Another way that Marvel came up with to cut production costs in the mid to late 70s was to pay artists for one page even tho it printed as two. The artists were instructed to take their drawing paper and to rotate it 90 degrees and draw two pages of art on this single piece of paper. They had to do this once per issue. This may have been during the Shooter years.

Not unless they want to lose money on every unit sold. I don't see that as greedy. I used to work in publishing. They're not getting rich off of comics.

The monthly pamphlet comic book format is the worst value for your entertainment dollar. $4 for something that takes about 15 minutes to read. And we're not talking about gems of entertainment quality either. 

Marvel also doesn't double the price when they go to second printings when they under produce books that sell higher than expectations the way that DC does. Marvel offers the free digital codes for the extra buck, which may not appeal to some, but has added value in the mass market entertainment medium, and Marvel is not doubleshipping all of their best sellers so it's $6 a month not $3 to follow a book, altering creative teams regularly after solicitations so you aren't getting what was actually advertised if you chose to add a book to a pull list, and using big names like Jim Lee to pull people to a book where he is only doing 12 pages and then other artists are doing back ups for the rest (with other books likely to follow the model to keep the doubleshipping schedule so you'll only get 24 pages of the lead stuff for your $6). Marvel's methods and pricing may be "deplorable" to some, but DC's practices are just as shady and greed driven. Marvel is just better at it hence they have dominated dollar market share for a long while, which is why DC has gone into overdrive to catch up so they can try to be the bigger fish in the small pond of the direct market.

-M

BTW that $3 event book DC Rebirth was held back by a lot of dealers when 2nd prints were announced and was selling for an average of $12 a pop at the show I was at today, so unless you actually had it on a pull, it's likely the customers didn't pay $3 for it. It was selling for $6 a pop at Wizard World the week after it was released and has doubled again since then-speaking of greed.

To be fair, I don't buy individual issues anymore and whatever digital price I see (or the preview/review price) is what I go by. I also didn't factor in double-shipping.

For me, I haven't bought a comic book off the stands since 2005...a few DC titles because I was so underwhelmed by the offerings of Marvel. I think at that time they were close to $3. Since then, I have not purchased any "contemporary" titles. I simply can't justify spending $3-5 for one comic book that can be read so quickly. I also hate the anime type look that seems to be popular and it seems that the art dominates and the story is secondary. Scant dialogue but booming pages of art don't do it for me. Just not my thing. I like balance...good art and a good(or fairly good) story. I also don't like the fact that Marvel constantly seems to kill off titles at the drop of a hat and then, whenever something is popular, they lock onto it like a lamprey and try to extract as much money from it as possible. Marvel has just gotten too arrogant. They don't make any money from me any longer because I just buy back issues from independent dealers and I don't watch their movies unless I can get them online for free or a pirated dvd. For me, I will remember the old Marvel and continue to buy the cheapie, beat up older Fair condition books that people don't give a damn about. The new stuff..well, it can burn. 

It is interesting to me that DC experimented with the 100 pagers & Dollar Comics & Marvel tried magazines. However they both released the treasury sized books....which I really liked. I know DC did digests, did Marvel do any digests?