There are a lot of complaints about comic books being too expensive, and it is true that the cover price of a 20-22 page comic is higher than it's ever been, at $3 or $4.
When I started reading comics way, way back in 1989, and most issues cost between $0.75 and $1.00. Some special issues, those with nicer paper like Punisher: War Journal, went as high as $1.50. Adjusted for inflation today, a $1 comic book from 1989 would be $1.78. A $1.50 comic would cost you $2.68.
Go even further back, and you'll find that the ten cent copy of Action Comics #1 from 1938 would cost you $1.57 today. It included 10 stories (13 pages of Superman) and was 64 pages long. It sold about 200,000 copies, and soon the series did 1,000,000 per month. You can check into economies of scale to see how that affects comic prices today.
It seems like we're getting hosed at the comic shop, doesn't it? And from a consumer standpoint, you totally are…
…if you have to buy new books, in a store, every Wednesday.
But if you're talking about the money that you have to spend to actually read comics, it's a whole other world. Going back to 1989 again, I wanted to read the Chris Claremont/Frank Miller Wolverine series, I had to buy the back issues, and I had to buy them from "the wall". The wall was where they stuck books up there, and slapped on a big price tag. I saved, and paid $10 for the first issue. That's $17.85 in today's dollars. For the first issue. The rest of the issues were priced slightly less. For the set of 4, my 12-year old self would have paid through the nose. I only ever bought the first issue actually. There was also a collection. It had a cover price of $12.95, or $23.11 in today's dollars, for those 4 issues. Cover price on the issues was $0.60. List price on the Wolverine trade today is $16.99, or $9.52 in 1989 dollars.
That was the case with most back issues. Prices for back issues didn't go down, like in record stores. They went up, because they were collectible. Most things weren't collected in trades at all, actually. A Marvel Masterwork book, collecting classic stories had a cover price of $50 each volume, or $89.24 today. There weren't Showcase and Essential collections so you could go back and read the classics. You had to back issue dive, which wasn't just expensive, but incredibly time consuming. For the premium collector, they didn't even have the option. Omnibus and Absolute Editions were like fantasies no one even imagined.
But those days are over. Extensive trade paperback programs opened up a whole new revenue stream for publishers. That combined with digital piracy have almost obliterated the bulk of the back issue market. Don't believe me? Try selling your recentish comics to a comic shop. There is still a limited market for some collectors, but it's a shrinking minority, and CGC has pretty much taken over that side of the business. If you're not interested in the collectiblity of an issue, but you just want to read a story, this is your time.
Add in the choice of digital comics, and you're off to the races, with most issues costing between $1 and $2. The catch for all of this, as of now, is that you're giving up the time factor, of reading things the day they come out, and having to have them right away. In our 24 hour, always on society, that's no small thing, but you pay for the premium of being current. If you don't feel that need, then comics are as affordable as accessible as they've ever been.
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Josh just used the concept of Economies of Scale on iFanboy (correctly). I am one happy economist/comic book fan.
I’m adding this to the list of iFanboy articles that will be discussed in my Econ & Society class this semester. Thanks for the material and another solid article.
On balance, I am glad that trades (in all their forms) exist. I recently made the switch from being mostly a Marvel reader to mostly being a DC reader, and I couldn’t be happier. However, being the type of person who needs to know the backstory of a character, I would have never been able to make that change from Marvel to DC if it were not for the fact that I could pick up trades inexpensively. I cannot imagin I would be a DC fan today if I had to shell out big bucks to read Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, etc. It just would not have happened.
That said, I do think that trades allow people to forego buying single issues (hence the term trade-waiting.) This, I think, hurts the single-issue market in the long-run.
But, on the other, other hand, trades might keep people in comics longer and introduce new readers to the medium. Marvel isn’t doing it for me, so if I couldn’t make the economical switch to DC, I would have stopped collecting all together. And, I know of many people, such as my wife, who have gotten into comics through trades, such as Walking Dead and Fables.
So, yes, on balance, “Yea, trades!!”
