Walk the Line

A while back there was a big industry debate about the price of comic books. All the major publishers, led by DC and Marvel, started experimenting with $3.99 as a price for major comic books. In DC’s case, the extra dollar got you slightly more pages of comics in the form of the second features. Overall, reactions to the price increase were mixed. Some didn’t mind so much while others felt that the increased prices were going to force consumers with already tight budgets to be more selective in their comic buying, thus hurting sales. After a year, DC decided that the extra one dollar in revenue wasn’t worth the decrease in sales and announced that in 2011, all of their books would return to the previous $2.99 selling point. Marvel made a knee-jerk announcement that they too would drop prices, then quickly forgot that one of their executives said that. Thus, now all of the publishers have $3.99 comics, except for DC. They’ve started an ubiquitous ad campaign to make sure you know it.

It’s pretty obvious looking at our pull lists that Ret-Conned HQ is more inclined towards DC books more than other publishers. While this means we get to “take advantage” of the $2.99 comics, pricing has little impact on our purchasing. The most important thing about buying a comic is that it is worth buying. The story needs to be entertaining, the art needs to attractive, and the writing needs to be compelling. My time is more valuable than my money. You don’t need to convince me that I should buy your comic because it’s price is attractive if you haven’t convinced me that your comic is worthwhile to read. There are several really good comics DC is publishing right now, but at the same time there’s several big books that are really disappointing. I think the biggest one that amazes me is Superman. I’m really wondering what dirt JMS had on Dan Didio to allow them to think the Grounded storyline was a good idea. Kris is a die-hard Superman fan, always has been, always will be. Every month he buys Superman because, well, it’s Superman how can a comics fan not read Superman? Every month he tosses the issue down in disgust at how disappointing it is. Hopefully, things will change for the better - quickly - as Roberson takes over, but the fact remains that DC has, at best, neglected and, at worst, given up on the greatest and most iconic superhero ever. It’s okay though, you can read all about it for only $2.99.