Woo hoo, I made the show! I should have been clearer, because later Crisis issues were only $0.75, and that's what I'd meant to compare to. Thanks for the shout out!

Loved the video!💕 Just started my comic book collection and found Toon Haven. They offer a huge variety of digital comics for every genre, and lifetime updates too!😍

Alterna is still using newsprint. His comics are $1.99 on his website. $4.99 for Alterna giants. $2.25 for blank variant covers and .99 for digitals.

In the end, these comics are priced and sold as niche products. As long as that doesn’t change, they will stay a niche product.

The ultra glossy printing of most comics now is nice but l don't need it. And l don't mind going back to having ads in my comics if it will knock a buck or two off the cover price. Don't need cardstock covers either.

How do comic prices to compare to other entertainment options? Books, computer games, streaming services are all ways of getting people to spend money and with them you get more bang for your buck.

It may be like comparing apples to aardvarks, but I started collecting two things in 1968: Hot Wheels cars (roughly $1.00 each back then, I think) and comic books ($.12 -$.25). Today, Hot Wheels are still around a dollar apiece while comics... well, we all know about that! No, it's not a fair comparison, but it gives you an idea about how comics have been mishandled by the publishers.

Yep! Still here. Shipping out 4 new comics this week. We're at $2.25 a piece now.

Simple math.... 1980 comics were 40 cents each, minimum wage was $3. That means 7 comics per hour's work. Today, $4 or $5 each, min wage is $7.25. That means ONE per hour--you literally can't even buy 2 comics for the one hour's wage. THAT's the real tale of the tape. What's worse is decompression... literally nothing's happening for your $4/5, certainly not a whole story. So drive by/casual purchasing is NOT FEASIBLE. Meaning the entry to the hobby now is virtually insurmountable. What I loved about comics in the 80s is that I could always pick up a few extra random comics just to 'check in' on titles I'm not invested in. Wonder Woman, Legion of Super-Heroes, etc. Today I absolutely NEVER pick up random issues on New Comic Day unless it's a #1.... and little chance of that. All my extra goes to back issues instead.

In 1992, a standard format Marvel comic was $1.25 and the "deluxe" comic was $1.75. Dark Horse was charging $2.50 for their color comics. It was generally accepted that independent comics cost more because they had smaller print run along with other factors. The reason comics cost as much as they do now? Marvel saw IDW publishing comics for $3.99 and selling them. Marvel "experimented" with increasing the price of their highest selling titles like New Avengers. The sales numbers didn't drop by a significant amount, so Marvel simply went with it. Now, here we are. And, from what I can see, the $4.99 price point isn't hurting them, either.

If I ran DC comics, this is what I think I might do:: 1) Sell an online subscription for $2.99/month. This subscription allows access to every monthly floppy in digital form as well as the past 11 issues (total of 12 months of issues). $3 is a good buy for every new monthly comic and makes it accessible. I would count of this being the "bread and butter" for covering all expenses. 2) Sell floppies of these same comics in comic stores. The print run would be based on orders only + 5% (or so for reorders and such). I would also make them fully returnable. Any comics that are returned would be destroyed. This keeps the collectability of these prints high and feeds that market. Also, I would get rid of the variant cover scheme. 3) I would work with mainstream retailers (gas stations, grocery stores etc) to get copies into their establishments in a place that is accessible for kids. Fr example, putting spinner racks in the convenient stores and comics in the magazine section of grocery stores. These would get limited print runs of the same floppies sold in comic shops but in TPB format. They would be reprints with three (or four) issues per magazine at a lower price mostly just to cover the cost of printing, shipping, and stocking them). The purpose of these would be to get new readers, and I would advertise the online subscription and the comic shop floppies as an alternative. Like the floppies, these would be returnable and destroyed. 4) Once a run was done, I would sell omnibus including all of the comics in that run. The only future reprints would be in omnibus format. The digital versions would be removed and the floppies/magazines would be destroyed. Omnis could be sold in the stores they are now. 5) I may even have specific versions of floppies for comic shops and versions for the mass market (grocery, gas stations, etc). For instance, a separate Batman floppy run may be in the convenient stores and grocery stores which would be a different title than the LCS (which get the flagship Batman, Detective, etc). The mass market shops only get the flagship titles (with the best teams) in the magazine format. The goal of all of this is to get every title to the masses at a reasonable price (via digital) while still preserving the collectors market. Since the digitals disappear after 12 months, the only access people will have is via back issues of the floppies, collected magazines, and eventually the omnibus. Having a copy of the titles in the mass market shops could get more readers, while keeping the price reasonable. Eventually, kids (and big kids) would drift into the digital side to just read everything each month at a reasonable price, and when the kids get older, they may gravitate to the floppies in the LCS. Also in this scenario, LCS' will become collectors shops and should have the same traffic they do now. Hopefully, this would allow the people with more money to get invested in DC comics, which would lead them to other independent comics. I have other ideas on the independent space and the back-end finances for DC, too.

