Comic Book Inflation
zikaatlaw
Posts: 56
I was in a comic shop the other day, reached for the new Dark Knight, saw DC's $6 "f**k you" to the readers and put it back. I am ok with paying more occasionally, but it has gotten to be a regular thing with the big 2 that has gotten out of hand. I don't know all the economics and recognize that more titles means less readers for each title, so they need to charge more, etc, etc, but floppies are quickly becoming one of the worst values in entertainment. Based on a rough google search, 1975 was the first $0.30 comic. At the time, movies were $2-2.50; magazines were $.40-1.50 (depending on weekly/monthly etc), daily papers were $.15-.20.
If you put the 1975 comic price in an inflation calculator, they would cost $1.45 today (that's not counting the shrinking page number). By comparison, a $2.50 movie should cost $12, which is about right for a primetime ticket, without shorter products. Roughly 4.8 to 5 times as expensive. $4 comics are now 13.3 times as expensive as they were in 1975 ($5=16.7x; $6 = 20x). That's absurd.
I know big companies are trying to profit while comics are big in popular culture, but I wonder at what price point are they going to set the monthlies up for another crash.
If you put the 1975 comic price in an inflation calculator, they would cost $1.45 today (that's not counting the shrinking page number). By comparison, a $2.50 movie should cost $12, which is about right for a primetime ticket, without shorter products. Roughly 4.8 to 5 times as expensive. $4 comics are now 13.3 times as expensive as they were in 1975 ($5=16.7x; $6 = 20x). That's absurd.
I know big companies are trying to profit while comics are big in popular culture, but I wonder at what price point are they going to set the monthlies up for another crash.
Comments
Look at the first Dark Knight Returns. it was $2.95 in 1986 plug that in the inflation calculator and it would be $6.40 today. Less that DK3. Dark Knight returns i believe has more pages even when you count the mini comic, and has yardstick cover, the production costs on the mini comic are a great deal more than those of a yardstick cover.
certainly the prices have grown more than inflation, but the costs of production have increased, and the entire market is a very different thing than it was in 1975.
they could lower the prices, but it would mean either paying everyone less (which is what happened when DC cut pages to hold the line at 2.99, and despite the internet overwhelmingly saying they would support this and stop buying the price gouging Marvels, DCs sales didn't go up. The other option is to make less money, which is step 1 of going out of business.
I can't justify buying monthly comics, just because of the expense. I've switched to trades, and that has caused me to seek out series that are self-contained, so I've kind of dropped out of following Marvel and DC. It's easier to read Y: The Last Man from beginning to end than to track down all of the Avengers titles from the last 5 years.
2001: Dark Knight Strikes Again #1: $7.95 when most normal comics were $2.25 (so, it was nearly 4x as expensive as a normal comic).
2015: Dark Knight III #1: $5.99, when most normal comics are $3.95 (so, it's only 1.5x as expensive as a normal comic).
It is what it is. $5.99 today is far less outrageous than $2.95 in 1986 or $7.95 in 2001. DKIII#1 gives you 34 pages of content (no ads) + a 12-page mini-comic.
It's a top-shelf creative team from top to bottom, and don't forget that even rank-and-file Big Two creators are paid more now than A-list Big Two creators were paid 10-12 years ago. (Ed Brubaker spoke on this a few years ago. He became the #1 Batman writer in the early 2000s. He's said that these days even Big Two fill-in writers and artists make more than A-listers did back then. And that's adjusting for inflation.) So, the slowly rising cover prices aren't just in response to generally lower sales. They're also in response to creators getting paid more.
I'm not saying we should all just happily shut up and plunk down $6 for any comic. It's very understandable if $6 is more than you want to spend. If that's the case -- don't buy it. The thing about pricing is that IF DC THOUGHT THEY COULD CHARGE $10 FOR THIS SAME COMIC, THEY'D DO IT. But they realize that they can't charge that much. It's already factored in. If sales on DKIII are lower then expected, then DC will adjust and maybe next time you see a big comic like this, it'll have a little less content and a lower price tag. Instead, as it is, it's $2 more than the normal $4 "Batman" comic, and it has over twice as much content, and no ads.
Marvel has been charging $4 for 20 pages for over five years now. During that time, sales of floppies have actually gone up. If the price is too high, don't buy it. People like us can say over and over again that $4 is too high for a new comic, but that opinion is manifestly incorrect, because you look at the sales charts over the last five years and you see growth. People are buying the comics, soo...
