marvel is pumping half their books up to $3.99 with like cardstock covers (sometimes! sometimes not.) and maybe extra-nice image comics grade paper for your 22 pages of story? so fuck those jerks. i love marvel comics, and i swear to god, if they were $1.50 or $2 i’d buy most of what marvel publishes every month. instead i’m picking and choosing and that conflicts with trade-waiting. (and this isn’t even getting into not having any comic money at all right now! i’m just making a list of shit to pick up later!)

meanwhile, dc is pushing the cost of some books up to $3.99, but adding an eight page backup to the 22 pages. ignoring that most comics are 22 pages nowadays, fuck yes. like, booster gold gets a backup the jaime reyes blue beetle, who’s on the new batman cartoon. doom patrol is relaunching with a metal men backup. this is genius.

i do like that the first issue of the new beta rey bill series, the one where he’s going to try to kill galactus, includes a reprint of the first walt simonson issue of thor, which was billie’s first appearance. and there’s the preview issue of claremonts horrible new xmen book where he’s picking up from where he left off like seventeen years ago? (and it looks embarassing, like he was reading xmen since he left and taking notes for his eventual return?) but that preview issue itself is just the first three issues of the 90s x-men book which he wrote, which means three issues of classic jim lee xmen, for $4.99. that’s pretty solid.

but also completely unusual. secret invasion 1 was double-sized, si 2-8 were normal sized. all eight issue cost the exact same fucking price.

seriously. $1.50 an issue, newsprint. right now $20 gets you probably five books at $3-4 apop. when that number jumps up to fourteen for $21 at $1.50 each? you’re god-damned right sales would go up. at that price i’d buy most of marvel and dc’s output every fucking week.

even $2 an issue would double my buying power. and if singles were newsprint and disposable, that makes me feel better about buying things again in trade; the paper quality is better, the art is crisper, it’d be like blu-ray for comics.

but whatever. marvel’s current plan is to have already proven that if they increase the price, the increased profit will more than compensate for reduced sales numbers. in other words, they’ve given up on increasing market-share and are instead going to milk more money out fewer readers.

IN A RECESSION.

and it’s actually working for them, because their standards have dropped so low from even ten years ago. this industry is fucking insane.