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IanG wrote:I'm curious, is the December order form something that only you have access to? I couldn't easily find that on Diamond's website. I saw the November order sheet but not the December. I believe it's 3.99 now nonetheless.

I noticed She-Hulk and Skaar are still $2.99. Marvel is testing the waters with one of their top sellers. They'll see if the sales numbers are substantially affected or not.

The consumer order forms aren't up on the public part of the Diamond website yet. They will probably be posted sometime next week (or maybe the week after due to Thanksgiving).

And, yes, I do have access to data that isn't publicly available to everybody.

I'm trying to budget myself so a price hike doesn't mean a boycott with me, just less books. I certainly won't buy books I'm sitting on the fence about and will just stick to the ones I KNOW I'll like. I've been doing that since the beginning of the year anyway.

Doesn't Marvel always go first with the price hike? At least for the last 30 years?

A few months back, I did a really rough graph of price increases over the years (breaking it down to price per page since comics are about half the size they where 60 years ago). The graph did show an increase to $4.00 for 2009 and 2010 so it is about right in terms of the trend (still don't like it though). I started using CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS as a base before realizing that ACTION COMICS was a better test subject.

One thing I noticed was many times over the years the books would frequently jump up with more pages at a higher price before the pages dropped back to 32 and either the price stayed or dropped from a much higher giant-sized price thus looking like a price decrease. This seems to be already going on.

DCBS still gives me a good discount. The big loser, to me, is the LCS since I won't pick up missed books at full price. Also average books without a great creative team.

I've already got way too many books and trades I have not read.
I've got way too much stuff and not enough room.
And money is now an issue.
So I can afford to be picky.

BTW, I don't think the price hike is just with comics. I took my kids to see Bolt at 11:45 and spent $25 on three tickets. Then I spent another $25 on food. The tickets would have been more expensive if we went after 12 pm.

So now the "matinee" has gone by the way of the dinosaur? I only take my children to see movies worthy of the "big screen". With home theatre systems, we can get the experience at home, without ME having take bathroom trips.

atomic99 wrote:I'm trying to budget myself so a price hike doesn't mean a boycott with me, just less books.

I don't advocate any kind of a boycott, I'm just advocating the fact that a book had better be pretty damn good to warrant me paying $3.99 for it. For the most part, I don't see the vast majority of the normal 22 page comics Marvel is pricing at $3.99 as being "worth" that price to me.

If DD & Cap go up to $3.99 with the current creative teams, I'll buy them.

Some out there might try to organize some sort of boycott but I just don't see it being successful.

But yes, like you said, it better be darn good so that is why I'm only buying ones I know I will like and take less chances.

I'm loving Cap, Nova, Guardians of the Galaxy, JSA, and will pick up the new Agents of Atlas title. Ones that would not make the cut I already trimmed out at the beginning of the year like Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Final Crisis, New Warriors, & Teen Titans.

I'll see how it goes with the independents. I want to be supportive of small press and friends that create those books but I might have to start looking at things with a budget in mind for these books as well.