Flashback - November 1986

In my re-reading the comic collection I am up to the month cover-dated November 1986. I'm always amazed at the size of the monthly stacks from this time period. They're pretty large. I was working two paper routes and I think almost all that money went to comics. I remember as a teenager thinking how great it would be to be done school and working full-time and be able to have more spending money for comics. Of course now they're four times the price so the increased spending hasn't really resulted in more comics. In actual fact, the number of comics has gone down. When I was 16, I couldn't imagine paying $4.00 for a regular monthly comic. (I mean I paid that for Dark Knight when it came out but that was special). Now $4.00 is the norm. Back then they were selling for a $1.00.

I try not to think about that too much because it's really depressing. I can buy a paperback book for $10.00 and it will entertain me for a month or two. Or I can spend that same money on two comics and be done them both in less than an hour. Honestly, if I wasn't already a comic reader I don't think I'd get started in the hobby. My wife and I spend money on video games, books and DVD's and they are a lot better value for the money than comics are. I've said before that I like the production quality on today's comics but if going back to newsprint would knock the price down, I'd be all for the lower quality.

I have trouble believing that the comic readership is actually growing. I know numbers are up but I tend to think that's the current readers buying more (because there is a lot of quality stuff being done) rather than brand new readers coming into the market.

Of course, I could never stop buying them now. I love them too much. Wednesday's are something I always look forward to.

So here I was, all set to talk about November '86 and instead I bitch about the price of comics. Just another instance of me getting old (both because I drift off topic and I say how much things go up in price).