by 
Updated on May 14, 2023
Those buying single-issue Big Two comics every Wednesday will need to adjust their budgets. DC Comics announced plans to raise prices on nearly all of the publisher’s comics to $3.99 an issue.
Back just before the New 52 relaunch, DC made a big deal about “holding the line at $2.99.” A few years ago, the Rebirth relaunch came with books priced at $2.99 as part of the promotion. However, a number of these came out bimonthly (i.e., twice a month). Now, it seems DC’s decided to make $3.99 the standard price across the board, as Rebirth is now the new status quo.
As for going digital, that route won’t save money either—DC’s also raising the price on new digital titles to $4. There’ll also be no more free digital copies included with regularly priced comics.
This applies to just the mainstream DC Universe titles. The only books that’ll stay at $2.99 include:
- The kids line of books. At this point, that’s just their licensed titles; those include: “Teen Titans Go,” “Looney Tunes,” “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You,” and “Scooby-Doo Team-Up.”
- A subset of DC Universe set titles DC calls the “New Age of DC Heroes” line. It’s a group of books featuring newer or secondary characters DC wishes to promote. These include the Fantastic Four-esque title “The Terrifics.”
There’s no word on whether DC plans to scale back on the bimonthly title releases, as $8 a month for following one title’s steep. However, given “Batman” is their top-selling title, I can see DC still banking on fans coughing up the $8 without hesitation. I also assume DC would like to get the long-running “Detective Comics” up to its 1000th issue as soon as possible.
I’ve written before about my feelings on the future of single-issue comics. While the format has its supporters, and is still a major part of overall comic sales, I still feel the future of the comic medium’s more in graphic novels, digital comics, webcomics, and the like, not increasingly expensive pamphlets that weren’t really created for today’s Big Two storytelling styles/formats/pricing. Of course, for those who want to switch to trade-waiting, trade paperbacks are pretty affordable.
Image by tunechick83 from Pixabay
