There is no doubt that collecting comics can be an expensive hobby. New comics are not cheap. Comic publishers find clever ways to incentivize you to spend more money. Variant covers. Story events. Multiple titles featuring the most popular characters of the day. These are just some of the many tricks of the trade.
Even collected editions can come at a premium. Those shelves full of pristine volumes of omnibus editions that appear on popular youtuber and twitch streamers would set you back a small fortune. A single omnibus retails at around $100. All those shelves smack of a (great) marketing campaign to me.
And then we get into the realms of indiegago and Kickstarter backed projects. A 64 page comic can be touted at upwards of $30 on some such campaigns. Clever and confusing promotions involving game of chance elements and packaging up cheap bonus items can help propel the price of the comics ever higher.
But is any of this a real problem? Not really. If people didn't enjoy such products they wouldn't be successful. If you can afford to buy the most expensive variant covers and wall fulls of omnibus editions, more power to you!
But what if you can't? Does that mean you can't enjoy comics as a hobby? Of course not. And to prove it I'm going to give you some ideas on how to enjoy comics and not go thermonuclear on the bank account.
Not all back issues are slabbed up, marked up, investment opportunities of lifetime[^Spoiler: Comics are not an investment vehicle at all]! You can actually find some great comics written & drawn by great creative teams for bargain prices in the back issue boxes of your local comic shop.
And if you look in the discounted boxes you can find some eclectic and often overlooked titles. Sure some of these will be pretty terrible, but you’ll also find some hidden gems. Keep an open mind and a sharp eye out to find some comic treasure.
Don’t buy variant covers no matter how pretty they are. You’ll almost certainly be able to find a picture online of most variant covers, so if you really like one, you can still enjoy the art without the pesky issue of paying a premium to own a copy.
Forget dreams of shelves full of omnis. Forget the tyranny of having to store box after box of single issues. Buy trade paperback collections of the stories you want to read.
Got a friend who is into comics? Well… find some. Maybe set up a reading group, and share your trade paperbacks with each other. Or take sharing to an industrial scale… and hit up your library. Chances are they have a graphic novel section.
Failing to plan is planning to spend money…
If you just hit up the comics shop with no real idea of what you intend to buy and how much you are prepared to spend you may well find yourself spending a lot more than you intended to.
Setting and planning a budget for your comic book hobby is the best approach, but may seem too restrictive to some. An easier step is to check the release list ahead of time and make a list of what you intend to buy and perhaps more importantly what you are not going to buy when you visit your comic book store of choice.
And if, dear reader, you too find yourself one night scrolling through a long list of REWARD TIERS and ADD-ONS for some comic Kickstarter campaign… I would humbly suggest you do the math for what you are getting for your money, and then quickly close the browser tab…
Do you have any tips or strategies on how you enjoy comics and save money? Share them in comments or reblogs or whatever.