Don't see this being talked about yet on IMWAN, so I'll mention it here. According to Bleeding Cool, DC has announced that with next week's Batman #35, the series will have a new cover price of $4.99. The page count will be increased back up to 30 pages.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2014/10/01/ ... -an-issue/

This is after the book has long been solicited as being $3.99, but DC's solicitations have been a mixture of shadiness and incompetence for a long time now. It also doesn't seem clear as to whether this is a permanent thing or just for the duration of the "Endgame" story arc. BC ran another item yesterday saying that Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo were surprised to learn this and have been pressuring DC to return the series back to $3.99. Even if DC agrees, I don't see what can be done about the first issue, at least, as I assume it's already printed and just waiting to ship.

It seems to be just this series, which not coincidentally is DC's biggest-selling monthly. Individual issues of Snyder/Capullo's last story arc were oversized with price hikes to match, but if this is permanent I have to wonder what it means for the rest of the line and which titles might follow, like Justice League. I personally would be willing to pay the $5 price---I love Snyder's work on Batman that much---if it means keeping most of the rest of the DC line at its current prices, especially the $3 books like Swamp Thing, Batman and Robin, and Green Arrow. But I fear they're all going to be bumped up to the $4 level regardless.

I saw some mention of $4.99 online earlier today.
Looks like I picked a good time to slack off the modern comics.

I don't know how this price compares to the way these things were costed in the past - how expensive it is compared to other luxury goods - but I do know that, from the outside looking in, it looks like companies squeezing as much as they can out of people they know are going to keep on buying....squeezing until the pips squeak, really.

This baffles me. $5 is in the range of a fast food meal or a matinee movie ticket.

$5 for a chapter of a book... I couldn't see doing that.

How much for the digital version?

Yeah, they've lost to ability to think in terms of growing sales with new readers, and instead are selling to sadboys.

$4 is too much, so... $5? Nope.

Let's see, Batman Vol. 5: Zero Year - Dark City trade $14.43 softcover ($18.17 hardcover) at AmazWAN.ca. 240 pages. $0.06 (or $0.075) per page. The above, for 30 pages, would cost $0.166 per page or $0.13 at the $3.99 price point. Plus, as nice as the guys at my comic shop are, I'll take the free delivery to my front door over to the trip to my LCS any day.

My brain likes to think that comic books cost 20¢ when I could get most candy bars
for 10¢ (but Hershey Bars were still 5¢) and a 12 oz bottle of pop was 10¢.

Most comics are costing me $3.99. I typically see candy bars for about 60¢ to $1.
And 12 oz. of pop is about 75¢ to $1.

I remember trying to scrape together a couple of dollars so that I could buy all of the DC comics that came out in that one week.

As usual, Jay is correct.

Should say "Still Only $4" somewhere on the cover.

I probably said in the past that $3.99 was too much, too. But I kept buying.

And Hollywood wins agai. ..wait.

What is the $3.99 page count. I thought it was 20. Maybe it is 22.
3.99/20 = .1995
3.99/22 = .1814
4.99/30 = .1663

It is only 1 title, and it costs less per page, and you can always wait for the trade.
I don't see what the problem is.

It's only one title for now, and as I noted, DC hasn't announced if it's even permanent anyway, or only meant to last the duration of the story arc.

My unedumacated guess is that they just want to see how badly it affects sales (and drives readers to digital) and if it's worth doing with other "prestige" series.

digital is the same price as print---which is also a bad thing but the comic shop guys were already whining about digital hurting them so I think the companies kept the prices consistent to appease them. Everywhere else, digital is cheaper, I believe though, right? Paperbacks, etc.


they just raised the price on Batman to $3.99 within the last year and they're doing it again---man, they are trying their level best to get me to dump that book.

In some cases, print is cheaper than digital: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_ ... g=imwan-20

Batman has been a $3.99 book longer than that, actually....started out as $2.99, then got hiked up within 6 months or so, along with a higher page count. Then about a year ago they kept the price but dropped the page count. Now they're raising both again.

And...Snyder has successfully lobbied DC. As expected, it was too late to lower the price of this month's issue, but next month's will return to the $3.99 cover price without lowering the amount of content.

So, kudos to DC for coming to their senses, but a pox on them for having to in the first place.

I didn't notice when buying it, that Marvel raised the price on the last issue of Original Sin to $4.99.
I also didn't notice that issue #8 had any more pages than #7, but maybe it did.

Kind of a suck to stick it to the people who, you know, decided to see the story all the way through.

I don't live near a LCS, but as one who buys trades, I can say that DC's are a much better deal than Marvel. Marvel's standard HC price is $24.99 for six issues. DC's standard HC price is $24.99 for seven issues, although there many books at that price that have contained as many as nine issues.

With the In Stock Trade discount that $24.99 is discounted to 40 - 50% so for Marvel that is about $13 for six issues and $13 for seven issues for DC. That comes to $2.17 per issue for Marvel and
$1. 86 per issue for DC. Marvel's standard softcover price, with discount, comes to about $1.50 with DC undercutting them at $1.30. I can live with this.

I saw the digital version and it was listed as $4.99 but with 39 pages. Of course i knew there was an 8 page back up feature and probably a couple pages of ads but I figured, ok, at least they added a few more pages of the regular story. say 27 or 28 pages. no. Main story: 21 or 22 pages kie usual. then and 8 page back up. Then an 8 page long ad for for Futures End! They got me.