Unfortunately, as I understand it, pulp paper isn’t readily available any more in printers, so it’s not possible to return to that, and it wouldn’t be a savings if it was. The modern equivalent of pulp is digital. That’s where you pay a cheap price for something disposable.

But, I really don’t want to pay all that money for them. I mean 25 cents? That’s a good price and I don’t think that should have been exceeded. But $5 bucks for a comic today? 5000% it’s original price? Come on.

I really want to collect all of the comics that come out and read them (also the old ones) But to do it in a good moral conscious, I have to waste like 50 bucks a week or something like that. That’s not right.

I suggest that we return to the pulp format. Cheap paper for a cheap story. We all get to read and get a story. This will save some ink and expensive paper overall and give people cheap entertainment.

Seriously, who reads a comic book more that once or twice? It should be like a newspaper, 50 cents for something you chuck in a few weeks. And if not, it’ll still last. I have my dad’s comics that are from the 60′s and I can read them fine after being in the basement.

Use newspaper quality paper and do some light inking. Print more issues. The cheap stuff is in greater supply, and if it’s cheap, it’ll be in greater demand. I’m not sure how the curve alters, but make them less then a month’s salary per issue.

If you do the math well the lowest standard priced comic US$2.99 is $6.00 Australian here. With annuals or ‘special’ editions or 1-shots reaching $10 or $12 for a comic. Even with the exchange rate (a whopping 10-15% extra) and freight which I am sure retailers use as an excuse why such a disparity?

Greed? Profiteering? Who knows really but it is apparent comics at least in their conventional form are on the way out sadly.

RIP
Comics

I do and I will not pay 3.99 for a new book! It’s absurd! I do not need cardboard stock covers I need newsprint and a good story…Books should be 1.00, no more!

The good thing that’s come out of it is, that waiting for certain books to be collected has changed my comicbook tastes. It’s been nice to wait for a book you really want, like DMZ or Jonathan Lethem’s Omega The Unknown; and also to be selective on writing quality, creative merit & the like. Libraries have also been a great way of catching up.

Both of them together took about 10-15 minutes to read tops. I’m not sure that really justifies whatever the UK equivilant of $7.98 it cost me.

People still buy books. They buy lots of books. They even buy lots of manga. It may be that Amazon’s Kindle and such will eventually change that, but Alice in Wonderland notwithstanding most people aren’t reading content they could get online for free (let alone legally). The dominant paradigm is still that people are buying books including comics in order to read them.

If Burger King was failing while McDonald’s, Subway, and Pizza Hut were still chugging along should you immediately conclude that the problem is their outdated business model? Why, look at how Wolfgang Puck sells frozen pizzas at the supermarket so people don’t have to pay all the extra overhead for a physical restaurant and staff!