We here at the podcast love to complain about comics… no wait, that’s not fair. Parts of the comics industry demand to be disapprovingly questioned, discussed, and ultimately mocked.  It’s their fault, not ours.

So, in order to give an outlet for the special parts of the industry that really tick us off we created personalized segments on the show/blog so each host can really let loose. Thus far the segments which have come from our angry places have been Greg’s Gripes, Perturbed Pete, Chris is Chafed, Jason’s Giant Failures, and Ahe’s Murderous Rampages.  To those you can  now also add - Kevin’s Kvetches.

What’s first on Kevin’s Kvetching Kavalcade? Overpriced Golden-Age collections.

Offender #1-DC’s Adventures of Superboy hardcover.

This book collects the first Superboy stories that DC ever put out, including the original one with art and story by Superman’s creators themselves, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and it also comes with one of the most gorgeous covers I’ve seen on a comic collection in quite some time.

Combine the subject matter and that cover and I instantly wanted to buy this book when I saw it.  You know what made me put it back down? The $40 retail price.

I would love for someone at DC to explain that price point.  Recouping losses in the Superboy lawsuit is the only thing I can think of for how a comic with only 224 pages of 65 year old stories on mediocre paper stock can be so overpriced.

If DC puts these stories (plus another 250 pages) out in a Showcase collection, I’ll buy that. Until then, I’ll just try and hunt down crappy copies of the original comics.

Offender #2-Marvelman Classic Premiere

Sigh…Way to use a stock photo of space instead of, y’know, drawing anything other than a pin-up there, Marvel.  It’s also good to see that the Quesada signature is nice and big on that drawing but nowhere on the front cover is the title of the actual book.  Thumbs up, design team!

This book collects a number of Golden Age Marvelman stories that Marvel Comics saved from comic book legal limbo last year.  These stories represent an interesting part of comics history I’ve never read, seeing as Marvelman is the British equivalent of Shazam and they’re about 50 years old.  So I’d love to actually read these stories to get a feel of the history that Alan Moore was drawing on when he wrote his legendary run on the character.

How much does Marvel want for this book? $35 for 160 pages of story.  Want to know what’s worse? The book is entirely in black and white and is on paper not much better than newsprint. Thirty.Five.Dollars.

Yeah, I get that Marvel shelled out some decent cash for the Marvelman library but they’re never going to make that money back in comics.  They’re planning on doing what they’re doing with all of their properties–turn it into a film.  So why not make these comics affordable so you can build an audience for a character that isn’t exactly a household name instead of pricing out a large portion of your audience?  Right now I imagine the only people buying this are Joe Quesada completists who want everything he’s ever had art associated with.

If these are the kind of decisions being made with Marvel & DC’s parent companies paying more attention consider me unimpressed.

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