Geek Time

brevoortformspring:

I’m not sure what your age is, but you’re paying more than that, most likely.

That said, going by your 3X rule and guesstimating based on that, I was paying between 5X and 10X what the previous generation had paid. So by that metric, you’re doing all right.

One summer, I paid 89 cents a gallon for gas.
When I was in high school, a Big Mac was somewhere around 2 bucks.
Prices have a tendency to go up.

I am not happy with the price increases of comics over the years, either. It is part of the reason I have changed my purchasing habits to rely heavily on my Marvel Unlimited account. To some degree it was unavoidable.

Paper is not cheap, and the mass market print industry is not doing well, overall. These are real factors that will increase the cost of your media.

But all is not bleak. To combat increased prices, Marvel and others have increased production values tremendously since I was a kid. Paper, colors, and print quality are worlds better than what I grew up on.

Beyond that, you have creators who are writing, drawing, and coloring comics that are more beautiful, and thought out than at any time before. Even details like lettering are better developed, conveying emotion, tone of voice, and even indicating details like digital voice signatures.

Simply put, you are buying a far better product than ever before.

I do think pricing for digital media should be looked at, and think it should come down. I do appreciate the thought put into bonus material for digital edtions, like all the extra content Bendis put into United States of Murder Inc 1, or Marvel’s Starlord Digital Special Edition. But really, I would like to own the book, instead off just a license to read it. Kudos to imagecomics for doing that.