“The High Price Of Comic Fantasy”

I hate to be the one to point this out, but complaining about comics costing $0.40 back in 1979 looks pretty silly from this point in time. Earlier this month I paid $3.50 for a single issue of Image’s Empty Zone comic book, a price that’s significantly higher (when adjusted for inflation) than that $0.40 comic cost relative to other things back in 1979. Just what is $0.40 in 1979 dollars equivalent to today? Well, the handy inflation calculator tells us that $0.40 in 1979 translates to $1.28 in 2014. Hell, I’d be overjoyed if I only had to pay $1.99 for a new comic book today.

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Sure the paper and printing quality is better today than it was in 1979, but aren’t the setup costs and operating costs lower today than they were in 1979 (relative to other costs, of course)? The article — found in the November 12, 1979 issue of The Evening Independent newspaper — is worth a read, if only to remind us of a time when comics were far more affordable than they are today.

What drove the costs so high? Was it the decline in sales, or did the decline in sales happen because the comic prices kept climbing higher and higher over the last few decades? It’s gonna take someone with a lot better ties than I have to the comic industry to answer the question, and I suspect that even then we’ll never know exactly where comics went from cheap entertainment for kids to the pricey reads they are today.

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