I bought a copy of Dark Knight III #1 for $1 last weekend. It was from the kind of comic shop that many people would hate, since the owner is all into speculation and CGC. And yet, the guy had a $1 sale and was actively going around to customers and telling them "Any recent comic is $1, and that includes DKIII, which is a $6 comic, as well as that Walking Dead variant over there, which goes for $20 on eBay. Have at it."
You can go to a normal comic shop and pay $6 for it. Or go to a "slimey" speculator store and pay $1. Or you can wait for the hardcover and get it for 50% off at instocktrades. Or you can wait for the TPB and get it for probably less than $20 on Amazon. Paying $5.99 per issue is just one of many options.
On Black Friday I resubscribed to all of my Marvel Comics via Ebates and Magazines.com, and it worked out to only $1.25 per issue. And I split that cost with a friend who gives me money for the digital codes. Half of the issues will arrive to me in sub-VF condition, but oh well. I like reading them and don't care that much about condition.
On the other hand I'll pay hundreds of dollars for a 9.8 certified comic.
The market is what the market is. If you think DKIII#1 is overpriced at $5.99, there are many ways to get that content for a cheaper price.
Has the (cover) price of an average comic gone up over the last 40 years in relation to inflation? Apparently so. So has the price of gold. And the price of oil or some other commodity might be less than the average rate of inflation. So does that mean there's some sort of problem and we should insist that the price of all products match the average rate of inflation? Of course not. The average rate of inflation is just the overall average. We're living in a different world now, and insisting that an old-fashioned model (paying cover price at a comic shop) match the average rate of inflation is kind of silly. The cover price has gone up, but we also live in a world now where there are an increasing number of ways to pay less than cover price.
But compared to the relative prices of the last 30 years, I don't think that $5.99 is high for a "special issue" of a comic, certainly not when prices of "special issues" were $3.95 over twenty freaking years ago. Overall, that $5.95 price is there for a reason. Many people will get a 20% discount at their shop or whatever, or a 25% discount from an online retailer, or a 40% discount from DCBS. Many more people will simply pay $5.99 and support their LCS. I probably got my copy for only $1 because the shop owner "over-ordered" enough copies to get a rare variant or something. Is that gross speculation? Is that a problem for the industry? Well, I personally would not have paid more than $4 for DKIII#1, but lo and behold: the direct market, of which that speculator-oriented shop is a part, found a way to provide me with a copy for $1, and that $1 helped that shop owner get rid of his overhead on ordering 100 copies "too many" or whatever. All things factored in, the $5.99 is there for a reason. It's calculated. Is it a miscalculation? Maybe. Probably not.
We know FOR SURE that Marvel's $4-for-20-pages calculation has NOT been a miscalculation. It's working. Sales and readership of floppies has increased under that price tag. We may not like it, but that's the fact. On the face of it, anything over $2 for a comic is going to make longtime readers grumble. But we're really no different from our grandfathers when they told us that they only paid 12 cents for comics post WWII.
Consumers have more options now than ever before. You're not beholden to a comic shop that insists on charging you cover price. But, again -- and I know this will anger some people -- I really don't think $5.99 is high for the content.
I'm someone who gets almost all of his comics for less than $2 (in many cases, less than $1, factoring out the digital code reselling), but I don't think that a $5.99 cover price is too high for DKIII#1. Not based on the actual multifaceted marketplace it isn't.
Retail has always been for "suckers," but I didn't mind being one of those suckers when a comic still cost less than a Happy Meal™ - that's no longer the case.
CEO's of America’s largest firms earn 3x more than they did 20 years ago and at least 10x more than 30 years ago. And don't get me started on professional athletes salaries. So it is no surprise that Marvel and DC have been raising the pay for their artists. In a world where those artists can earn big bucks with the right creator-owned property, it's in Marvel/DC's best interest to keep the workers well paid. It just isn't in the consumers' best interest as it obviously affects their bottom line. The costs have to be passed on. And since Ike Perlmutter isn't going to take a pay-cut and neither are these creators (now that they feel entitled to what they're earning), this situation isn't going to improve for consumers any time soon.
Look for quality over quantity.
Back an independent publisher who isn't taking out multi-page ads in Previews but has a book that looks interesting. I can't praise one I read today from Fubar Press called Mother Russia highly enough.
Hop on Kickstarter and throw some cabbage at an indie artist or back their Patreon so they can keep doing work they love and you enjoy.
I'll be reading DKIII, but probably not until it shows up as a completed trade. Unless it's something I really really love (character, writer, artist), I won't pick it up for more than $3 (I'm holding my own line at $2.99! :) )