Why I stopped buying comics…

There was a time when I was a comics junkie, although this ended probaby twenty years ago. Part of it was getting tired in stuff like seeing characters killed half a dozen times over the years and keep turning up alive.

However, the bigger part was that at one point I was laying out incredible amounts of money every month. (And it’s not like I was making all that much.) I was reading so many books–I look at my dusty old comic book longboxes now and think, “Why the hell was I buying that?”–that I started using a service to buy my stuff. Basically, instead of going to the comic book store every week, I ordered titles and they all came in a once-a-month shipment. Do this I saved something like 30% off the cover prices. Even then, though, I was usually blowing something north of $200 every month. And again, this was back in the ’80s, when the minimum wage was like $3.25.

So, anyway, now I buy the occasional ‘graphic novel’ compilation, order more to read via inter-library loan (handy, since I work in a library), and bum a read off another guy at work who buys some stuff.

Anyhoo, Marvel’s big mega-plotline this year is the “Civil War,” which basically entails a bill that would make superheroes register with the guv’ment. Some are for it, and some agin it, and one side of the superhero community is fighting the other.

So today my buddy gives me a stack of six comics to look over. I read comics quickly–one reason I bought so many at my peak–and so this probably represents about an hour’s worth of reading material, if that.

Cover price for these six books? $20. (2x$4, plus 4x$3.) I’m sure if I bought as many books as I did back in the day, my habit would be costing me at least $500-600 a month.

I don’t think I’ll resuming that hobby any time soon.

By the way, do parents still indulgently buy comics for their kids anymore? When I ran up to my mom and asked to buy the latest issue of Spider-Man as a kid, it cost .20. If my kid (if I had one) said “Can I buy this?” and I saw it cost four bucks, I’d be like, no way.

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Altair IV

I know just what you mean. At my peak I was probably buying just as much. Then I moved to Japan and pretty much lost all track of what’s going on in the US comic market. Sometimes I miss the stories, but I certainly don’t miss the expense.

One reason prices skyrocketed though is that the comic companies in the 90’s transitioned from cheap newsprint and 4-color printing to much higher quality full-color formats. I don’t know if it justified going from averaging less than a dollar per cover when I started to $2.50 or more just eight years later, but it certainly did help to show off the artwork better. I think it was probably one of the factors that led to the rise in influence of comic artists at about the same time.

I also remember just before I left the nightmare of all the sales gimmicks they were using to gouge money out of the collectors like me. Multiple covers, embossed premium editions, hologram cards, anything to get the fans to buy multiple copies. Are they still doing that stuff now?
Ken HPoJ

I think they still do some of that to some extent, especially the multiple cover racket, but these days both of the major companies rely on these company-wide mega-stories. Marvel’s had House of M and Civil War in the last few years, and DC has something (I think) called 52 going on right now. The idea of using a big story line to ‘encourage’ readers to check out more titles (lest they miss part of the story) is an old one, but it’s been refined quite a bit lately.
Aussiesmurf

I am still collecting comics, and with the US to Australian ratio, the average comic costs $ 5.40 Australian (which includes a 10% discount for having comics on my regular order). I usually buy 8-10 comics a week for a total of around $50.00.

The price increases in the 90s literally almost drove the industry out of business, as Marvel was bankrupt at one point.

Recently, comics only make a tiny percent of Marvel’s profits, with the remainder coming from licensing / merchandise / movies.

52 is brilliant though. Its a weekly comic taking place in ‘real time’ over the space of one calendar year. All of the remaining DC comics skipped ahead ‘one year’, and this title is telling the story what happened during that year. In the monthly sales lists, all four of the 52 issues that come out in each month have regularly been in the top 10 sold.

If I was buying a comic for my child (which i have yet to have) I would buy one of the ‘Essential’ collections. Although in black-and-white, each contains around 20-30 old issues of Spider-Man, X-Men etc. for a price of $20.00 US.
Nathan

I don’t buy monthlies FOR my children (though I have bought them some of the “Essentials” collections that aussiesmurf mentions), but I do try to make sure that I buy one or two titles that they could reasonably enjoy, like the recent (and absolutely brilliant) “Death Jr.” miniseries.

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