Two Ninety-Nine. Does it work for you?
October 13th, 2010 by Esther Inglis-Arkell |Because it definitely does for me. I can’t help but wonder if the fact that something like five Batman: The Road Home books are coming out on Wednesday has something to do with the timing. Batman’s a draw, sure, but dropping a twenty on tie-ins that are coming out before the end of the series that they’re supposedly sequels of doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that even die hard fans would do.
I buy that DC and Marvel are both scaling back because readers have done the same. Hell, when I started buying comics they were $2.50 each, and I haven’t been collecting long. Raising prices by sixty percent over less than half a decade is asking a lot of consumers, especially since all those ‘extras’ and ‘second features’ dried up pretty fast. I wonder, though, if the damage has been done. Once people get in the habit of dropping things, once they realize they can and it doesn’t make that much of a difference, it could be hard to get them out of it.
Especially since books may be getting scaled back by two pages an issue. Paper costs money, of course, and I don’t think that anyone is planning a get-rich-quick scheme by milking the oh-so-lucrative comic book market, but I can’t help but remember paying five dollars for a comic book that had a First Wave preview. A few months later, almost every book being published that week had that same preview added on for free.
Still, I think that scaling back the price will do what Marvel and DC hope it will do; encourage people who are on the fence about an issue to throw it on their stack with a, “What the hell. It’s only three dollars.” That will give more marginal books a chance to thrive, and I think it would be a real boon to everyone.
Are there any issues that you’re planning on picking up due to the price rollback?
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I don’t like comics being even thinner. Honestly, it feels like a temporary measure until either digital comics take off (and at $1.99 a piece, I don’t think they really will) or enough time has passed for a reasonable raise to $4 again.
But, I must say, not paying $4 for Batman Inc makes me feel good.
Are trades the same price?
I guess my comic-buying habits are unaffected, then.
Avengers still 3.99 and while I got lored in with all those number 1s, they are all up to issue five and I still feel like I’m reading issue one. Decompression works sometimes but kills over a the long run. 2.99 is okay but it’s getting really hard to justify spending money on these books.
I’m planning on picking up least one more DC book a month because of this. I haven’t decided which yet. Probably Knight and Squire, but I’ve heard good things about Generations Lost, so I may give that a look.
Nope.
While losing a a couple pages seems a fair exchange for saving a buck, this does not excite me. I’ve become so bothered by the current system of floppies that I go digital whenever possible, with the exception of very few series. That wont change any time soon.
It won’t change much for me. I’m pretty much a “wait-for-the-trade” guy, except for occasional issues of pure fun such as “Fantastic Four in… Ataque del M.O.D.O.K.!”
Agreed on waiting for trades.
I occasionally pick up a floppy or two, but only when I happen about them. Or seriously old back issues for $.25 or $.50 a pop. It’s hard when all the stories are “arc’s”. Or maybe it’s just me that appreciates a good one-shot?
Zypher: It’s not just you. I had forgotten how great they cooed be and then I read an old Hulk story where Peter (?) David turns the genre on it’s ear AND creates an engaging done-in-one.
FWIW, reading that ish cost me nothing (extra) since I bought the Hulk PDF comics on DVD years, ago. Digital is where it’s at, baby.
Does that mean they will be cheaper on DCBService?