast that is struggling to provide fresh content for its readers.

Enough about me.  Let's talk about you.  A lot of folks have a limited budget to spend on their comics.  The average age for readers is probably around 30.  If you're 30 there's a good chance that you have to pay for rent or a mortgage, and may have to support a spouse, significant other, or even a whole family.  Now, let's say you allow yourself $25 a month to spend on comics and your buy primarily mainstream books that are currently $2.99.  You can buy eight issues a month and have a little change left over in case one of those books is an indie title or an annual.  If we step into the future and a world where comics are now $3.99, you now can only buy six issues and have that little bit left over for the indie or annual.  So if you are on a strict budget, you've cut out two series that you normally pick up every month.  Two!  That's with a dollar increase.   

At the same time, this increase shouldn't really be that surprising.  If you look at price increase trends for mainstream comics, they tend to roughly double every ten years.  2009 will see them at $3.99, 1999 they were $1.75 ($1.99 the following year), 1989 the price was $1.00, 1979 it was $.40 ($.50 by 1981).  Sensing a pattern?  Does this mean we'll be shelling out $7.99 per issue by 2019?  Sure that's a decade away, but it almost seems inconceivable.  Will we get used to $3.99 like we begrudgingly got used to $2.99?  It's the same sort of question people have been asking themselves about gasoline prices: how much is too much?

Some books that are standard issue size are already being priced at $3.99.  From my own personal purchases, I know that X-Men: Manifest Destiny and X-Men: Worlds Apart reflect this increase price and they both do not contain any increased page count.  Then there's Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes.  I won't go into too much detail about this being a fill-in mini-series to hold readers over until the regular series catches up on delays.  On the plus side, the first issue is still written by Warren Ellis and the art is by the always excellent Alan Davis and Adi Granov.  But here's where the problem comes in: Davis and Granov draw only eight pages of story a piece.  The rest of the issue is padded out with Ellis' script and notes.  Let me reiterate, there's only sixteen pages of original comic book material in this $3.99 issue!  I know that a price increase is all but unavoidable, but this is just shameful.

The padding of an issue with a reprint story or sketches and slapping an additional dollar on the price tag has been a pretty annoying habit as of late, particularly of Mavel Comics.  If I want to read an older story that may or may not tie into a given issue, then I'll seek it out.  I'll either pick up the back issue, read it in a trade, or look it up on Marvel's digital service.  Let me make that decision.  I've put books back on the shelf that I might have bought if it wasn't for that dollar increase for supplemental material.  What's even worse is when there's a price increase and the extra pages are previews for a completely different series.  I do not want to pay for your in house advertising!  I've digressed enough.

What will the additional the impact of a dollar increase on all mainstream comic book titles?  Who are the winners and who are the losers?  What kind of impact will this have on an industry that has been slowly trying to claw its way out of muck after the bottom dropped out in the late '90s?

Independent publishers are going to take a hit.  Face it, the Big Two (DC and Marvel) rule and will continue to rule.  They've got the clout, the money, and the mainstream recognition.  They aren't going anywhere and they have the power to continue to flood the shelves with material that will push the smaller fish out of the way.  Image and Dark Horse will probably be fine, too.  They've been around along time and both have enough properties that will retain loyal readers.  Unfortunately, if customers are on a fixed budget, they may not be inclined to take a chance on a new property and may feel more comfortable sticking to what they know.

If customers start cutting back, then it will definitely impact the retailers.  Heck, a $3.99 comic book will probably scare off a new reader that casually walks into a store after watching the latest big screen comic book based blockbuster.  If customers are not willing to try out new or different titles, then there isn't any growth.  Some people may become more trade readers, diminishing weekly sales that are the bread and butter of the retail industry.  Also, if an issue doesn't sell and just gathers dust on the rack, the retailer is out more money per issue due to the increase.  There's also the issue of customer attrition.

Online retailers that do not have a store front to maintain and can afford to sell at a discounted rate may pick up more customers.  More and more readers may choose to wait for a monthly discounted order of their regular books instead paying full price so they can pick up their books on a weekly basis.  As a result, there could be a boom in online comic books sales.

But what about digital comics?  Could this price increase finally be what motivates readers to demand downloadable versions of their favorite comic book series.  Marvel has it digital service, but it's subscription based and you have to be connected to their site to read anything.  Also, it doesn’t release digital versions of books the same day the paper version hits the stands.  What is also need to allow digital comic books to flourish as a serious portion of the market is a peripheral that will allow for virtually the same reading experience as reading an actual comic book.

As it stands, if a company does offer a downloadable version of a current issue, a reader has to view it on their computer screen, many of which are not as tall as a standard size comic book.  As a result, you can't see the whole page at once.  Tablet computers are bulky and expensive and I see few people buying one just to read their digital comics.  I'd like to see some kind of hybrid of the Kindle and the iPod Touch.  An affordable, thin, full-color reader with a screen the size of a regular newsstand magazine.  A person wouldn't have to scroll up and down a single page to read it, and the machine could be taken anywhere.  If you have a month’s worth of books loaded into the machine or a digital version of a trade, you’d have plenty of reading for a trip and wouldn’t have to be connected to the internet to read the issues.  With built in wi-fi, a reader could download and issue directly to the machine as well as their normal computer.  It would be perfect for reading comic books, magazines, and books.  Throw in mp3 and video storage and playback plus a headphones port and you've got nifty little multi-media machine.

Of course this becomes a "chicken or the egg" argument.  Does the digital market need to start up so such a machine will be made available or will the creation of such a reader cause a demand for downloadable reading medium?

My point is that if such a machine existed and comic books were sold digitally at a discounted rate and released the same day as their paper cousins, there would quite possibly be a boom in the digital comics market.  Fifteen years ago, who would have thought that digitally sold and downloaded music would be such a major corner of that market?  There are a lot of listeners that hardly buy a physical CD anymore.  Who's not to say it wouldn't happen with comic books?

If you've read comics for over a decade you shouldn't be surprised when the books go up in price every few years.  It's not enjoyable, by any means, but it's the nature of the beast.  Inflation and the rising cost of paper and fuel, not to mention the advances in production quality all impact this.  Is $3.99 finally going to be the line in the sand that will cause fans, retailers, and companies to have to really rethink the market and the industry?  Will we all just suck it up, take a hit and keep plugging along with a grumble?  It'll probably be a combination of the two.  One thing is for sure, us hardcore comic book fans will find some way to get our four-color satisfaction no matter the obstacle.