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New York, October 7, 2010 – Beginning January 2011, DC Comics will implement a line-wide pricing adjustment, lowering the prices of all standard length 32-page ongoing comic book titles currently priced at $3.99 to $2.99, it was announced today by DC Comics Co-Publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio.
“Today’s announcement re-affirms DC Comics’ commitment to both our core fans and to comic book store retailers,” said Jim Lee, DC Comics Co-Publisher. “For the long term health of the industry, we are willing to take a financial risk so that readers who love our medium do not abandon the art form.”
“As Co-Publishers, we listened to our fans and to our partners in the retail community who told us that a $3.99 price point for 32 pages was too expensive. Fans were becoming increasingly reluctant to sample new titles and long term fans were beginning to abandon titles and characters that they’d collected for years.” said Dan DiDio, DC Comics Co-Publisher. “We needed a progressive pricing strategy that supports our existing business model and, more importantly, allows this creative industry to thrive for years to come. With the exceptions of oversized comic books, like annuals and specials, we are committed to a $2.99 price point.”
When taking into account mini-series, annuals and specials, more than 80% of DC’s comic books will be priced at $2.99.
As of January, the following titles standard length ongoing titles, previously priced at $3.99 for 32 pages/22 story pages, will be priced at $2.99 with 32 pages/20 story pages:
American Vampire;
Batman: The Dark Knight;
Batman Incorporated;
Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors;
JSA All-Stars.As of January, the following licensed titles, previously priced at $3.99, will be priced at $2.99:
Gears of War;
God of War
Kane & Lynch;
Ratchet & Clank.As of January, the following ongoing titles previously priced at $3.99 for 40 pages/30 story pages including co-features, will no longer include co-features and will be priced at $2.99 for 32 pages/ 20 story pages:
Action Comics;
Adventure Comics;
Batman: Streets of Gotham;
Detective Comics;
Doc Savage;
Justice League of America;
Legion of Super-Heroes;
The Spirit.In January, five books are $3.99 for 40 pages/30 story pages:
Batman: Europa # 1
First Wave # 6
DCU: Legacies # 9
Weird Worlds # 1
World of Warcraft: Curse of the WorgenThe following oversized anniversary issue will be $4.99 for 48 pages/38 story pages:
Hellblazer # 275
“Fans of our co-features should stay tuned. Some of these characters will find a new platform,” said Dan DiDio. “Going forward, mini-series and special events may feature a different price point and page count to best allow writers and artists the flexibility of format and story pages they need to tell their stories best.”
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Very interesting. I wonder how they can afford to do this. I also wonder how Marvel will react. Maybe Marvel will make a demonic pigeon land on Didio’s house, which will drop a brick on his head, cause him to stumble into some fat guy, and as a result he’ll forget everything.
HaHa…Best post I’ve read on any comment section in a long time…if that were to happen, Geoff Johns would just have Superboy Prime punch a wall and all history would be fixed and Didio would remember again……..
By the way if you haven’t heard by now, Marvel did the same thing and basicaly said their Digital Initiative is going so well that it can subsidize their price decrease.
Imagine that. Actually lowering prices to insure your audience stays with you… the film industry could learn something here
The film industry DID get its prices lowered… by RED BOX…
Jack, I’m guessing that the extra two pages of advertising might help cover costs, plus they’d be hoping more of us stick with titles we were considering ditching when money gets tight.
I think it’s a great idea & hope it works for DC, retailers, & fans
They lost me quite a while ago and can’t have me back even if they price them at twelve cents again, which is what they were when I was a kid and first started buying them. It’s not the product — although even $2.99 is too much for it, in my book — it’s the places its sold. I won’t go into those horrible comic shops.
What I want them to do is announce that their digital comics are a buck a pop. They’d then get a lot of my money once I have an iPad. There are many books from the 60s and 70s that I’d pay a buck each for to have in digital format to read again. But paper? Forget it.
As a comic book fan, digital will never replace the feel of holding a comic book in your hands. I can see how digital comics are can be more convinient in the same way the ipod replaced CD players, its all about space. But i love my paper comic books. To me, that is what a comic book is, for the most part, beautiful art on paper. I tried digital and it doesn’t feel the same. So I am glad to hear the prices are lowering for the most part. Just my two cents.
Geez, they’re going DOWN to $2.99?? Man, I remember like 10 years ago skipping over comics that cost THAT MUCH. So glad I stopped buying comics, I’d be broker than I am now.
If there was a ‘like’ button for this post I’d be clicking the shit out of it right about now…
Thanks for sharing this!
they were charging $4? for a f*ing comic book? christ, that outrageous. is that what Marvel charges for their comic books, too?
man, im glad i collected back when they were a buck twenty-five.
Actually, I’m old enough to remember 15 cent comics as well. But I still love the artform and it’s important for us to remember one thing: Many of the blockbuster films we’ve been watching the past ten to twenty years had their source material directly FROM those ‘aren’t-they-for-kids?’ comic books!
