I HATE IT HERE *CREATOR OWNED EDITION*

Recently on the page it was asked how much people spend a month on comics, and the figures really did vary from around the £10 mark, to staggering numbers that won’t be mentioned here! One subject that did crop up a lot was price points though, more and more books are going back up to the $3.99 mark with little to no extra content that a $2.99 book has, except some of them come with a free digital code. This seems unfair to me, and a cheating way or recovering costs, what if yo don’t want the digital copy, should you still have to pay the same amount? The easy answer is no, but that’s not something i want to get into here, and i’m sure there is lots of Jargon that can be spouted as to why the higher price point has to be used in the long run.

Personally my spending ranges from 1 book a week, to around the £15-£20 mark and i am cautious about what i’m spending on particular books. if a book seems to be getting too expensive for the content that’s inside it, i drop it. I vote with my wallet, so to speak. However, books that i can always justify spending the extra buck on are creator owned books or small press releases. Books that come from companies like Image that are owned by the writer/artist team are (generally) always good value for money, of a constant high quality and you know that almost all of the money from it is going back to the people that actually created it, as opposed to the company big wigs. In the same vein though, the only reason books such as Manhattan Projects, Saga, Morning Glories, East is West and to a degree Vertigo books such as Fables, Sweet Tooth and 100 Bullets see the light of day is because people vote with their money. It is known that if a certain writer or artist has a new book coming out that it will at least be picked up for the first issue, because people want to see what all the fuss is about. That’s why, in another respect, companies like Image are doing it right, alot of first issues that come out of them now are double sized, but for no extra cost, so the story gets a nice initial bump and the reader gets a larger look into the world that they normally would.

Another avenue with i always gladly throw money at is small press books. It’s almost a guarantee that anything coming out of John Lees’, Neil Slorance’, BHP, OR Comics, Morag Kewell or anyone else that was exhibiting at Glasgow Comic Con this year is going to be worth giving a shot. Time after time i’m amazed at the work that comes out of this city and I’m willing to support it as best i can. Clearly you do too, as it seems like every other day, i’m hearing about a book selling out, and if you don’t know who these lovely folk are, i can’t stress enough how much you need to go read their work.

And so to finish up, support Creator owned projects, it might not have the capes and cowls you’re used to, or the high polished finish that the big two produce, but damn are you missing out if you don’t dig a little deeper and find some of the best books on the market, by some of the best writer/artist teams in the industry today.

Love and Bullets,

Chris