Rising Prices Inhibit Buying Stuff. In Other News, Fire Hot.

With December's solicitations out, I have an idea of what's coming out through the end of 2017. If my estimations of what I'm going to buy over the next three months are correct, I'll end up buying 72 new Marvel comics this year. Last year it was 73, the year before 74. This isn't a jokey post about how, by 2087, I'll be down to 2 Marvel comics.  It's more that it's remained so curiously steady.

Looking it over, when 2015 started, Marvel was in the midst of one of those "Marvel NOW!" pushes they did three of or four times. I can't recall if that one was All-New Marvel NOW! or Marvel Now 2.0. Both of those terms are ones I'm reasonably sure actually existed and were pushed by Marvel, and were not made up by me. More's the pity, at least I'm not being paid to come up with that.

But shortly after came Secret Wars, and the cancelation of every ongoing, followed by the subsequent relaunching of the entire line, even before Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic's mini-series had shambled and lurched across the finish line. There was Civil War II, and Inhumans vs. X-Men before CW 2 had even finished. And during all that, Marvel was throwing out a preposterous number of series, acting like the market would support two Dr. Strange books, or any Inhumans titles*. Then we had Secret Empire and now Legacy, which is more another attempt at vague branding, like the "Heroic Age" tag they used after Siege but prior to Fear Itself.

Point being, there's been a lot of flailing and nonsense over the last three years, and yet, I'm sitting at, on average, six books a month. The number fluctuates - I was at 8 books a month the first three months of this year, closer to 4 during the summer - but it evens out to 6. Which seemed strange. The only two books I've bought throughout were Ms. Marvel and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (I'm not counting the month or two they were canceled, since it wasn't my choice to not be able to buy them). Somehow though, the flux evens out. Marvel cancels whatever I was enjoying, but eventually stumbles into a bunch of new series I'm willing to try, at least a few of which I end up sticking with until they're canceled, then repeat.

I've been considering that given the price of the books these days, 6 is basically what I feel I can justify buying. In the spring, when I was considering buying Iron Fist and Scarlet Spider, I started thinking more about whether it was time to ditch Nova and Great Lakes Avengers. Swap out two books to make room for two others. As it turned out, I dropped Nova but not GLA, which got canceled anyway. But Iron Fist ended up not working out, and ultimately neither did Scarlet Spider.  Which is the way it goes sometimes, but it's atypical to feel I needed to drop a book before adding another. Mostly because there haven't been so many books out there it seemed necessary.

2014 was the year Marvel started really pushing the $4 books. It was also a real outlier in terms of the number of Marvel comics I bought, 101, which is the most of any year going back to 2010 (by a lot, second place would be 2013's 80). At midyear, I was up to 10 ongoings (to the extent you could still count Hawkeye, which was firmly in its "it'll come out, eventually" death throes). Some books were still launching at $3 - Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk to name two - but others were starting at $4, and still others increased in price from one issue to another. Superior Foes of Spider-Man #11 was $3, #12 was $4.

Which would seem to counter the cost factoring in, but I was only at 10 books for three months. Two titles ended in the fall, two others got dropped in January 2015 because they weren't working, and even though I added Ant-Man and Squirrel Girl, by then we'd reached "everything's getting canceled because of Secret Wars", so it hardly mattered. Once we were past that, I couldn't find more than 5 titles I was interested in for about a year. It was only last winter Marvel threw enough stuff at the wall to the point I started to feel pressed about how many books I was buying.

Brief aside: I bought 79 Marvel comics in 2010, 70 in 2011, and 64 in 2012, when the $4 price point wouldn't have been a factor. The difference being, I remember there was nothing out then I wanted to buy. I was lucky to have 3 ongoings on my pull list each month, and the rest was random mini-series and one-shots. I remember adding Hawkeye in August of 2012, bringing me up to 5 ongoings for the first time since 2009. It was a wasteland of Bendis-written Avengers comics and Brand New Day Spider-Man as far as the eye could see. So, not exactly the same situation as we're discussing in the present.

For me, 6 $4 books is the same amount of money as 8 $3 books, though it means fewer stories, fewer chances to see something cool, or funny, or touching. I don't know if it works in Marvel's favor. I don't know the difference in price point for the retailers. Fewer books would mean fewer writers and artists to pay, but it isn't as though Marvel's pared the line as they've raised prices. The line had bloated considerably, and even after they cut it down somewhat for Legacy, there's still over 50 titles out there. They had to release a lot more shit just to get me buying enough books I started to consider capping the pull list. So I wouldn't call that a net win, especially since enough of the books I was buying were on thin enough ice I wasn't too bothered about dropping them.

* I tend to consider Ms. Marvel about as much an Inhumans book as Deadpool is an X-book. They're adjacent to their respective messes, but largely safe.