{"id":11735,"date":"2011-10-22T11:30:33","date_gmt":"2011-10-22T15:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=11735"},"modified":"2011-10-22T11:30:33","modified_gmt":"2011-10-22T15:30:33","slug":"this-probably-explains-why-the-typical-comic-book-reader-is-no-longer-a-young-teen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/10\/22\/this-probably-explains-why-the-typical-comic-book-reader-is-no-longer-a-young-teen\/","title":{"rendered":"This probably explains why the “typical” comic book reader is no longer a young teen"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s all in the economics<\/a> of the comic book world:<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When my family came to Canada in 1967, one of the things I missed the most were British comics. Canadian<\/font><\/strike> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,28],"tags":[165,477,504],"class_list":["post-11735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-media","tag-inflation","tag-magazines","tag-teenagers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-33h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11737,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11735\/revisions\/11737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}