Thursday, May 22, 2014

Tales From The Quarter Bin--What This Country Needs Is A Good 90¢ Comic Book!

Lessons In Over-Promising #275:

Well, yes, that's a nice George Perez cover and all, but what's the big deal here?

Oh, yeah, right.

This was 1992, and most Marvels were $1.25, while DC's books were $1 (with Vertigo/Baxters at $1.50-1.75). So I guess boasting of your (somewhat arbitrarily priced) 90¢ comic books was maybe worthwhile.

Except that this was a reprint series, representing the original 1986 Eclipse series (albeit this version had some added story pages). So it's not like Hero Graphics were giving the people new stories for that magical price point.

Perhaps and even bigger "except" comes from the fact that the experiment lasted exactly 1 issue. After a 6 month hiatus, Champions Classics returned, as a flip-book with Flare Adventures (another reprint series which also had one issue boasting "the 90¢ comics are here!"). The new cost? $2.95. Then $3.50. Then $3.95. When Marvel was still $1.25, where DC soon joined them.

Oops. So much for 90¢ comics.

But at least they managed to keep Marvel from re-launching their version of The Champions, so thanks for that, Hero Graphics...

2 comments:

The Mutt said...

I'm old enough to remember when comics went from ten cents to twelve cents. I was appalled!

snell said...

I came in when Marvel emblazoned every comic with "Still Only 25¢!" Which, of course, meant 30¢ was coming.

We didn't know how good we had it...