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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 17, 2021 10:16:11 GMT -5
Yikes. 25 comics these days would be about $75-100. Interesting how relative costs change so differently over time. Thanks for the historical context. I imagine someone at the time would fall over if they saw what fancier grocery stores charge for half a gallon of milk. A gallon of milk in 1965 was around $1.05. When I worked at a gas station (started in '71), our Esso Extra was 41.9 a gallon. I made $1.65 an hour. That translated (before taxes) into about four gallons of the good stuff and, because comics had gone to 15 cents, at least 11 comics. (The regular was 36.9, btw, and Esso Plus was 40.9.) Even if you're making ten bucks an hour today, well, you can see how costs have outrun the minimum wage. You ain't getting 11 comics or four gallons of gas. This is why when my uncle or my grandfather would slip me four shiny new quarters, I was like a pig in slop. That's eight comics. Eight. Nobody ever got to buy eight comics at a time. I felt like a millionaire. Some prices have. And some haven't. I can get a gallon of milk right now for $1.89 which I recognize is super cheap. The internet is telling me the national average is $3.59/gallon (which seems insane to me). Which is a small fraction of the rate of inflation...and that's true of most food staples. Televisions used to be a major purchase that was financed or saved for for years. And while you can drop a lot on a high-end model you can also get them dirt cheap which is true of most electronics. For years the price of comics was kept artificially low by periodically cutting the number of pages. They also paid creators for crap. You've also had the change from being a mass market item to being essentially a small-scale collectible market. |
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Post by Batflunkie on Mar 17, 2021 10:26:20 GMT -5
For years the price of comics was kept artificially low by periodically cutting the number of pages. They also paid creators for crap. You've also had the change from being a mass market item to being essentially a small-scale collectible market. Do you ever think we'll see comics go back to being both socially acceptable and in grocery stores and the like or are they too far gone? Scholastic Book Fairs not withstanding |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 17, 2021 10:32:24 GMT -5
For years the price of comics was kept artificially low by periodically cutting the number of pages. They also paid creators for crap. You've also had the change from being a mass market item to being essentially a small-scale collectible market. Do you ever think we'll see comics go back to being both socially acceptable and in grocery stores and the like or are they too far gone? Scholastic Book Fairs not withstanding Never say never, but given the general health of print media particularly periodicals, no I don't expect that. Direct sales of longer form comics, like the Scholastic Book Fairs and graphic novel sales and electronic media seem to be the way of the future. We're seeing fairly top creators like Brubaker & Phillips moving more and more to OGNs. And with the rise in online shopping and pick-up with Covid people are less likely to hang out in stores and just see what's there. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 17, 2021 11:33:00 GMT -5
For years the price of comics was kept artificially low by periodically cutting the number of pages. They also paid creators for crap. You've also had the change from being a mass market item to being essentially a small-scale collectible market. Do you ever think we'll see comics go back to being both socially acceptable and in grocery stores and the like or are they too far gone? Scholastic Book Fairs not withstanding I see fewer and fewer magazine racks anywhere, and all of them are smaller than ever. (And none of them even has an Archie comic on them.) At the supermarket checkouts, I see magazines from National Geographic and Life and Time that cost upwards of 14.95, and are essentially compilations of pictures and brief chunks of text assembled around a theme. And the scandal rags, too, the ones that are left anyway, are much smaller in both size and page count and much higher in price. Unlike technologically-based products, these kinds of disposables continue to be more expensive every year. (Though vehicles never seem to stay at a plateau very long. Try to buy a decent used truck for less than 20 grand. If you can, it has well over 100,000 miles on it. That can cause alittle sticker shock if you haven't bought a used truck in 10 years.) In the mid-70s to early 80s I worked in a magazine / bookstore where we stocked every magazine imaginable on a double-decker wooden rack that ran the length of the store. Had to be a hundred feet long. And we sold magazines like crazy. Newspapers, too, including both morning and evening editions of the Globe, with updated news and even different columnists. A few hundred a day easy. (Wednesdays we almost always sold out of the local afternoon daily before five, as it was the one with the weekly coupons.) And that was when you had serious competition, because every store sold magazines, paperbacks and newspapers. Now any titles that have survived are surviving on-line. Newspapers are dropping like flies, and before they finally go, generally after being gobbled up by a syndicate or shell company, they are emaciated versions of themselves, stripped of ads, want ads, classifieds, local writers, decent coverage of local news and sports and substituting generic pap from USA Today to fill the few pages they still publish. Their demographic now is old b*st*rds like me, and we can't afford nearly 500 bucks a year to get the actual paper newspaper in our driveway every morning. Life is change, of course, but it is tough for me, a kid who had access to a dozen a day and grew up loving "the papers." But newspapers today can't survive today trying to do what they used to do. Their function has been supplanted by the insatiable, addictive 24-hour-a-day televised, streaming, digital "breaking news" cycle. Sorry, wandered. No, I think comics are done as anything but a niche collectors' item product, and who knows how long that will last? |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Mar 17, 2021 15:22:02 GMT -5
Life is change, of course, but it is tough for me, a kid who had access to a dozen a day and grew up loving "the papers." Same here. Things change, but you never forget your first love or the delicious smell of newsprint mixed with cherry-flavoured tobacco. |
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Post by impulse on Mar 17, 2021 17:10:39 GMT -5
I always loved magazines and comics. I wasn't much for reading the paper, but I have fond memories of the family spilling out the Sunday paper and going through the comics, the ads, and all of that.
