It’s all in the economics of the comic book world:
Looking at the graph we can see that the relative price of a comic book stayed around a buck until 1970 or so, slowly ramping up to a buck fifty over the next 15 years. That’s a 50% increase. From 1985 to 2000 the price almost doubles (100%) getting neat three dollars. From 2000 to 2011, it’s around a 33% increase.
It’s a fact that costs increase over time, so I’m not saying prices could remain at a buck forever. But it is hard to see how young kids and teenagers can get into comic books, it’s simply too expensive. For $20 you get 5-7 books. Serious comic readers will pick up 10-20 books a week. A few years ago, when I was a more regular reader, I would the totals of other people routinely $30-50 a week. That’s $120-200 per MONTH. There can’t be many parents helping pay that much for a kid’s comic habit.
When my family came to Canada in 1967, one of the things I missed the most were British comics. Canadian American comics were very different from what I was used to, so I never really became much of a comic collector. I’d pick up the odd few, but it never was a “have to buy” item for me. I remember having to decide whether I wanted the immediate satisfaction of a chocolate bar or a can of pop, or the slightly longer-term satisfaction of a comic book. Immediate satisfaction won more of the time, and with my princely 25 cents per week allowance, there wasn’t a lot of satisfaction whichever way I decided to go.
