And They Will All Live Like Cartoonists: The US Economy And Comics, Post #7
* the writer Sean Kleefeld looks at exchange rates and how they might rapidly exert an influence over the North American comics industry.
* the retail manager Chris Powell of Lone Star Comics speaks to the WizKids cessation and economic issues in the Dallas/Fort Worth area in general, noting that economic hard times haven't quite hit that area yet in a way that they've seen an effect on their business.
* the cartoonist and artist Stuart Immonen wrote in with one last set of ideas regarding inflation and comics:
I thought I had freely admitted that my figures were also skewed, however to the high side. I don't believe I "mixed and matched"; rather, I took prices as they were in a given year (as provided by Rich), and applied the Consumer Price Index rate of inflation to project where they "should" be the following year. So I stand by my figures as valid, but only from one year to the next. It's unusual for manufactured goods (as opposed to raw or wholesale items) to have their prices increased annually based on the CPI. More often -- and this is the case with comics, as the chart shows -- the price is flat for a time, then sees a jump well beyond the CPI as both a recovery against the years of no gain as well as against future increases.
In Column 8, I've tied the increases directly to the CPI, and fed those results (not the actual cover prices) into the formula for succeeding years. So in the universe where comics and everything else increased retail prices exactly as proscribed by the CPI, even in the late seventies days of double-digit inflation, the prices are modified by mere pennies. Thirty years on, the result is very close to Rich's, but I would suggest slightly more accurate.
But retail prices don't go up by pennies in any business -- if we ignore the real-world scenario I posit comics have actually followed ( big jump followed by (and following) no change), and take the same formula as in Column 8 but apply a "ceiling" (which is what Excel calls it -- it's more like a "floor") of increases no smaller than five cents, the final figure changes dramatically. It's still nowhere near the $2.99 level, but the changes from this point on increase exponentially.
Now I've given up on numbers, too. Back to work.
* I don't know enough about the major non-North American comics industries to do a lot of commentary about how a worldwide economic recession would have an impact on those countries, but occasionally something will catch my eye. If I'm reading this article correctly, Editions Milan -- which I believe does both traditional BD and translates manga for the French-language market -- may be working its way through some staffing changes in order to reduce costs.
* the reviewer Don MacPherson points at a couple of comics that he believes may fuel the dissatisfaction readers will begin to feel about serial comics. I think it points to a certain volatility in the serial pamphlet market that's unique to that format. Why wouldn't you wait until the trade, wait for the library or skip certain books altogether if you couldn't trust the solicitation information and you might get stuck with something you clearly don't find worth the money?
* finally, the retailer Brian Hibbs talks about the forthcoming potentially deepening recession and how that might have an impact on comics. He suggests something smart, which is that with readers deciding to participate or not in certain kinds of comics there's going to be a psychological component of certain price points vs. certain expectations of quality. Like Lone Star's Powell he notes that economic downturn has failed to hit his store in any significant fashion thus far. On that last point, I think it's important to note that even if you toss out the most severe predictions and ignore the Mad Max ones entirely, there's still enough belief out there we could easily be heading into a recession of early-'80s length (a couple of years) or more. So the first wave of consequences could be yet to come, perhaps starting with massive layoffs come the New Year.
I thought I had freely admitted that my figures were also skewed, however to the high side. I don't believe I "mixed and matched"; rather, I took prices as they were in a given year (as provided by Rich), and applied the Consumer Price Index rate of inflation to project where they "should" be the following year. So I stand by my figures as valid, but only from one year to the next. It's unusual for manufactured goods (as opposed to raw or wholesale items) to have their prices increased annually based on the CPI. More often -- and this is the case with comics, as the chart shows -- the price is flat for a time, then sees a jump well beyond the CPI as both a recovery against the years of no gain as well as against future increases.