Obviously the bean counters at DC have been monitoring the bottom line and can see that people are re-thinking their reading entertainment(s)
Book Publishing is going through similar problems with their continued, stubborn dependancy on 29 dollar read-once hardcovers. (and you think 4 bucks is high for a repeat-reading Comic Book?)
The bottom line is that all publishers need to make money on the product they publish.
This is where the electronic medium of Kindle and iPads and maybe even iPhones can help save the day. Several comics companies have already begun offering stories to the electronic medium and while this road might have a few bumps through the transition period (which could take months/years) we, the fans, should step up and sample these experimental formats as they are made available. We should also continue buying comics product despite the temptation to take our cash elsewhere for our entertainment.
This way, the bean counters can see that the investment in the electronic medium is worth continuuing and the publishers (of both comics and “regular” books) will put more time and effort into feeding the very medium that just might be the very thing that will keep the publishing industry as a whole….going.
A loaf of bread (as well as everything else) has gone up in price over the years. And yet, we still love to eat don’t we? We do tend to look around for the cheapest loaf of bread, but we still continue to BUY bread because we LOVE bread. The same is true of comic books (and whatever reading entertainment you enjoy.)
“THEY” can see that we’re demanding a change and they’ve stepped up and given us a compromise. Now the ball is in our (the fans) court and it’s up to us to continue supporting a medium many of us still love. But the numbers of readers has dropped dramtically. Part of the reason comics might be so high priced is that there aren’t enough readers BUYING the comics to warrent the comics MAKERS being able to make enough on the scant 50,000 copy print runs they do. The things ARE, after all, printed in multiple ink colors. These aren’t hardcovers where the bulk of the ink used is “just” black.
We need to spread the word that comics are still a great entertainment choice.
Illiteracy is the ultimate bad guy and the only hero out there who can save the industry….. is us.
Subscribe.
Visit a comicbook shop.
Buy something for your iPad/iPhone/Kindle
If they can’t make money at this they can’t keep telling us the stories we crave. THAT’S the true bottom line!
yes, carg0, the world has changed and is no longer the world you grew up in.
sorry to be the one to tell you this…
That is good news to kids out there! However, it is still a little bit pricey but good, they can able to lower their price despite of economic crisis happening around the world.
This is a very smart move. Two years ago, I read about twenty Marvel comics per month. Their prices rose a dollar per and now I buy 0 Marvel comics per month.
@ Mike cain: I agree. I imagine there are some fun, well-lit, clean comic shops around, but the few I’ve ever poked my head into were dark, dingey places, with nasty, gory and/or porny posters up all over. Places I would never take my kid to. Bring back the old spinner racks at 7-11!
It would also help if the Big Two would emphasize big imagination, a sense of fun, and amazing adventures, and lay off the dismemberments, beheadings, rippings-in-half (yes, Sentry, I’m looking at you), disembowlings, obnoxious political propaganda, profanity, as well as the sexual stuff that’s supposed to be confined to the Vertigo/Max lines.
For every fan whose conscience has been dulled down by too much exposure to all this, there are 20 parents like me who say, “This will never come into my house.” Guys like Jack Kirby used to create amazing stuff without needing to resort to any of that. Gory violence & porn are like the crack-cocaine of comics. It works for a while, and then you need more and mnore to get the same tasteless thrill. So while they throttle back the price, i hope they throttle back the debris, too.
OK, comics aren’t really for kids anymore. And clearly they are not for you. I have yet to see comic shops like you describe. The ones I have seen are usually frequented by animators, professionals and other pop culture collectors.
If people don’t have $4 to spend, they have bigger problems.
I remember 10¢ comics & I thought they were 48 pages.
Well, that’s a rare display of actual common sense on the part of DC. There’s just one problem, though:
20 pages of story?! What’s next? The reduction in story page count to 16 pages, including one page split horizontally across the top of two adjoining pages — like Marvel did so disastrously back in the early 70′s?! C’mon, reducing page count is *always* ridiculous.
Marvel even tried a budget line of books with 20 story pages for 99-cents when books were the standard 22/23-story pages for $1.95. The only book from that line to last any length of time was Untold Tales of Spider-Man — and that ended after a little over two years. The additional ads and decrease in story pages was obvious and disruptive to story flow.
If you want two more pages of advertising, just add four more pages to each issue, devote two of them to ads and two of them to the return of the letter columns that never should have disappeared in the first place.
One more thing: 2 fewer story pages per issue is still on its face a price increase on a page-by-page basis, however fractional it may be compared to the recent $3.99 books. Moreover, it adds up to us getting short-changed the equivalent of one issue of story pages (24 fewer pages) per year.
If DC is *really* serious about re-standardizing their line at the $2.99 pricepoint, then they need to take Marvel’s lead in its also-just-announced price-cuts and retain the standard 22-page count for their stories.
— Rob
DC – can you please bring back Plop magazine, the cartoon from Sergio Aragones.
Great news. Now adjust your digital prices, DC. $1.99 for an archive title is too much. Follow the iTunes pricing model and you’ll be in good shape.