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Post by Batflunkie on Mar 17, 2021 17:45:16 GMT -5
I always loved magazines and comics. I wasn't much for reading the paper, but I have fond memories of the family spilling out the Sunday paper and going through the comics, the ads, and all of that. Same. I loved being subscribed to Nickelodeon Magazine and Reminisce. Always wanted one to Shonen Jump but never got around to it before they went all digital. I also had some old issues of Disney Adventures that I got from a psychologist that I was seeing at the time. I also used to cut out comic strips and paste them in notebooks to make my own comic books or a loose interpretation of one anyway |
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Post by impulse on Mar 18, 2021 9:54:16 GMT -5
Nintendo Power magazine was the sacred text of my generation.
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Post by Batflunkie on Mar 18, 2021 11:33:53 GMT -5
Nintendo Power magazine was the sacred text of my generation. I had a few older issues that I got from my babysitter from the early to late 90's. Was really big into Tips and Tricks, mainly for Collector's Closet  |
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Post by impulse on Mar 18, 2021 11:58:49 GMT -5
Ha, that gear is new school/late Nintendo Power for me. I had probably moved onto GamePro by the mid-late 90s as it was "edgier."
More relevant to this sub perhaps, I remember early Wizard magazine. The writing was downright hilarious until all the good ones eventually left for Toyfare (at least that is how I understood it).
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2021 13:27:41 GMT -5
Welp just scheduled my appointment for my first dose of the Covid vaccine for next Tuesday. Ohio just opened up vaccines for anyone 50+ last week, just took me a while to find a place to register/get scheduled. My wife goes tomorrow for her first dose.
-M
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Post by impulse on Mar 18, 2021 14:36:29 GMT -5
Great news! My state recently changed its guidelines, too, and my wife and I are getting dose 1 next week.
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Crimebuster
CCF Podcast Guru
Making comics!
Posts: 3,959 
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Post by Crimebuster on Mar 18, 2021 16:05:16 GMT -5
My wife and I aren't eligible here until April 5, so we're just playing the waiting game. Every time I leave the house I feel like the cop in the movie who is going to retire tomorrow but has this one last call to respond to first.
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Post by Prince Hal on Mar 18, 2021 16:10:49 GMT -5
My wife and I aren't eligible here until April 5, so we're just playing the waiting game. Every time I leave the house I feel like the cop in the movie who is going to retire tomorrow but has this one last call to respond to first. Did you pre-register yet? It at least gets you in the queue. (I'm assuming you still live in Massachusetts, CB.) |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Mar 18, 2021 16:32:17 GMT -5
My wife and I aren't eligible here until April 5, so we're just playing the waiting game. Every time I leave the house I feel like the cop in the movie who is going to retire tomorrow but has this one last call to respond to first. Did you pre-register yet? It at least gets you in the queue. (I'm assuming you still live in Massachusetts, CB.) That's what I did, got a nice text alert from the commonwealth thanking me for pre-registering. Hopefully the system is working better than it was back in January when I was trying to help my old man get an appointment. |
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