Well, that was quick. Just two weeks after Marvel announced that all of its $2.99 books were to shift to “self-cover” format – ie, the cover is of the same paper stock as the interiors – the publisher released the following update to retailers:
Starting with the 7/4/12 On-sale items, all 32 page Marvel Universe comics, including those that contain a digital code, will be printed with 50# Coated interiors and will be Self-Cover.
I’ll admit it: I’m not that bothered with the self-cover format (Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like I’m used to it from the Dark Horse books I’ve been getting, not to mention growing up with 2000AD in the UK), but I’m curious about what the wider reaction has been out there. Does the “lighter” cover stock mean more shipping damages? Are you as a fan bothered by the change? Do people even really notice it?
May 21st, 2012 at 8:12 am
hate it, hate it, hate it
May 21st, 2012 at 8:56 am
It’s fine with me, though I wish Marvel would start noting how many content pages there are in each issue. $3.99 for 19 pages is just way too much, even with a digital code.
May 21st, 2012 at 10:48 am
I’ve noticed the change and I don’t like it. I’m seeing many more “dings” and scratches on the cheaper covers.
Give Marvel some of the money from Avengers to keep covers as they are. I’m sure there is enough money to go around.
May 21st, 2012 at 11:08 am
Will we see a corresponding drop in price? I’m guessing not…
May 21st, 2012 at 12:19 pm
Won’t effect how I read them on my tablet. Would be nice to see a price drop, though.
May 21st, 2012 at 12:26 pm
I buy the books to read the storys not to have collectables. I’d be happy if they went back to cheep newsprint and started charging like $1.99 again.
May 21st, 2012 at 12:28 pm
Also, reading the books on a tablet/ipad is great but the price needs to reflect the “no printing/paper costs”. They NEED to drop the digital prices to 99 cents to 1.99 per issue across the board. First company that does will OWN digital and get a ton of my money they’re not seeing now.
May 21st, 2012 at 12:53 pm
If this means that printing will be less costly and therefore we’ll see a price drop in the book then I’m all for it, but we’re talking about Marvel and we all know better than that…
May 21st, 2012 at 12:53 pm
Gee, Marvel is sticking it to the readers once again – what a surprise. What them screwing us with a good chunk of their books being $3.99 and now this – guess I will be reviewing just what it is I buy from them in the future. Quite frankly, the greed of the big two is starting to annoy this long-time reader. I nearly dropped out of the hobby at DC’s relaunch and I foresee a day where it’ll be one more shove that pushes me over the line.
May 21st, 2012 at 12:55 pm
This may just be the straw that breaks this 40 year collectors back. Comics has become a death of 1000 cuts to me, between reboots and cross-overs and price increases I complain much more than I enjoy. I may just have to dig into my long boxes and Essentials and Showcase Presents for my future reading enjoyment.
May 21st, 2012 at 1:24 pm
If this wasn’t reported on, few would notice and less would care.
May 21st, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Interiors should be newsprint; exteriors should be slick cover stock. That worked fine for decades. Weasel, your “death of 1000 cuts” comment is spot-on.
May 21st, 2012 at 1:34 pm
As someone who only reads comics on a tablet now I’m thrilled. The more Marvel messes with the traditional readers the more they’ll be chased onto the tablet. Which means there will be more demand for tablet comics and hence more back issues (Marvel’s already pretty much gone line-wide with digital comics but I still miss out on TPBs)
That said the price gouging on comics really has gotten out of control. When I first started collecting you could buy a comic and a candy bar for $.75. Now the candy bar is $1.50 and the comic is $2.99 to $3.99. Even magazines haven’t increased that much. Time Magazine was $2.25 at the time and is $4.99 now.
The real question is whether fans chased away by the cheap cover stock will be willing to pay the same price for digital (even though no raw materials are necessary to produce the digital comics)
Time Magazine was $2.25 in 1987 but can now be bought for $.64 on the iPad (with a subscription) while Marvel comics are $2.99 to $3.99 even on digital.
May 21st, 2012 at 2:52 pm
I am a collector and having flimsy covers really bothers me. The covers need to be sturdier paper. I really loved when DC was doing the Blackest Night covers for the minis. They were a nice thick, sturdy paper stock and were awesome. Marvel’s covers aren’t like that now but are more closely resembling that than going to Self-Covers which are going to lower the quality of the book in my opinion. If they are just trying to cut corners to save costs then they need to do it elsewhere.