I would have break my addiction to this fine website and podcast before I could contemplate waiting for the trade so for now at least it’s a none starter.
that’s an interesting angle that i hadn’t considered. I would also add that comic shops were fewer and farther between (although comics were still sold at drug stores in the 80s) so extra travel time/money factors in. I really do think trades are the future. Its about the complete story and trades open up the comics world in a way that retailers with limited space and inventory can ever hope to do.
I was at a shop a few months back and a guy brought in a long box of back issues looking really confident. He had nice stuff..Big chunks of blue chip titles, like Uncanny, Detective etcLOTS of 90s Valiant/Image stuff…the comic shop guy offered to buy like 5 individual Uncanny X Men issues off of him for pennies. The guy was so pissed off. “WHATS WRONG WITH YOU!?!? THIS STUFF IS VALUABLE!!!” the comic shop guy told him how they had double and triple copies of just about everything in his box and they all sell for around $10 at most. He was destroyed. It was sad, but also funny cause the guy was a total douche.
Bit off topic but……..There seems to be this rational that if you don’t read issues as and when they come out you can no longer be a part of a comics community or enjoy brilliant sites like this one. I really, really don’t understand that. I pretty much stick exclusively to trades (though i will admit I picked up some issues recently – mostly the .1’s and No 1’s). Anyway, most times I go weeks or even months without reading comics yet I still enjoy this site. I’m on here every couple of days. I’m not bothered by spoilers either, and even if I was chances are that I would have forgotten them by the time I have the chance to pick up the trade.
I understand that maintaining the single issue market is important, if nothing else to serve as an indicator to publishers what will sell and what should be cancelled. But surely this is where digital can pick up the slack? Once that stuff hits full speed maybe we’ll reach a point where printed issues are phased out and the only printed comics are trades? Thoughts?
I guess what I’m saying is, come over here and join the Trade Waiter Cult. Come on. it’s better over here. We have money for cake! 🙂
Trades really are the way to go if you can do it. I borrow a lot of the stuff I read from a friend and buy the trade when it comes out. I get to read them a few days later than I would if I bought everything but I save a lot of money. And I have a nice looking bookshelf with all my trades.
“…if you have to buy new books, in a store, every Wednesday”
Well, sure. But that’s the fun of it for so many of us- the “Wednesday event”- a little thing to look forward to in the middle of the week. What Josh is saying makes perfect sense from a $ point of view, but to me, it would take out most of the fun of reading comics.
@HailScott And that’s a choice you make and a premium you pay for. I do it too.
@stuclach Phew! I thought I had it, but if you’re backing me up, I’m happy.
Very insightful perspective.
@swag – I completely agree. It’s an idealistic standpoint for trade waiters, but If something is going to eventually be collected in trade, it should be printed only in that format in the first place. Let the digital avenue take care of the immediacy that some people prefer.
Too true. I remember in high school I went on a back-issue binge, buying up tons of old books to catch up to where I was currently reading. There’s a comic shop in Waco missing a massive chunk of its Daredevil run due solely to me.
Now I still snage a few here and there, but usually only on Free Comic Book Day sales where stores are selling back issues for a quarter to fifty cents. If it’s a run I really want I’ll just hunt down the collection.
I to was a regular in the back issue bins back in 1989, and I must say, I loved it. That was one of the most fun parts of collecting comics back then, going through the back issues and seeing what I could find. Sure, it was time consuming, but not in a bad way. It was a blast, looking through that stuff from those inconceivable times of 1960 or 1970. The excitement I felt if I found that one issue I was hunting for, or if I ran across an issue or story line that I had only heard about but never read. It was magic. And I should point out the huge difference between the back issue bins and the wall comics. When I was a kid wall comics were what you could only one day hope to own, the stuff I was afraid to even touch. The back issue bins weren’t overly expensive, if a regular book was $0.75 or $1.00 you usually weren’t paying more than $1.50 or $2.00. Seemed reasonable to a teenage me.
But back then, most back issue bins could contain stuff from 10-20 years prior. It wasn’t unusual to find Spider-Man or Batman titles from the late sixties and a lot of the stuff from the 1970’s that’s considered classic now was just considered old then. I miss those days.
