Comic Reviews by Walt

As I’ve not been blogging regularly lately, there are a number of things I’ve been thinking about, had thoughts about, and generally considered blogging about/retreading, but haven’t. I sat down Saturday morning for awhile and typed a lot more than I intended. So I’ve broken that into several posts (this is one of those posts).

DIGITAL COMICS & PRICING

I’ve bought a few issues of Batwing digitally a month “late” for the discounted price DC offers. However, I think I’ve only actually READ through issue 2, so I may look for some other series to try this way. Where DC’s got it right is that these are rather new issues, BUT I’m not paying the full identical price as the PRINT EDITION. Marvel doesn’t seem to do this discount only a month later. They have the Netflix-style subscription to “stream” comics (not actually buying/downloading them) or full price matching the print edition (or paying $3.99 for the print and getting a code to ALSO get a digital edition, but that’s a different thing). Marvels are more expensive ANYway, which has put me off more of their books than I could probably list.

I cannot justify paying the same exact price for an electronic file as I’d pay for a physical comic. I’ve caved and see it moreso with ebooks, for convenience: but the primary reason for me for buying a digital comic WOULD be that it’s cheaper than the print, so I’m sacrificing convenience (of size/etc) in favor of a savings from DC. If the digital price is the same, I’m simply sacrificing convenience for the digital experience.

MARVEL $3.99 STANDARD PRICING

A couple years ago, I was all set to jump in on all the new Avengers books for the Heroic Age “relaunch.” BUT…I refused then and continue to refuse to pay $3.99 as a standard price. 4 Avengers titles at $3.99 each was NOT an investment I was willing to make. $2.99 each ($12/month) was within my tolerance…$3.99 each ($16/month) was beyond my tolerance.

More recently, I picked up X-Men: Regenesis and Uncanny X-Men #1 and Wolverine & the X-Men #1, just to try ’em (and because I’d spent a half hour in a comic shop that didn’t have whatever I’d walked in looking for, and I wanted to justify to myself the time/effort of going). But while I probably would’ve given both series (and some of the other X-books) more of a chance, I refuse to pay $3.99/issue (especially as I believe Uncanny was $2.99 before the renumbering). I enjoyed Gischler’s X-Men series, but even that I finally gave up on because it just didn’t seem worth $3.99/issue.

I dropped Iron Man for the same reason: at $2.99, it was a solid enough title (down from my loving it after reading the 19-issue hardcover). But $3.99 is more than I’m willing to pay.

I’m somewhat “grudgingly” continuing with Uncanny X-Force, because it hooked me with the Age of Apocalypse stuff, and scratching the X-itch as well as Deadpool. But I’m looking for an excuse to drop it, and may just as soon drop it spur-of-the-moment sometime as not.

Filed under: NON-REVIEW CONTENT | Tagged: Age of Apocalypse, comic pricing, comics, digital comics, Regenesis, x-force | Leave a comment »