May 21st, 2012 at 3:03 pm
I don’t disagree with Z, Go newsprint! Truly, I don’t mind the self-cover, just drop your price .50 cents or so on at least the $3.99 books and everyone will be happy.
May 21st, 2012 at 3:47 pm
I buy all digital now (which I LOVE for how compact and easy it is to access all my comics), and I’m pretty happy with the pricing strategy for most major comix companies. $1.99 for comics a month old and older is a very fair price that I’ll pay happy to enjoy my books.
However, Marvel’s method of releasing $3.99 digital comics then leaving them that price for 6 months or more is simply attrocious and extremely insulting to their consumer. I hate to be bias against one company or another, but Marvel just seems to be absolute jerks to their fans and costumers.
The publisher with the best – and most logical – pricing around is Image. They’ll drop all of their books ( even the $3.99 ones) to $1.99 a month after release. If both Marvel and DC could follow that pricing stucture as well, I’d be a much more satisfied customer.
May 21st, 2012 at 3:51 pm
I keep hearing the “Go to Newsprint” argument but this is flawed. Newsprint is noe not really cheaper then regular paper and at some times more expensive as there is higher demand. If they went back to Newsprint you would not see a price drop merely a downgrade in quality.
This doesn’t even get into how it would react to the higher demand from Digital Coloring etc. Most older comics had at the most 256 colors…we now have Millions. Much as printing an older comic on better paper makes it seem to bright printing today’s comics on cheap newsprint would make it a muddy mess.
May 21st, 2012 at 4:05 pm
heres the thing–you SHOULDNT view comics as collectors items. Theyre not. Supply far outweighs demands. I cant believe the people i see at the comic shop poring over 30 copies to find that perfect mint one. People who read novels and magazines don’t act like that. Your copy of Wolverine and the X-Men aint ever gonna be worth $600. Those days were gone decades ago.
May 21st, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Im a collector and lets be real it doesnt really matter… formats has been changed left and right for the past 20 years and in the end doesnt matter. This format is applied to the AoA book and FF already and no damage was presented thats soooo different from the other books. Plus lets get real many “collectors” dont really know how to look for proper condition. And no taking a book from the back of the pile doesnt mean you have good condition book. Theres an art into looking for better condition book and trust me i go to 3 different stores every Wednesday and most dont even look or care for that matter. And seriously if you like your books in tablet form then your missing a good portion of experience from reading a comic.
May 21st, 2012 at 5:17 pm
I am a collector and reader and i agree that no comic published nowadays (with a few exceptions)will ever be worth anything, however I have received several comics from my LCS that have had bent corners and have serached through the remaining shelf copies to find a non-damaged one. I don’t do this because I want that perfect mint copy i do this because I should not have to pay full price for ANYTHING that is damaged, regardless of whether it’s a comic, a piece of furniture, etc. This new change disturbs me because I believe retailers will see more damages which will cause shortages until newer copies can be obtained. Unless the retailers want to start sellign the damaged copies at a discount.
May 21st, 2012 at 6:20 pm
As a vendor, I’ve noticed we are receiving more damaged copies of Marvel books since their experiments with self-covers started. Sometimes I’m convinced they don’t even make it off the printing press without some dings…
May 21st, 2012 at 8:07 pm
I am a collector and reader and have been for over 3 decades. I have seen formats change as well as the inflated prices for lackluster stories & art. The industry is wondering why they are losing readership, well, quality and price point. It is harder and harder to shell out $3.99 for a low page count book with a poor story and crappy art. The major publishers should re-visit what First Comics & Epic did in the 80′s with Mando paper & Baxter paper. Both held the artwork and color very well for $1.00-$1.50. Newsprint was great in the day, looking at Daredevil #174 on the newsprint and enjoy the book. I think that all publishers including IDW (who prints in Korea) should look at changing their paper quality or flat out lower the price back to $1.99-$2.25. They would see me get back into buying the books. As for DC, stop with the re-boots. The new 52 turned me off from DC. As for self-covers and the damaged books. Look at the printer, Diamond and the LCS as to how the books are handled before the buying public can purchase a book. The entire industry is flawed.
May 21st, 2012 at 9:23 pm
For people with sweaty hands it is the worst. The. Worst.