@josh You nailed it. I haven’t (and probably never will) seen hard data on the cost side of comic book production, but I bet it has changed in massive and varied ways over the last 70 years. I’m sure that when they were producing 1,000,000+ copies they were doing it at an exceptionally low cost per unit (that’s your economies of scale). Now we produce 50,000 and costs simply cannot be spread as thin at that level of production regardless of the cost savings derived from new production techniques.
Excellent article.
Great article
Nice article.
The WEDNESDAY-factor is really a sticking point for a lot of comics pursuits. On the one hand, if I’m REALLY invested in a certain storyline (like I was with Batman R.I.P. when it was coming out), then I’m almost physically ill if I have to wait till Thursday to read the new installment. But for the most part, I find that if you just let it go, then your comics experience is a lot more pleasurable, and oftentimes cheaper. Recent backissues from online sites are often waaay less than cover price.
As far as iFanboy goes, the Wednesday-factor is a big part of what makes the site fun. But on the one hand, I feel almost bad for Josh, Ron and Conor that they HAVE to buy all the hot comics on Wednesday and then read through them that night. I get more out of reading experiences when they’re not so rushed, y’know?
Anyway, our hobby has always been at the mercy of a lot of weird forces. Back issues that were worth so much 20 years ago are now only worth pennies. On the other hand, because of that, it makes BUYING back issues so much cheaper. …And yet because back issues are so cheap, most LCS’s don’t have a good selection of them anymore.
As readers and consumers, I think we all just have to try to manage our concerns as best we can. I feel like getting over the Wednesday-factor is almost like getting over a dependancy on foreign oil or something. It plays into digital comics, too, because on the one hand we’re always saying “Oh I’ll just read that in trade”. But if a reader isn’t concerned about day-and-date anyway, then why not jump into digital comics? Sometimes I feel like people saying “Until digital comics go day-and-date, I’m not interested” are just using that as an excuse, because these same readers are often trade-waiters anyway.
Nice article, Josh. You make a couple good points. One, that the price of single issue comics is indeed ridiculous when you sit down and think about it. But more importantly that TPB’s are really good deals. There’s a reason they sell as they do. And a reason you can re-sell your trades, but not your single issues. And I guess that’s the reason single issues are getting so out of wack price wise.
I have absolutely no problem with this comics paradigm shift. We’ve basically come to a point in time where single issue reading is more of a premium market as opposed to the norm. You want to read the story on a monthly basis as it comes out? You’re going to pay more than if you wait half a year to a year for a trade. That’s totally fine with me. Markets change. And this one that we are currently in favors trades so much that it’s made single issue comic buying an expensive luxury.
That’s fine by me. I have no problem with people having to make a choice based on their financial situations and personal preferences. But what I DO have a problem with is how the comic book publishers are going about business during these changing times. They’re trying to approach things as if nothing has changed. They want to sell the same audience both single issues and the trades. They continue to greenlight and continue/cancel books based on single issue sales. Which to me is the dumbest thing they could do. For the trade market to be as big and growing as it is. I can’t see how that’s smart business. You’re basically catering to this increasingly shrinking sub-set of the marketplace, and ignoring the newer one that brings the biggest potential new readership.
I have more than a few friends who aren’t comic book readers who I could never in a million years give a bunch of floppy issues and get them to read them. Or even if they did and liked it, they would never go to a comic book shop and buy one issue once a month for $3-4. But those exact same people, I can give them a trade or two and get them asking when the next one comes out. I know us hard core fans love the old system and are willing to support it best we can. But if comic publishers want to embrace new readers and the new status quo of the business that they are in, they need to put just as much effort and attention into their trade programs as they do their monthly books. (DC, I’m looking at you.)
A big part of that IMO, is doing away with the old, “Book X is only selling so many single issues a month. Therefore it is canceled.” A book like ‘Thor the Mighty Avenger’ that is critically acclaimed and praised, but doesn’t sell great to the single issue, Deadpool-loving, comic book fans is going to go a much longer way in bringing in new readers to comics. The people I was referring to earlier who aren’t going to waste their time on single issues or walk into a nerdy comic book store, but who are more than willing to buy a book off Amazon.
