I’m going to start this little rant by going back 2 years ago when DC announced they were “Drawing the Line at $2.99”. For those not familiar, this campaign was geared toward lowering the price of some comics, and maintaining the price on the rest of their comics. As it went, all regular comics (32 pages, including ads, and under) would have a $2.99 price tag, all oversized (above 32 pages) would start at $3.99, depending on the page count. Not only do I want to emphasize that DC has remained true to this pricing structure (their $3.99 books are 40 page books) but they never sacrificed the quality of their books to do so.

The thing is within a couple of hours after that announcement; Marvel also announced a price drop, citing that their digital subscription package has been so financially successful that they would pass that savings on to their fans. If you read a lot of Marvel books, you will know this is something that really never came to pass. So what exactly was it that did happen? Seemingly none of their $3.99 books were lowered to $2.99, instead adding pages to keep it from happening. Some of the current $2.99 books increased in page number and became $3.99 books, and not only that MANY of their books suddenly became “twice-monthly” releases. So, not only were prices NOT lowered, now over half of their books shipped twice a month. I’m not sure if they were aware of this at the time, maybe someone needed to explain it to them, but this is the EXACT OPPOSITE of making books more affordable.

Comparing the low quality of cover stock between Marvel’s X-Men Legacy #2 and a Zenescope comic. Note how just holding the issues regularly at the bottom of the book, X-men Legacy almost folds right over, while Zenescope’s book only rolls slightly with gravity.

Ok, now we get to the heart of my rant. Last year, a few months after the launching of DC’s New 52, Marvel started to downgrade the quality of their books, and by that I mean paper quality. $2.99 books were obviously the first to be hit, starting with covers. Gone was the high gloss magazine cover stock, as it was replaced with a non-gloss cover stock that felt hardly sturdier than the pages it was charged with protecting. I first noticed this change with X-Men: Legacy #262.

The difference was immensely obvious. As time went on, to compete with DC’s new $4.99 print/digital combo issues for some titles, Marvel announced that all of their $3.99 books would come with a free digital download code for a digital copy of the comic a customer had just purchased. To absorb these costs Marvel now downgraded the quality of their $3.99 books in the same manner. I remember only a few years ago when a $3.99 price tag either meant an oversized book, or nice heavy card stock, which by this time Marvel had long done away with using on anything other than their 2 Stephen King titles. Now we are paying $4 for a 32 page comic that wasn’t even on nice magazine stock. It seemed that over the next few months the downgrades continued. $2.99 books had fewer pages then before, and soon the issue’s interior page quality seemed to go down too.

This month we have reached the Marvel NOW era, and I hate to say it, but once again we have been hit with a down grade. I picked up my copy of X-Men Legacy #2, and immediately felt like the thing was going to disintegrate, it was that bad. I had mentioned before that the interior pages had been downgraded as well, but what I hadn’t mentioned yet was that it honestly seemed like it was just a step, maybe 2, above newspaper material. It was incredibly thin, flimsy, and easily marred. You know, 3 things that every comic book collectors just loves (read with intense sarcasm). What I then noticed when I held this book yesterday was now the cover was made of the exact same paper stock as the interior pages. The nice cover, that’s actual function was to attempt to protect the fragile pages held within, was completely gone.

Here we compare Marvel’s X-men Legacy #2 with the recent Marvel freebie, Marvel’s Backlist Reading Chronology. While the freebie is thicker, it also has a much nicer card stock for the cover, preventing it from folding over like the X-men Legacy comic that runs for $2.99.

I was upset. Yes, I’ll admit, maybe more so then was rational. But this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. We as Marvel fans have had to put up with too many poor decisions made by the House of Ideas lately, effecting both our wallets and quality of comic books. I’ll save the rest of those decisions for an upcoming rant. So, to avoid the additional rant now brewing, I will say that we have already had to put up with pricing problems, all stemming from Marvel complaining about the cost of production for all of their books and dwindling readership numbers, so yeah, I’ve taken this as the final blow to our loyalty.

So to really set this BS home, I noted DC earlier because as they increased their amount of titles, and saw an increase in production costs, notice I told you that they did not deviate from their pricing structure, and NEVER downgraded the quality of their product. Furthermore, small independent publishers like Zenescope, who do not even remotely have the financial resources of Marvel, have MANY $2.99 titles each with very nice glossy sturdy magazine cover stock and high gloss magazine paper interiors. But you know who might surprise you to find still prints with a nice cover stock? Marvel, despite everything I’ve said, and they use it when they print countless thousands of pointless free insert books; not for their actual comics we pay for. The recently released, updated essential reading chronology from Marvel is a prime example of this. But why doll up these freebies with such a nice cover when others are wrapped in glorified recycled newspaper? If more than a single digit percent of all that had been printed were ACTUALLY used to their intention, I would have a heart attack from the surprise.

How is it fair that we spend our hard earn money, and are given a far inferior product in comparison to something pointless that ends up being used as pet cage liner? My answer, Marvel execs have spent so long BEING execs, and they have long forgotten how to run a business.