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Underground > Comic Books >

Comics economics

12:49 / 13.06.05

a couple of things i was thinking about recently

first is what poor value comics are these days and how that might be affecting sales, when i were a lad most US glossy cover comics were 12p and 2000AD was 7p, a 7 inch single was about 45-65p making a comic relatively good value and an easy choice to make in terms of spending money, these days the price of a comic is about the same as for a single, or CD (but less than a 12 inch) and seems far worse value relatively speaking.

also compared to books, i get 20 minutes escapism from a comic compared to a book costing 5 times more but which has many more hours of pleasure in it.

on a bigger note, just how much do writers and illustrators get paid on typical gigs for Marvel / DC, and creator owned work? where does the money go if they sell say 100,000 copies plus trades? just wondering really, for no other reason than idol curiosity.

12:59 / 13.06.05

I'm not sure your comparisons hold up. I mean, taking inflation into account, has the price divide between comics and books really got smaller? Also, singles have had to come down in price because no-one's buying the fuckers.

13:42 / 13.06.05

You should see in France, where a 46 pages graphic novel is roughly the price of a CD...

14:51 / 13.06.05

>singles have had to come down in price because no-one's >buying the fuckers.

but i thought no one was buying comics these days, compared to the 60s or come to that compared to the 90's comic boom. now i know that them not being available at the newsagents anymore has contributed to that but them being so expensive, relative to other entertainments, must have an impact too.

should be gratful i don't live in france though, despite the much better standard of living in every other respect

didn't realise they were even less value for money in france

14:52 / 13.06.05

Oh, I dunno. While a novel gives you a higher immediate amount of escapism (I really hate escapism, but anyway...), there are precious few novels I'd want to read again and again, but with a comic, you take the fifteen or twenty minutes and multiply it by dozens of rereadings....

Hell, I just like comics more than books. Mwahah!

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:58 / 13.06.05

This is wandering - speeding, in fact - off the discussion of the economics of comic books. Does anyone have comparative sales figures for the 60s, the "comics boom" and the present day?

17:32 / 13.06.05

Comics stack up terribly against prose in financial terms--your average TP/"graphic novel" costs $15-20 and takes at most two hours to read, vs. your basic prose novel, which is more like $6-10 (mass market paperback) and can offer many hours of enjoyment over several days, depending on your reading speed and level of attention. Novels not available in mass market format obviously cost a little more ($15ish for most literary TPs), but the cost/benefit asymmetry is still pretty obvious.

OTOH, comics stack up pretty well against films. The base price of a theatrical showing ($8-10) is still a little lower, but you also have to get there, pay for parking or public transportation if you live in a major city, etc., plus you don't get to own a film and rewatch it at will for that $8-10. For that privalege you have to buy the DVD, and DVDs these days are pretty generally comparable in price to GNs.

Still, you don't hear too many people complaining about the poor cost/benefit ratio for films as compared to novels. The fact that comics and books are both print media leads people to assume they're in some sense different versions of the same thing, when in fact they're quite different mediums. A common symptom of this confusion is the unfortunate misapplication of the term "novel" to any work of graphic literature that's longer than your average 22-page funnybook--as I've said here before, most graphic "novels" would be considered short stories at most if rendered in prose, so the implicit comparison this term sets up is heavily weighted in favor of the prose novel.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

18:10 / 13.06.05

I suspect the biggest reason that consumers get more concerned about the poor value for money provided by comic books in term of hours of pleasure per pound than they do about the cinema is that very few people are obsessive enough about cinema to go to the cinema several dozen times a month, however it not at all uncommon for comic book readers to end up buying 30 or more books a month, therefore the exorbitant prices of comic books are a concern. I know the price tag on comics wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if I could wean myself down to just buying the five or six absolute most enjoyable titles every month.

02:24 / 14.06.05

I dunno, maybe I buy (a) less comics, or (b) more expensive prose and movies than y'all, but on a price-per-entertaining-moment scale, I'd say something like 'The Invisibles' or even 'Marvel Boy' have it all over the average action movie or the new Tom Wolfe. A TPB and a Vintage Press or 4 Walls 8 Windows novel cost about the same, and I have, on occasion, been torn between and gone with the comic.
I do think people scanning and putting up for download comics of today and yesterdecade are making major companies like Marvel and DC look a bit silly at times. There's a bandwagon that keeps circling around real slow in case somebody might finally jump on, but...
You pay what you're willing to pay, in the end. Unless someone's putting a gun to your head, it's your own fault if you pay a painful amount for *anything*. My copy of whaddayacallit... 'If You Touch Me I Will Be Dangerous' or whatever, emptied my wallet, but damned if I don't love it to death. Ninja bubblegum bullets, lethal 45s, and camera-boy action hero! With dance sequence, painted people, and a bondage porn shoot!
While my used copy of the collected 'Dark Knight Returns' cost like eighty cents, of which I contributed half on the basis that I'd hold onto it, but had to let the other contributing party borrow whenever they wanted. For forty cents, and all; fuck.
I keep quitting buying single issues, and keep starting back up. Some things are not going to get collected, others read better when there's not a salvo succession of the stories, and other things are just too damned enticing to wait.
But I borrow a lot, too. I think a lot of people just don't borrow or lend comics, books, movies, whatever almost ever in their lives. I figure, as I'm often forcing people to check things out in the hopes they'll dig it, I ought to also be willing to check out what's interesting to them. Because I wouldn't have bought Battle Angel Alita, probably, or watched Bad Boyz 2, or the untold masses of bootleg DVDs with drunken panda subbing, like the copy of 'Returner' with subtitles for the second 'Lord of the Rings' movie (with added cussing). And I know at least a dozen people who would never have checked out 'Boondock Saints' if I had not insisted and leant them a copy. Or 'Split Second', 'An Autumn's Tale', or hell, to get back to comics, 'We3' or 'Fake'.

07:57 / 14.06.05

I'm not sure it's particularly relevant to compare novels comics and film on how long they take to consume - quite aside from the issues of your milage may vary they are all consumed in different ways. They all have different costs associated with their production. It would be as valid to complain that it takes (you) days to read a 300 page novel but this 32 page comic took me 5 minutes as it would be to castigate the novel for not having artwork...