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Post by terryallenuk on Jul 30, 2020 13:43:06 GMT -5
Marvel Comics And The $4.99 Twenty-Page Comic Book Posted on July 29, 2020 | by Rich Johnston This is how Empyre #3, published today, was solicited, at $4.99. EMPYRE #3 (Of 6) AL EWING & DAN SLOTT (W) • VALERIO SCHITI (A) • Cover by JIM CHEUNG The tag-team action comes home! Wakanda is the battleground – as the Avengers and the FF unite to prevent a Vibranium-powered threat to all life as we know it! A long-lost Avenger returns to active duty – but will that be enough to turn the tide? And in space, interstellar intrigue threatens the fragile Kree/Skrull alliance…and the repercussions might just doom planet Earth! 40 PGS./Rated T+ …$4.99 Note that last bit. Forty pages. Now everyone knows that doesn't actually mean forty pages of story. It includes house ads, letters pages, titles and the like, but usually suggests 24-28 pages of story. But that's changing. Empyre #3 has twenty pages of story, plus title page, character designs and lots of house ads. For a 20 page story, it is usually listed as 30 pages, and charged $3.99, not $4.99. It wasn't that long ago that $2.99 was a 20-page comic, then $3.99 but now it's jumping on some occasional to $4.99. DC Comics will charge that extra dollar if the title has a cardstock cover. But Marvel just has a few additional foldout advertisements to make it thicker. We are now at 25 cents a page. In 1975, comic books cost around 25 cents or $1.25 in today's money, taking into account inflation. $4.99 is four times that amount. Any while most comic books are still tacking to the 20 pages for $4 model (just over three times the inflationary-compensated 1975 price), today's Spawn #309 is still priced at $2.99, which is what most comic books were priced at fifteen years ago in 2005. If Todd McFarlane can do it, why can't everyone else? Marvel Comics led the way with $3.99 twenty page comic books and with $4.99 twenty-five page comics. Is $4.99 for twenty pages to be the next about-to-be-common price point? In the UK, the price in comic stores will be usually around £4.50, or thirty cents a page… bleedingcool.com/comics/marvel-comics-and-the-4-99-twenty-page-comic-book/
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Post by johnnypt on Jul 30, 2020 14:15:09 GMT -5
Marvel Comics And The $4.99 Twenty-Page Comic Book Posted on July 29, 2020 | by Rich Johnston This is how Empyre #3, published today, was solicited, at $4.99. EMPYRE #3 (Of 6) AL EWING & DAN SLOTT (W) • VALERIO SCHITI (A) • Cover by JIM CHEUNG The tag-team action comes home! Wakanda is the battleground – as the Avengers and the FF unite to prevent a Vibranium-powered threat to all life as we know it! A long-lost Avenger returns to active duty – but will that be enough to turn the tide? And in space, interstellar intrigue threatens the fragile Kree/Skrull alliance…and the repercussions might just doom planet Earth! 40 PGS./Rated T+ …$4.99 Note that last bit. Forty pages. Now everyone knows that doesn't actually mean forty pages of story. It includes house ads, letters pages, titles and the like, but usually suggests 24-28 pages of story. But that's changing. Empyre #3 has twenty pages of story, plus title page, character designs and lots of house ads. For a 20 page story, it is usually listed as 30 pages, and charged $3.99, not $4.99. It wasn't that long ago that $2.99 was a 20-page comic, then $3.99 but now it's jumping on some occasional to $4.99. DC Comics will charge that extra dollar if the title has a cardstock cover. But Marvel just has a few additional foldout advertisements to make it thicker. We are now at 25 cents a page. In 1975, comic books cost around 25 cents or $1.25 in today's money, taking into account inflation. $4.99 is four times that amount. Any while most comic books are still tacking to the 20 pages for $4 model (just over three times the inflationary-compensated 1975 price), today's Spawn #309 is still priced at $2.99, which is what most comic books were priced at fifteen years ago in 2005. If Todd McFarlane can do it, why can't everyone else? Marvel Comics led the way with $3.99 twenty page comic books and with $4.99 twenty-five page comics. Is $4.99 for twenty pages to be the next about-to-be-common price point? In the UK, the price in comic stores will be usually around £4.50, or thirty cents a page… bleedingcool.com/comics/marvel-comics-and-the-4-99-twenty-page-comic-book/Glad I stopped reading those almost a decade ago...I think Brian Reed's Ms. Marvel was my last regular Marvel series bought off the rack (doing the Conan stuff digitally)
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Post by Char-Vell on Jul 30, 2020 14:24:30 GMT -5
I really enjoyed Brian Reed's Ms. Marvel.