May 21st, 2012 at 10:26 pm
This is a horrible move. It might have been a nice novelty but whether I’m just reading or collecting, I’d rather have a better quality cover. This is a lower quality cover. It certainly doesn’t give me a reason to buy more Marvel books.
May 21st, 2012 at 11:15 pm
Yeah, how this is news is a little beyond me – they’ve been doing this for several months now with several of the $2.99 books (I noticed it first on FF, Fantastic Four, and Avengers Academy). If you didn’t notice it then, you won’t notice it now.
But more importantly, calm down about the cover prices already. Marvel went line-wide on $2.99 in June 2003 – it’s been 9 years at this price point for some of these titles (like Fantastic Four). I’m not eager for increases of course, but it’s inevitable they’ll go up eventually, and I actually appreciate any and all efforts to keep it down as long as they can.
May 22nd, 2012 at 2:15 am
I look through the stack for the best copy I can find every week. Not because I’m planning to make a fortune off of it–I’ve sold exactly one comic in my life–but just because I like it to be nice. That don’t hurt nobody. I didn’t like the idea of self-covers, and they have led to more damaged copies, but it’s hard to find a “perfect” book any more anyway. The corners are almost always dinged, which I think comes from the box they are shipped in being dropped. I don’t know why it wasn’t as big a problem before, but it seems to have gotten worse. Oh, well. It’s made me realize I have to accept lower quality copies and lower my standards.
May 22nd, 2012 at 5:24 am
We are seeing the effects of Marvel now being owned by Disney. They were never going to do something as blatant as interfere with content but they are determined to turn more profit and increase share value. They are starting to do it at the expense of product quality and customer satisfaction. I will name this the “mouse hole effect” because it is a strong but invisible force that is dragging events and decisions to an unseen point. Cheap covers, monthly artist changes due to double shipping, and fewer short arcs are making me a hostile. It is time to be smarter customers. We must put our dollars where our hearts are.
May 22nd, 2012 at 5:44 am
After AvX and Hickman’s FF run wraps, I’m pretty much done with Marvel. Bendis’ Avengers was really the only story that kept me around, and the pricing + format changes have really been rubbing me the wrong way. This just feels like a cheap book.
May 22nd, 2012 at 7:25 am
Invincible and Walking Dead and every other Kirkman book (and who knows how many other Image titles have followed suit since) have been self-cover for YEARS, and there was never a single complaint because there wasn’t a damn press release about it. Stop looking for things to complain about. Get over it. You care less than you think you do.
May 22nd, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Ziggy sure seems to care an awful lot about what other people care about.
He should get over that and move on with his life.
May 23rd, 2012 at 2:15 am
Meh. Doesn’t matter. I guess whatever it takes for comics to keep coming out in some form or fashion. I get issues for story, and I buy collections for lasting quality.
Everyone will keep buying comics regardless and the companies know it. There are people who have a strict budget on comics every month and there are people who buy a certain number of comics every month. If someone spends $50 on comics a month, Marvel gets that $50 regardless of how many books the person buys. If a person buys ten titles a month, Marvel gets more profit by charging more per book.
I don’t see this changing unless the price hits a tipping point and everybody jumps ship. (And it obviously hasn’t happened yet, since most of the books are still $3.99)
May 23rd, 2012 at 6:40 am
I am dumping titles by the boat load. Both Marvel and DC, at this point I feel like only Dynamite is giving me consistent quality and value these days.
May 24th, 2012 at 11:50 am
Well, if I want to keep reading Marvel comics in a monthly format, I’m kinda screwed. My sub service gives me a 30% discount for paper books, something the digital prices have yet to do in any site. So I either put up with a weakened cover or I stop being able to afford Marvel comics. I wonder how many Marvel fans will do that?
May 24th, 2012 at 4:59 pm
I dropped all comics when they went over 2 bucks an issue, and I haven’t looked back. I buy the occasional tpb off Amazon or any other book site that has big sales and big clearance lots… so that’s about the only way I enjoy books these days. I’d never pay $2.99 or $3.99 for the issues coming out these days.
Marvel and DC’s greed has driven lots of us older fans away, and I see no way for any kids these days to get into the hobby.
Sucks, but that’s greed for ya.
May 24th, 2012 at 9:05 pm
That sucks! But I really don’t care. I’ve already gone digital! God bless the iPad!
May 24th, 2012 at 11:29 pm
If they are just trying to cut corners to save costs then they need to do it elsewhere.
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