Just my own personal take. But if comic book publishers want to attack today’s market the right way, they need to change their approach just a tad. They need to turn their focus away from “How can we squeeze every possible cent out of our increasingly shrinking usership” and instead try to find ways to actually grow their business.
As Josh points out in this article, reading comics doesn’t have to be a super expensive hobby for ultra fans who are willing to sacrifice a couple meals a week to read their favorite stories. Reading comics can be a reasonable source of entertainment if you go about it the right way.
One can make numbers say amazing things when you massage them the right way.
Whats great too is that back issue diving, and Im talking about going WAY back, is way cheaper today than it ever has been. I mean in the 90’s if you tried to get something Frank Miller did in teh 80’s you were going to pay a lot more than cover price. But today not so much, a while back I bought Daredevil Born Again and Ronin in original issues and most of the issues averaged out to 3.00 – 3.50 each, thats what we’re used to paying for most comics.
Maybe it’s just been time and location luck for me, but I haven’t run into the problem of not being able to sell single issues. I recently decided to make the switch to trades on certain titles and to replace favorite runs with nice omnibus/harcovers and unloaded the single issues at my LCS for a decent trade in value that allowed me to pick up additional trades. I didn that several times over the past year, only to have them pass on some last week so I took them to a used bookstore in town which gave me a decent amount for them. The locals shops seem to steadily move back issues–and I always hear that single back issues are so cheap now but I quickly gave up trying to get around picking up missing trades by picking up single issue runs when every time I went into a comic shop the back issues cost 4-5.00 per issue regardless of the title while the trade is 30 percent off of 20 dollars.
I like being able to read issues as they come out and enjoy the monthly fix and then pick up the trades for titles I wish to revisit in the future and to keep on my shelf. I could see digital filling this need but not everyone (myself included) has the still rather pricey digital readers or even enjoys reading comics in that manner…
re:you had to back issue dive (to read classic stories)
since i’m only a few years older than Josh I know this isn’t entirely accurate since at that same time I bought monthly “Marvel Tales” (reprints of original Spider Man) and “Classic X-Men (reprints of original X-Men with awesome Arthur Adams covers)…which was how I first caught up on those great comics and became a huge Ditko fan (since it wasn’t from Speedball?!)
re: TPB and digital comics.
The rise of trade paperbacks is really Comic companies capturing their lost revenue generated by the rise of Comic Book Stores who filled the niche of demand for the back issues. I’m sure the same will happen in the way way future with digital comics (post the actual coming of digital)…why have other’s profit off of your content, when you have it in your means to do it yourself?
I still love “back-bins” and randomly walking the stacks of libraries since no computer program suggestion can ever predict that you would pick up a book because you loved the binding or the title fonts and it turns out to be Dave McKean’s Cages…
@j206 –nice point about the hobby being affordable by sacrificing meals. The other day i thought about it…i basically traded in fast food and eating out for lunch 3 days a week for comics. Worked out pretty well for me, and i lost weight too! Take that Comic Book stereotype!!!!
While this makes perfect sense, I (like others above) am still addicted to the Wednesday “Comic Book Day”. I still can’t make the leap to trades despite the economics. Much of the fun (for me) really is in the weekly ritual of it all.
So basically…I’m a sheep. A damn comic reading sheep.
This is a great article. There are great conversations going on in the posts. The only thing I could add is that it seems like the single issues are absorbing the upfront cost of creating most of the books before they go to trade. I think most companies look at trades as to much of a financial risk in the upfront.
The lip service at the comic shops has been the primary catalysis for taking a chance on new issues as well as trades. It looks like an endless sea of titles in a bookstore, just like novels in the same book store.
I personally found it easier to drop out of comics when I collecting trades, due to the fact that I no longer heard anything about what was going on and didn’t like the what was going in the trades which I had purchased.
I became a comic reading sheep agian and happy about it.
@OliverTwist I think that’s what’s happening in the big 2 (to a certain extent), but in the smaller companies, they know that trades are part of the pie, because single issues are almost a non-factor.