Josh Crawley

by Josh Crawley

This week I had intended to take a flip through Marvel Previews #88. Then I noticed the listings for Iron Man 2.0 #1 and #2, and it prompted me to speak a little about something that has been bothering me for quite some time.

These books are, very possibly, the perfect example of how I feel Marvel’s pricing on certain titles is counter-productive to consumers buying the first issue of a new series, and in turn, detrimental to the industry as a whole. For an extra eight pages (“Oh, thank you!” he exclaimed sarcastically) you pay an extra dollar. Sure, that extra dollar is about the correct ratio for an extra eight pages of content – depending, apparently, on who’s writing the book… or something – but what’s contained in those extra eight pages?

Iron Man 2.0 #1

My guess is it’s some lamely-named “feature” such as “Iron Man 2.0 Saga.” You know, a trimmed down version of the much longer sagas Marvel frequently sends out for free (based off of orders on a previously ordered title), and usually those free sagas are for books that, oddly, already sell really well (comparatively): Amazing Spider-Man, X-Men, and Wolverine have all been done recently.

Don’t get me wrong. Those sagas are great to catch people up who may not have read about a character for ten years.

That’s basically charging someone extra to get caught up when – really – a starting point like a first issue shouldn’t need that, or it’s charging someone extra for material that’s generally useless to them because they already follow the character. I may be a moron, but that doesn’t seem like the way to get someone to try something new.

If it’s not made clear at that time that it’s just an introductory price – not later on in some interview or on Twitter that it’s just for that first issue – some consumers who would normally buy it may just forego reading the series. That’s not even a hypothetical situation. I have a friend who almost didn’t buy Hawkeye & Mockingbird for that very reason. (And I don’t even want to get into the concept of moving a crossover between two $2.99 titles into a $3.99 miniseries while also cancelling one, if not both, of those titles.)

Color me an idiot, but I think DC’s concept of pricing many of the first issue of Vertigo titles at $1 to be a much more sensible approach to get people to take a chance on something new.

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment, and if you’re so inclined, ask others to do so, too.

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Josh Crawley may or may not be the keyboardist for Everclear. He strongly suggests you not bet that he is.