We're talking about new comic books, I say new comic books....

I think DC did the right thing by lowering their prices to $2.99 a book. Almost every week in Comic Shop News I see an ad for DC ?holding the line at $2.99?. I was waiting for Marvel to follow. Before Joe Quesadda stepped down I remember reading that Marvel was going to do the same thing. I think this was in December. The months passed and every week I looked, I saw the same $3.99 price per book on the books I loved. There has been no change and I have been left waiting.

Although I still get my books every week and I read them as I get them, I noticed I was slipping in reading my free Comic Shop News (Yes I said free). I tend to skim through them but time has a way of dragging when you work overnights. A long night and five Comic Shop News newspapers will kill at least an hour. I was perusing very nicely when a three sentence blurb needed to be reread. Marvel is not lowering the prices. They state they would focus on quality and talent. Does this mean they weren?t focusing on quality and talent (like the late nineties), or are they trying to say DC isn't? I don't know anything about this Flashpoint story by DC but it looks good and the talent they have is what makes it look good, by the way it is listed as a $3.99 book(so much for holding the line.)

Marvel does plan to release "most" of their mini-series at $2.99 but will alter their decision on any future new series, whether they will be $2.99 or $3.99. I remember when the $.60 book was raised a nickel $.65 and I was slightly shocked that within less than a year of this change they raised it again to $.75. It took some time before they jumped into the dollar category and as time went on the prices escalated. Its latest one from $2.99 to $3.99, so what's next $5.25? Even though Action Comics issue #900 was just released at $5.99 it at least had 96 pages, but I still passed. I am not a fan of the back story.

Marvel still gets my vote, and I think what they care about is they still get my money, but somehow someway I wish they would feel pity on us and give us something more. I know, the first Saturday of May is free Comic Book Day and it could be argued that the comic companies give us free comic books for this one day but we buy them the other 364 days. What might be a good idea is every comic purchased would come with a code and this code would be a digital copy, something akin to what a lot of movie companies are doing. I love buying a Blu-ray and getting a copy to watch on my iPod. This would be great to buy a comic book and have a backup copy to read anywhere. (Have you ever tried to read a comic book at the beach?) But since Marvel isn?t lowering their prices I am simply going to have to stop purchasing as many books. I don?t want to, I just need to.

Thanks for Reading

Tnerb