Are comics/TPBs value for money?

[grahamthomson]

In terms of what you might get from a comic (not just Transformers), such as entertainment, thought-provocation, artwork appreciation, repeat-readability and so forth, do you think comics and TPBs represent good value for money compared to other books, magazines, DVDs, cinema trips, museum admission, gig tickets, etc.?

[Andy Turnbull]

I think it varies. Some comics are dense and well worth reading and re-reading. Fell despite only having 16 pages of strip is a dense and engaging read. The Ultimates on the other hand is a hollow shell of intricate yet unengaging splash pages. And on the flip side many a film is not good value for money - Catwoman, The War of the Worlds, Napoleon Dynamite.

Andy

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Purely in terms of the amount of time it takes to read them, they are certainly not value for money compared with other books. The same applies to going to the cinema.

But I think this really comes down to books being so cheap to produce compared with other media. I mean, you can get the greatest novels ever written in £1.50 paperbacks - publishers don't even have to pay royalties to Charles Dickens & Shakespeare.

But variety is the spice of life, and I'd hate to read all the time.

Martin

[Deleted]

I agree with Andy on this. Some of the comics I have picked up (not necessarily brought) have been value for money but others like some of the ones churned out by Dynamite are pretty much over priced as they only have the comic strip in (which can be either a good read or a bad one) and a stack of adverts. As for TPB's because they mainly only have a selection of comic issues in them they can be well worth the money if the title is triple-A material but if the title isn't then its best left on the shelves. Some of the Transformers TPB's I've got have got features such as concept artwork and exclusive covers in them and they are worth the money in my opinion.

[The Doctor]

The best value for money TPB's are Marvel's Essential line. 500ish pages for around £7 on amazon from the era of US comics when issues were generally jam-packed with stuff. They can take weeks to read.

Many current comics are bad value for money, ie Astonishing X-Men, etc, which take 2 mins to read.

-Ralph

[legios]

I have to say that the answer to this is a definite "depends" (Why, yes. I do indeed do consulting work for the Neutral Planet embassy sometimes...). Some comics have enough content to be worth the money, and others don't, the same with trade paperbacks. For example, something like Powers I find holds tremendous rereadability - you have to tot up the value you get out of repeated revisits to a piece of material and not just the initial pass through to really decide whether something is value for money for you. "Reign of Starscream" for example, wasn't value for money for me because I couldn't see me rereading it at all, and I didn't enjoy the first pass through. By contrast the Patlabor collections were definitely worth the fiver I paid for each of them - light and fluffy certainly but the entertain on a third of fourth read-through.

In the end the answer to this question can only be a personal one. For some folk the entire medium is not worth money. I feel that it is unfair to make blanket judgements about an entire medium - for example, I have no interest in opera and would not enjoy sitting through one. From that perspective I could claim that opera is not value for money - but I'd only be right insofar as I was speaking from my own standpoint.

It is a personal judgement call, and one that is going to be different for each individual.

Karl

[The Doctor]

May 21, 2008 20:40:00 GMT legios said:

I have to say that the answer to this is a definite "depends" (Why, yes. I do indeed do consulting work for the Neutral Planet embassy sometimes...).
Karl

"If I die, tell my wife: 'Hello'."

-Ralph

[legios]

"It's a beige alert."

Karl

[Andy Turnbull]

"All I know is my gut says maybe."

Andy