Done with DC

 I woke up Saturday morning in a productive and creative mood. I played through my Magic the Gathering Arena daily quests quickly. Then, I outlined another two chapters of the novel I am developing. I hate to admit this, but rather than put in the two hours I try and dedicate to my writing in the morning as soon as I found myself floundering for how to explain what should happen next I switched gears. That is not good for the work ethic that I need to develop to become a successful writer, but I felt it was more important to lean into a productive mood than it was to hold myself to putting in work on the novel. It was Saturday after all. 

Friday night I sat down and balanced my finances for the week. Like mowing the grass this is something that a younger version of me hated doing, but I have come to really enjoy as I have gotten older. Maybe that is because as my Mom once stated," I am old and I have a bigger credit card than you." Not really, but there is something pleasant about paying off debt, controlling spend, and building a bit of savings. While I was crunching numbers I noticed that I was spending quite a bit more on comics this year than last. I was not happy with the result. 

Since I returned to reading comics in 2014, comics have always had a big weight on the balance sheet. Since 2017 I have spent about $16,500 on comics. That is an average of $295 a month for the past 4 years and 8 months. That is a car payment. I enough on comics a month to have paid for another vehicle. That staggered me a little bit. As much of a fan of reading and talking about comics as I am, I do not feel that I have the same value in my comics as I do my Veloster. 

Part of the reason I read so many comics is the podcast. Over the past few months I have not been as driven to read things that I do not feel a passion for. I feel it is important that if I say a comic book is Fantastic that my opinion holds some value. I do not want the people who listen to me to disregard the opinion because, like Garin (totally teasing, but I love calling him out about it) every book is a "Fantastic Read. I really enjoyed it." 

I have been trimming my pull list for months now. I got rid of New Mutants, Children of the Atom, X-Corp, and eventually Excalibur. For me to be dropping Marvel mutant titles they have to really be not resonating with me. I do not think I am really the target audience for any of these books. I point that out to say that I am not trashing any titles here. I promise each of those (maybe not X-Corp) is someone's favorite book. 

The interesting part is how much DC comics have come to annoy me because of their rise in price. Some of my favorite writers are currently doing great work for DC. James Tynion IV may be wrapping up his Batman and Joker runs in the near future, but he will be dropping DC vs. Vampires in October. Tom Taylor still writing Batman The Detective and Superman Son of Kal-El.  I should be fairly invested in DC. 

Here is the thing. Joker is a $5.99 comic. I am paying $6 an issue for this book about Jim Gordon chasing the Joker across the world. When Mirka Andolfo was doing the art I could justify it. A superstar artist and writer are worth that money. Give me 24 pages of their work. Sure. I will hand you $6 for their work. The catch is that Mirka Andolfo only illustrated the main story for the first 4 issues. Why did the price not drop to $4.99 with her departure? 

Also, We were never getting 24 pages of the main story. It was shortened to about 16 pages with a back up story. I didn't hate that in Joker because the back up story was all about Punchline. She wasn't really doing anything in any other part of the DC universe. Fine. I am paying more for a book and getting two half stories. I really was aggravated with this from issues 5 forward. I think I would rather have paid $4.99 each for a Joker and a Punchline standalone books with 22-24 pages worth of story in them. 

Detective Comics and Batman are both suffering from this same problem. DC has upped the price and added back up stories as justification. Instead of getting a single story I care about, I am getting one I do and one I do not care about. Less of what I love for more money is not a winning combination. Quitting Detective Comics was a difficult choice because Dan Mora beautifully illustrates the book's main story. I historically like Mariko Tamaki's writing. Those back up stories and the price point just rubbed me absolutely the wrong way. 

When I started thinking about giving myself a real budget on comics I was a little challenged. I already had my pull list written for September and October. They both were going to be $300 plus months. How could I cut that down and not lose interest in comics totally. I have a history of getting frustrated with comic books around the end of each year. 

I started by pricing all of my purchases for September and October in Excel. I am a total spreadsheet nerd.I freaking LOVE spreadsheets. Once I had everything entered there were a couple of quick cuts I could make for books I am on the fence about anyway. A few of those titles only have an issue or two left. I decided to pick up those final issues speculating that I would have a good chance of flipping a complete run of a book on eBay and the spend was worth the risk. 

Next I gave myself a few caveats. I want to budget the stuff I am reading regularly, but I still want to be able to speculate and make money on a few books. Buying an extra copy, variant cover, and late printing of a title for the express purpose of making money should not really count against my budget. After all, technically, I am still about $1000 up on my comic spend this year from the money I made back in March. So I removed duplicate copies, variants, and speculation books I will not be reading from the calculation. 

My goal in all of this was to buy $100 worth of comics to read a month. At $4 each that is basically 25 titles. The cool news is that my LCS gives me a subscriber discount. That 20% buys me some forgiveness to pick up a few more titles. To be faithful to my budget I did have to start calculating sales tax as well. So Tennessee screwed me to just under 10%. Such is life. 

I worked through the spreadsheet for more than an hour weighing and considering how I was going to turn $120 into $100. I contemplated checking out of X titles totally which are mostly fairly weak unless Gerry Duggan is writing them. I put consideration into dropping Star Wars comics. They are very well done and are filling in gaps between Empire and Jedi that I have always been curious about. Also, Luke Skywalker is one of my all time favorite fictional characters. I did give up the new Spawn titles. I have not read any Hellspawn comics since the early 90s. Why get myself addicted just to have to make tough choices later?

Then I looked at my few remaining DC titles. I have been an avid Batman reader for several years now. Could I give up Harley, Punchline, Barbara Gordon, and the Joker (because those are the characters that interest me) to make budget? Yes, it turns out I can. I do not like paying $4.99 an issue for comics I do not feel are worth $2.99. The price point made the decision to abandon the characters rest easier with me. I hate back up stories. The value of the books just is not there. I made the cut. My budget almost worked out. 

I can live with being $5 over in September. I am that much under in October with several series finishing off that I do not place to replace. I think in the coming months having purged DC that I will get down to $70 a month of books I am reading which will allow me to pick up my variants and speculation stuff and still make the $100 goal. 

Why would I write about something as boring as budgets and comic books? Some secret little part of me hopes that DC is hearing this from more and more of their fans. I don't believe their current model is attracting new readers. I know that they are alienating their diehard fan base of old neckbeards like me and have been since the New 52. 

I am not saying Marvel is doing it totally right, but I do not feel taken advantage of so much at $3.99 an issue with an occasional $4.99 for a #1 or special issue. The good thing about being middle aged is that I do not mind paying more for what I want when it has value. (I am stuck deep in the question of buying the "inexpensive but still $20K" Ford Maverick or spending $34k on an F150 that will probably last me 20 years) I did not include trades and graphic novels in my comic book budget because they are exceptional. Buying the latest Reckless book or the Fine Print Vol 1 Trade paperback doesn't feel like the same thing as buying an issue of X-men. 

Anyway, Good Riddance DC. I hope you get your shit together, and I can justify buying your comics again. Until then, I am going to complain about you on the internet A LOT!