Does Marvel believe comics sales will increase if Marvel movies continue to be successful? In my opinion, if Guardians of the Galaxy does well at the box office, most Marvel comics will be $4.99 and the trend will continue. A lot of people are not going directly to reading comics because of a successful movie or television series. A lot of people consider comic characters as movie characters since a lot of the comic movies are people first introduction to the comic characters. A lot of people are not going to look up their local comic shop and start a file. A few will pick up an issue or two and will quickly loose interest. This is common especially with certain people I know. Walking Dead Volume One paperback collection is a perfect example. The paperback collects the first six issues of the now classic series. Since the television series took off beyond irritating levels, the Walking Dead Volume One collection took off in sales and was always on top or near the top in graphic novel sells. People would try it out and now my used book store will have several copies on the floor and to quote an employee "We got about hundred or so in the storage of the first one. I don't know why we keep taking them in!" Hence, these people tried it and noticed it's nothing like the television series and in return will not buy volume two. Image Comics did get a nice bump in sales for volume one but I noticed sells for volume one has went down. Drew can buy used volume one copies up cheap to make goat sheds out of them. This can happen to any series. One friend purchased one copy of Avengers and ask me "What the #uck is wrong with the comic?" A successful movie or television series can cause a spike in interest but nothing long term. Same thing with Batman (89), people got into comics and quickly lost interest by end of the summer. The dark ages of comics in the 90's, where everybody purchased issues thinking they would be rich didn't turn out well. Now everybody just has bonfires fueled with awful Rob Liefeld comics. Hence, the comic industry is their own worst enemy.
The comic industry is killing themselves slowly. $4.99 is my breaking point. I dropped a lot of comics because of the $3.99 price tag but another major factor is the awful writing. The comic industry needs to get back to basics. My comic file at my local comic shop is getting smaller and smaller each month. Current comics books have less number of pages but the prices are up. A lot of fans have turned to the digital format. Either buying the digital comics or just simply downloading the comics illegally. It will be interesting to see what DC Comics, Image Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and Dynamite Comics will do in the near future with their price points especially since DC Comics has announced a long over due creator/artist payment plan. To make things worse, Marvel is getting the Star Wars comic line from Dark Horse at the end of the year! Horrible thoughts of Brian Michael Bendis writing anything Star Wars related makes me once to throw up. Nothing personal.....
Overall, I have been working on completing my classic comics and comic collections through graphic novel collections. I have found this to be a better way both economically and storage wise. I am not telling anybody not to buy comics but I am going a different route. $4.99 is a lot of money for a comic. I don't even buy magazines that are $4.99. If you can afford the hike in prices go for it but Shawnster the Monster has better things to spend $4.99 on like Bojangles chicken dinners.
PS Checkout Kristopher Upjohn's movie review page. http://filmphreak.tumblr.com/ He is full of facts and has a lot of pet chickens.
© 2014 Shawnster The Monster Shawn D Patrick
