Comic Book Prices

Hello Chums,

I just wanted to say I'm NOT happy about the new price hike. I mean $2.99 was already too high a price for a comic book. Now the price is $3.99. Are they kidding me? How many kids have an extra $20.00 a week for 5 comic books? Not many kids. Not many adults either these days.

This whole price hike has me thinking maybe now would be a great time (or the right time) to drop a few books. And Marvel comics would be a great place to start. Marvel comics have almost as many pages of adds as there are story pages. The November issues are notorious for having more adds than pages. That is RIDICULOUS. If I collect a long box full of Marvel comics, half that box would be adds. Who needs that?

Marvel comics the same price as IDW comics? That's insane. First of all, with Marvels dominance of the market on the amount of titles published each month and their higher print runs (number of books to be sold), why are their prices going up? The shear number of adds they have in each book should keep the prices down. It's my opinion that Marvel Comics is a greedy company. They're so cheap they hardly show up at any Comic book conventions. They should be the leader in the field. Instead they have become a greedy price gouger.

Back to IDW, they're comics have card stock covers. Marvel has low quality cheap paper covers (the ink comes off on my fingers all the time). IDW's comics have a few pages of adds at the end of the book. But their adds are for other IDW products. And that doesn't bother me. Marvel has twice as many adds and they're also dispersed in between every few pages of the story. I have always found this disruptive to the story. This is very old school. IDW, Dark Horse and Image comics put their adds in the back (where they belong). Since Marvel is jacking up the price, maybe they could drop some of their adds to thin up a few books. The car (Honda), food, movies and video games adds would be great places to start.

If I did quit buying Marvel singles, it's not like I'll miss anything anyway. Almost everything they print gets collected in a trade (usually sooner than later). The trades are a better value. No adds. And square bound. Which means they'll sit nicely on my bookcase. And you know getting them off the shelf to reread is much easier than digging through long box upon long box until you luck into finding what your looking for.

Keep Reading Comics but boycott the $4.00 Marvel books.

D.L.