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Post by Jason Aiken on Jul 30, 2020 21:24:56 GMT -5
If all comics go to $4.99...let's just say they better be worth it in content and be of good paper stock.
I'm actually a big fan of the look of DC's Black Label in this regard. While I haven't read them yet I've been buying the Last God series and have been impressed with the packaging.
Can you imagine a Conan MAX with brutal artwork and a fitting story to match? I'd pay $4.99...
BTW I got Adventureman #1 today and look forward to reading it. Very pulpy and Adventureman seems to be a Doc Savage homage, but featuring who I'm guessing is his daughter or granddaughter later on.
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Post by themirrorthief on Jul 31, 2020 0:01:11 GMT -5
I miss the days when you could get three comics packaged together for 15 cents...the covers were gone but still a great deal for a broke little kid living out in the outback
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Post by terryallenuk on Jul 31, 2020 12:50:18 GMT -5
Ah for the good old days UK 10 old pence , about 14 cents , for a comic filled with crackin' art and a story that probably took 15 minutes to read instead of 5 these days.
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Post by johnnypt on Jul 31, 2020 14:05:31 GMT -5
It would usually take me three quarters of an NFL game or NASCAR race to read a Masterworks, say about two hours for 10-12 issues. When I was near the end of my floppy buying, I would sometimes be able to finish an entire issue BEFORE the bus left Port Authority, around 5 minutes.
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Post by Jason Aiken on Jul 31, 2020 23:00:02 GMT -5
It would usually take me three quarters of an NFL game or NASCAR race to read a Masterworks, say about two hours for 10-12 issues. When I was near the end of my floppy buying, I would sometimes be able to finish an entire issue BEFORE the bus left Port Authority, around 5 minutes. I noticed how long it took me to read Savage Avengers #0 with the Uncanny X-Men: An Age Undreamed Of reprints... one issue was at least equal to two modern comics. At least. That's nuts.
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Post by Von K on Aug 1, 2020 17:09:40 GMT -5
I'd like to see someone run an analysis of the number of panels in a modern comic compared with the number in the old classics. Just a hunch but I'd warrant you get about a third to a half less panels per issue these days, therefore less text and less sheer story for a similar number of pages (20-22).
A more intensive comparison could be run on the number of words per issue.
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Post by crimsonblade on Aug 2, 2020 2:32:39 GMT -5
That’s been on the decline since the late 80s, when ‘superstar artists’ like McFarlane, and Liefeld started getting work at DC and Marvel.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 10, 2020 16:13:01 GMT -5
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Post by garbanzo on Aug 10, 2020 17:40:44 GMT -5
It's true that most new comics are rubbish, but fortunately there's no shortage of excellent old comics to choose from.
We're living through the golden age of reprints. The classics have never been more accessible. IDW, Fantagraphics, Dark Horse, Titan, Hermes, and others are serving up countless hardcovers filled with fantastic comic art. And with so many available digitally, I can read them anywhere.
No complaints here!
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Post by boot on Aug 10, 2020 17:46:22 GMT -5
It's true that most new comics are rubbish, but fortunately there's no shortage of excellent old comics to choose from. We're living through the golden age of reprints. The classics have never been more accessible. IDW, Fantagraphics, Dark Horse, Titan, Hermes, and others are serving up countless hardcovers filled with fantastic comic art. And with so many available digitally, I can read them anywhere. No complaints here! This is true. Still, there is so much more that could be reprinted in omnibus form. I'd love to see both DC runs of Star Trek. The entire Warlord series, too. From Marvel, I'd like to see Battlestar Galactica and the original two runs of The Micronauts. I had to find all of those in single issues on eBay. Still looking for the 200+ Warlord run.
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Post by Jason Aiken on Aug 10, 2020 20:28:24 GMT -5
That's....a very odd letter to send to your staff. It's odd there is no mention of DC Comics, though. I don't even think actual comics are on the corporate radar.
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Post by Jason Aiken on Aug 10, 2020 21:03:53 GMT -5
www.comicsbeat.com/dc-layoffs-reportedly-a-bloodbath/The Beat has some names, apparently things were very bad at DC Comics. Details in the link but I noticed a few of the people that came during the New 52 are gone like Bob Harrass and Bobbi Chase. Oddly, two guys involved with Black Label are gone. Never heard of them but Black Label was the one bright spot at DC. DC Collectibles looks to be dissolved. Doesn't look like Jim Lee is publisher anymore, but he's still with the company.
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