To be clear on the price thing, I have no issue with a comic that just came out costing $3. $4 is a bridge too far for 20-24 pages of story, but let's assume I have no problem with that, either.
I'm talking about old stuff. It's not an inflation issue*, it's the idea that as works recede into history, the price you can expect to demand for them decreases. This is very clear in film: a few months back, I bought a two-for-one DVD of the Bill and Ted movies for $5, because they are twenty years old and in the flat part of their long tail. It's difficult to reconcile three hours of classic cinema (oh, you know it) with a $1 price tag on an issue of Action Comics #252 (I know, I always use this example), which has only sixteen pages of Superman family related content because at the time Action was an anthology.**
It's even more difficult to reconcile that with $1 price point for comics that aren't even
historically important.
This argument doesn't have as much force in a printed format, because of the heavy fixed costs, but in an electronic format?
*And surely you don't propose that comics' prices have been pegged to the consumer price index. Twenty years ago, comics cost $1.50. If we go cents/page, 1991 prices are even lower. But in any event we have not experienced 100% inflation since 1991.
**Of course, it's a little hard to reconcile buying a brand-new two disc Blu-ray of, say,
Inception for $15 for the same price as five comic books that will take about half as long to read, but that's a different argument, really, and has more to do with the vicious cycle of comics-as-a-niche-interest.