Try being a comic collector in Australia - we pay nearly double the US cover price. A standard comic costs $7.50 while special issues can be up to $20. This is a major reason I've cut back my pull list down to just a few books.

Perch go talk to Zack he’s being crazy.

2.50 should be the max...not that any art is worth it these days...sorry..but it's just a fact..the art in these books today are just down right dismal....big corps gotta get their money...ughh...why I don't buy any comics anymore..it's just sad.....

Somebody once made a excel spreadsheet showing how inflation and wages was explained by comic costs. 60s the per hour rate of work could buy you 5 comics..... Now maybe 2.

The scary thing is that the direct market likely can't facilitate a lower average price point since it restricts the overall volume that can be sold (each shop has their own max number of issues they'll buy on preorder, and there are a declining number of shops), and the best way to meanìngfully reduce the cost is to dramatically increase volume. Or, in other words, cultivate a boutique hobby model, get boutique hobby prices

What would be the perfect price for a comic do you think? I’d say 2-3 bucks for a standard issue, and maybe 5 for a big event, also why do we need so many useless variant covers?

I believe that the fairest price is one dollar for every ten pages.

They aren’t gonna go all in on a price decrease because their data shows it would not increase sales enough to offset the reduction in price and positively move their bottom line. UNLESS, as Perch touched on, they are willing to take a 3-5 year loss while building up distribution of these lower cost books. They seem content to make what they make right now.

I'm spending too much. When I get home in August, I really need to curate. (He did not curate.)

Great video, appreciate you sharing it!

Thanks a ton, this was super helpful!

Comics used to be sold on spinner racks in some books stores and small stores.

Perch $5.00 US book in Canada cost $8.10 for a book. Exchange plus taxes.

Great show guys, thank you

Maybe you should do a livestream with Pete and chit-chat about comics. It's been a while

Comics are not priced to attract new readers, when you can get Japanese comic trade for 10 plus bucks and get more entertainment and value. Floppies have to be cheap, don't care if the print is cheap, it will motive to spend on it and if you love the tale then you buy the trade or hardcover. Everyone wins

Fantastic vid!!! Thanks a lot!

Thanks for sharing this, truly excellent content!

I had to pay 12,5€ for an anniversary issue. It’s just not worth it anymore. Titan can still charge 3,99$ for Conan with great paper quality but Marvel wants to charge me 4,99$ for their standard issue. Can you make a video about how and if the recent price increases have affected the market?

For minimum wage in the mid 80s I could walk out of the comic store with 3-5 comics for an hours worth of work.. don't think that's possible at today's minimum wage

Just low prices won't solve stuff. Free comic book day is an example. If no one wants it even if it's free they won't take it. You have to make product that people want, if they really want it they'll pay the price. I would rather pay $4-$5 for a good Ghost Machine or Energonverse title then $2 for the vast majority of anything by Marvel.

Much like action figures, comics used to make a tremendous amount of money selling to children who didn't whine about everything or worry about how glossy the page was, they just wanted entertained. Making a thing which should cost a couple bucks cost two or three times that because it's for adult collectors who are trying to still enjoy that high from childhood, is a contradiction. Yes adults will pay more, and unthinkingly they will appreciate a higher quality item, but they'll still always feel like it's a jip because they don't want a different comic industry or a different action figure industry where everything is an overpriced luxury item, ultimately they just want the feeling engaging with the product gives them due to childhood connections. A plastic toy can only ever have so much cost attached to it before it just seems absurdly priced, it's just a piece of plastic. A comic book also can only have so much cost attached to it before it seems overpriced. It's just paper stapled together. Paper can't get glossy enough to make $6 seem reasonable for a comic.

very helpful, worth the watch

Can't wait to start my collection

ill definitely try that, thanks!

I don’t even find the pricing consistent between different series from the same publishers. I picked up GODS #8 and an issue of Immortal Thor I was missing last week. Both were $4.99, but GODS was 28 pages and immortal Thor was 20 pages. And then at DC Spurrier’s Hellblazer series is $4.99 for 28 pages and a card stock cover. I know that’s a different publisher and different paper stocks, but it increases my confusion over pricing in comics.

wow, great video. thanks so much

Well this was a cheerful episode.

Perch your talking about the adult collector section at Target

Perch: "Marvel and DC, use your corporate overlords to drastically increase distribution and the drop the price to corner the market!" C.B. Cebulski: 😪 zzzzzzz... "Wha? Did somebody say something?" Jim Lee: 😴 zzzzzzzz... "ZZZZZZZZ...snore...ZZZZZZZ"

The quality of art has drastically improved since the 1950's, which to be fair, should add value to the book.

Is newsprint the paper that manga is printed on? The price of comics is definitely too expensive, they should be $4 at most. The price of manga is all over the place now, Viz is the cheapest, I get most of their volumes for €9-€12, Yen Press I get for around €12-€14, and then Seven Seas is mostly €15-€17. Most of the manga I buy now is from Seven Seas.

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