New Brevoort Formspring

>Tom, I love Marvel comics. Marvel brought me back to comics reading in a big way after the Avengers movie, and I’ve spent a lot of money on comics since but $4.99 for a single issue is too much. In September, you have 15 books coming out at the $4.99 price point, including several titles which I have been following from the start (Hickman’s Avengers books, Spider-Man, etc). If I want to keep reading the series I’ve been following, I have no choice but to buy the bloated $5 issues that month. Had Avengers/New Avengers been $5 an issue when Hickman’s run started I would not have bought any of it. Remember when it started, Hickman’s New Avengers was a $2.99 book? Those were the good old days.

I am currently paying ~$8 a month to read Amazing Spider-Man, which is almost as much as my Netflix subscription. Do you think I get comparable value for my money? What if Amazing were $5 per issue and I was paying $10 a month to read it. At $10 a month, its cheaper to get Marvel Unlimited and you get everything else that Marvel publishes, just a little late. How does this make sense?>

You know what I’m going to say here, more or less. The books cost what they cost.

In the cast of those assorted $4.99 titles, they’re all larger-than-normal issues, which are typically priced higher. They need to be, in order to accommodate the greater story length.These books won’t cost that much on a regular basis.

I’m not unsympathetic to the dilemma that you’re facing. As somebody who goes to the comic shop every week, I face it myself. But it always comes down to the same fundamental underlying question: are you interested enough in or invested enough in a particular title to continue to purchase it? That’s a choice that you make every month, every issue. And it’s our job to try to keep you in your seat, by making our stories as compelling as we can.

But I can’t make this stuff cost less. The cost of everything continues to rise, inexorably, as it always has.