"Black Road," "The Fix," "Criminal" & More in Image Comics' April 2016 Solicitations

[Joker]

That's my guess as well; purely looking at drop off in numbers there's a bit higher percentage loss. This is one of those books that does offer some bonus content that for me will sustain my pull.

I really wish Image was more forthcoming with such details, as well with resultant pricing model. But hey, I get that its a business and such info isn't 'owed' to the consumer.

Recalling back to when Seeley raised Revival to $3.99 he implied it was Image's call alluding that comic shops were less reluctant to occupy shelf space for a $2.99 book..

Couple things, in order:

Remender books often have extra pages of story at no extra cost, and I think that's great. I never notice they're extra long until the letter column into, because he's just using the amount of pages the story needs. So, again, I don't mind paying a little more for those books.

I don't know a single publisher that divulges those numbers, let alone even talk about the 'why' except the occasional 'printing' explanation. Sadly.

Casanova got flack from retailers for being $2 back when it was an Image 'slimline book'. They didn't want to waste shelf space on a cheap book. So that might very well be a real concern at this point. Especially for Image, when a lot of shops still trade heavily, if not almost exclusively in Marvel/DC.

[TotalSnorefest]

In regards to rising costs of producing comics, a fairly recent issue of Saga mentioned this in passing in one of the letter columns. Might've been around #30? They mentioned things like paperstock had increased in price, but they chose to eat that cost and keep the price at $2.99. That's presumably more viable for something like Saga though, which sells around 50k and does phenomenal in collected format, than it is for books with smaller audiences.

[Joker]

Same as Walking Dead, which is still $3, and only slightly oversells Saga at this point. (Saga 30 sold 60k, but 31 was back down to 53. Which is still huge numbers. Walking Dead was barely hitting 30k at issue 80.)

Anyway, yeah, those books can eat some cost. I wonder how the shipping costs are for comics.

[armadillo]

I wonder how the shipping costs are for comics.

Higher and higher. Many publishers use Quebecor (Certainly, the Big Two and most East Coast print runs of the other publishers). The clue is in the name: As in, Canada. So shipping is likely going to be a factor that the industry will mention when and if 3.99/4.99 becomes the paradigm.

Chew: Demon Chicken Poyo #1
Criminal 10th Anniversary Special
Lazarus Sourcebook #1
Deadly Class #21
Dream Police #10
Elephantmen #71
Grizzly Shark #1
Saga #36
Tokyo Ghost #6

[Big Geek]

I'll be getting:

CRIMINAL 10TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL DEADLY EDITION: MAGAZINE-SIZE VARIANT
LAZARUS SOURCEBOOK #1