Notice anything about many of your Marvel comics this week. They're thicker! No, Marvel didn't give you extra pages of story, they gave you extra pages of ads.
For example, Astonishing X-Men increased from 32 to 48 pages (not counting covers). Those 48 pages are:
1 'previously on' page
23 pages of story
18 pages of ads
6 pages of dubious editorial material
Basically the thing is half advertising.
Why do I care? After all, they didn't raise the price, so I'm still getting the same story value for my $2.99.
One, the plethora of ads really breaks up the flow of the story. It's often a page of story, then a page of ads, then a page of story, then three pages of ads. (Unlike when DC ads an extra insert of advertising, you cannot 'debone' the Marvel comics of their extra bulk.) So why not just wait for the trade, where I can read the story uninterrupted by advertising?
Two, the extra-thick comics add up to extra bulk. 50% more. That 50% more weight that your retailer has to pay in shipping, which eats into his/her profits. Retailers raised holy heck before when Marvel did this, and Marvel promised to knock it off. Guess they forgot.
2 comments:
Oh, they stopped that "We'll stop we swear" policy last year. I think it was in one of those Joe Friday's or something that Mr Q said that they sell so much advertising near X-Mas that they'd be idiots not to take it.
Of course, if it were my company, I'd strive to not piss everybody off (including those advertisers who suddenly realize they are in a book of ads) and just charge the normal number of advertisers the inflated value that the extra advertisers would bring in.
Wow, I've been trade only for about two years now and had completely forgotten about the ads. Gives me one more reason to be happy about my decision - though it was dreadfully hard to give up at the time.
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