Ilan Strasser of Fat Moose Comics and Games n Whippany, New Jersey shares his thoughts on the upcoming round of price hikes from DC Comics.

By now, everyone knows that DC is upping the price on most of its line to $3.99 and joining Marvel in this new era of constant, high percentage price increases.  What absolute stupidity this is, especially because comics pricing has far exceeded the rate of inflation over the last several years.  If I ran Marvel or DC, I would give fans what they want and truly deserve.  Comic content with real value attached to it.  I believe that there is no reason why comics cannot follow this paradigm and eventually create far greater profits for either company.  All mainline books would be $2.99 for 40 pages of content, to be comprised of 28 pages of story and art, 3 pages of in-house advertising, 8 pages of external advertising and a 1 page letters column.  Every mainline book would have it's own annual at 100 pages for $4.00.

Second level books (decided by sales or character popularity) would be double the size with all specific parameters doubled as well.  These books would feature TWO characters (similar to Marvel's old Tales of Suspense or Tales to Astonish books), but priced at $3.99.  These books would be comprised of characters associated with each other (Cable/Deadpool) or related by genre (Supergirl/Power Girl, i.e. heroines) and unable to manufacture consistently strong sales on their own (Silver Surfer/Captain Marvel).  All published titles would be placed in identifying groups ("icons," sci-fi, women, kids, licensed, etc.) with all titles sharing a main logo and having a secondary group specific logo.  Age appropriate categorization would appear clearly on the front cover and be age specific using numbers and not potentially vague wording.

This is a simplified description to be sure, but if Bill Gates or someone else with truly deep pockets were my friend, I would ask them to buy JUST the publishing rights to Marvel (my personal preference) from Disney and help me and my dedicated staff resuscitate what was once a truly great industry.  It would be an investment that would truly pay off long term.  Is all this just nonsense given the comic apps appearing everywhere and the digitalization of comics content?  I don't think so.  Just because the present and future gives you new opportunities doesn't mean you have to desecrate and destroy the best of what worked before.  I'm sure all the business mavens at Marvel or DC would just laugh at what I've written.  After all, they have been proving for a long time that they no longer care about our customers (the real end users) or us as retailers.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.