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patentdragonAnother piece of unwelcome rumour-news this week has been the suggestion that comic book prices in the UK are about to go up AGAIN. It certainly doesn't help that Marvel have been first to jump and introduce the $3.99 regular comic...
Not end-of-the-world news. Some teenage bully was just found guilty of murdering a boy who'd just gone out to buy his first legal lottery ticket (at age 16, in the UK), and that's certainly of far greater significance than this - the same goes for the new US plans for Afghanistan, but you can read about all that anywhere, and you, dear reader, are completely entitled to go right ahead and do so, right now.
...
Still here? Okay, this must be a matter that means something to you. Okay, let's go...
Lets take a look at an example: Marvel's generally good-to-excellent New Avengers...
This time last year, the cover price for this was the standard $2.99, for which I paid £1.80. Then the bottom fell out of the pound, and my supplier adjusted the price to £1.99 to account for the exchange rate instability and distributor re-pricing - and almost simultaneously, the title switched to $3.99, and an equivalent UK price of £2.65, all for the same page count. $3.99 is an acceptable price for a special edition, like a special, bonus-sized anniversary issue - "NA" was only a few issues away from #50, might I add - but a regular title? Oh, come on.
I've decided to pass on several new titles of possible interest because they come in at the $3.99 price point, because there really is no reason for them to be priced so highly. I am looking for other avenues to economise - more and more comics will become "buy as collected edition only", and War Of Kings, Marvel's latest cosmic epic, will be the last limited series I buy as individual issues. And if Marvel insist on upping more prices, they may all but disappear from my order - and then my orders may just dry up completely.
I don't want to do that, but I may have no choice. I just went to Edinburgh for the first time in years, and right off, the memories came flooding back of my college days, when I went to Edinburgh on a comic-hunt every month - oh, how times have changed. The industry has been transformed, of that there's no doubt, but surely the comics industry needs to keep its existing customers, especially with growing interest in the digital media, and upcoming generations who just won't pay £3 period for 19 or so pages of illustrated story, let alone £3 each and every month. Better start inscribing that tomb-stone, Marvel...
We now return you to your regular, scheduled programming...
Not end-of-the-world news. Some teenage bully was just found guilty of murdering a boy who'd just gone out to buy his first legal lottery ticket (at age 16, in the UK), and that's certainly of far greater significance than this - the same goes for the new US plans for Afghanistan, but you can read about all that anywhere, and you, dear reader, are completely entitled to go right ahead and do so, right now.
...
Still here? Okay, this must be a matter that means something to you. Okay, let's go...
Lets take a look at an example: Marvel's generally good-to-excellent New Avengers...
This time last year, the cover price for this was the standard $2.99, for which I paid £1.80. Then the bottom fell out of the pound, and my supplier adjusted the price to £1.99 to account for the exchange rate instability and distributor re-pricing - and almost simultaneously, the title switched to $3.99, and an equivalent UK price of £2.65, all for the same page count. $3.99 is an acceptable price for a special edition, like a special, bonus-sized anniversary issue - "NA" was only a few issues away from #50, might I add - but a regular title? Oh, come on.
I've decided to pass on several new titles of possible interest because they come in at the $3.99 price point, because there really is no reason for them to be priced so highly. I am looking for other avenues to economise - more and more comics will become "buy as collected edition only", and War Of Kings, Marvel's latest cosmic epic, will be the last limited series I buy as individual issues. And if Marvel insist on upping more prices, they may all but disappear from my order - and then my orders may just dry up completely.
I don't want to do that, but I may have no choice. I just went to Edinburgh for the first time in years, and right off, the memories came flooding back of my college days, when I went to Edinburgh on a comic-hunt every month - oh, how times have changed. The industry has been transformed, of that there's no doubt, but surely the comics industry needs to keep its existing customers, especially with growing interest in the digital media, and upcoming generations who just won't pay £3 period for 19 or so pages of illustrated story, let alone £3 each and every month. Better start inscribing that tomb-stone, Marvel...
We now return you to your regular, scheduled programming...
