As Scott says from time to time DC has been taking Baby steps into digital comics. Well, Now they've just taken a much bigger one - I've announced Day and Date release for the Entire line of comics on the DC imprint, starting after the flashpoint event is over.
Yep. Now you can pay four bucks for a bunch of DRMed 1's and 0's that you'll finish reading in five minutes the same day as you could pay four bucks for a stapled pamphlet that you'll finish reading in five minutes at the comic book store.
"Mainstream" comics are broken as fuck, and they're barely even trying to fix it.
Nah, They've cut prices. Holding the line at $2.99 for DC and Vertigo. And as for digital, usually new issues price at anywhere from $1.15 to $2.99, depending on what you're looking at.
"Mainstream" comics are broken as fuck, and they're barely even trying to fix it.
I'm not so sure - DC and Marvel main imprints are not great, But BOOM! and the rest have some consistently good books, and a better way of going about things. BOOM! generally do well, have their whole back catalog available digitally, and release comics day and date at about $1.99 for digital. Oh, and they Print Atomic Robo, so that's a bonus tick.
Nah, They've cut prices. Holding the line at $2.99 for DC and Vertigo. And as for digital, usually new issues price at anywhere from $0.99 to $2.99, depending on what you're looking at.
Really? Do you have a source on that? Last I heard, they were $3.99 for day-and-date, and dropping to $2.99 a month later. Though I don't have a source on that, other than "some guy on the internet".
EDIT: Okay, looks like it's actually $2.99, but that's still the same price as their print books. And seriously -- $2.99 for a DRMed digital file that you'll finish reading in five minutes? That's abjectly stupid. You pay $.99 for a song you'll listen to over and over and over. I don't know what the economics are on the back end, but out here, among the people who might actually want to buy these things -- it just feels like they're pissing right in my face.
I'm not so sure - DC and Marvel main imprints are not great, But BOOM! and the rest have some consistently good books, and a better way of going about things. BOOM! generally do well, have their whole back catalog available digitally, and release comics day and date at about $1.99 for digital. Oh, and they Print Atomic Robo, so that's a bonus tick.
When I said "mainstream comics", I meant Marvel and DC, and I also meant their business practices more than their content.
Really? Do you have a source on that? Last I heard, they were $3.99 for day-and-date, and dropping to $2.99 a month later. Though I don't have a source on that, other than "some guy on the internet".
It's $2.99 day and date digital or paper. Then the digital drops to $1.99 after some amount of time. Either way, the prices are still obscene.
EDIT: Okay, looks like it's actually $2.99, but that's still the same price as their print books. And seriously -- $2.99 for a DRMed digital file that you'll finish reading in five minutes? That's abjectly stupid. You pay $.99 for a song you'll listen to over and over and over. I don't know what the economics are on the back end, but out here, among the people who might actually want to buy these things -- it just feels like they're pissing right in my face.
Nope, I don't pay 2.99 for digital comics. Because I don't buy digital comics. The few comics where I don't fancy to wait for the trade, I have on a pull list at my store. I just don't like reading comics on my phone. Maybe that would be different if I had an ipad, but Can't be arsed right now.
That's abjectly stupid. You pay $.99 for a song you'll listen to over and over and over.
Yep. I also occasionally pay for an e-book I'll read more than once, I read my comics more than once, I read any book I own more than once, I listen to audiobooks more than once. In fact, most of the stuff I don't bother reading more than once is either A)Shit, B)I don't like it or C)Shit, but Free! I know there is the usual "Oh, but there's more media than you could consume in your lifetime out there, even if they stopped making stuff right now!" argument, but fuck that, so what if I want to go and read a back issue of Scrooge, or Atomic Robo, or Sandman again? I own it, because I enjoy it, and because I enjoy it, I'll very likely read it over and over.
Now Pardon me, I have to go dump the contents of my wallet in the "Stupid jar". I put a buck in there every time I do something stupid, and I forgot which forum I was saying something non-negative about American comics on. That's at least a fucking fiver right there. Shit, I better get out of here before I say something like "Hey, Irredeemable and Incorruptable ain't bad, and I kinda like Tank Girl!", because that'd be another tenner gone to the jar.
I think you're arguing, while I'm trying to discuss. Sorry for the confusion.
EDIT: And now that sounds dickish. What I mean is that I don't think we really disagree much about anything here. I just think DC's latest move here is far too little to help anything much.
I think you're arguing, while I'm trying to discuss. Sorry for the confusion.
No, I simply said "Hey, This is what DC are doing." And then corrected you slightly, but to be fair, it's easy to forget the prices.
EDIT: And now that sounds dickish. What I mean is that I don't think we really disagree much about anything here. I just think DC's latest move here is far too little to help anything much.
Yeah, that's straight up the way I took it - the former, not the latter. Pardon me for speaking out of turn in this post, before I edited it back - that was straight striking back because I thought you were being a dick, and since you weren't, that's just not on. I don't think we disagree, no - but I do think you made some bad points against it, your primary point is sound.
It's fine, It's entirely my fault, I sparked off a little quick. I'm pretty fuckin' grumpy lately, but that doesn't give me an excuse to take it out on anyone, let alone yourself. I should be apologizing, not you, so sorry man, you don't deserve me lashing at you.
It's fine, It's entirely my fault, I sparked off a little quick. I'm pretty fuckin' grumpy lately, but that doesn't give me an excuse to take it out on anyone, let alone yourself. I should be apologizing, not you, so sorry man, you don't deserve me lashing at you.
Nah, it's my fault too. I'm noticing a lot lately how easy it is to come off as rude or combative on the internet, even when you totally don't mean to at all. I know I did a couple times here today. When I said "you're arguing, I'm discussing", what I meant was that you seemed to have interpreted my post as a disagreement with you, and you were defending your position against a perceived attack, while I didn't think that we disagreed about much, and I just wanted to talk about the details of the issue at hand. Of course, in retrospect, that's not anything like what I actually said. So, I'm sorry for that. I've got to consider my words more carefully on the internet.
So anyway, what points did I make that you think are bad? I did imply that you only read a comic once, which is certainly not the case for everyone, so I'll take that one. But I still think it's a valid point -- you'll listen to a song you like hundreds of times over the years. How many times will you really read a comic you like? Probably not more than a few. I just feel that $2.99 is way too much to charge for a download of a 22-page comic. Hell, I feel like it's too much to pay for a print copy of a 22-page comic, but I understand that the economics of the whole situation make it pretty unlikely that it could be any other way. That's a big part of why I think that the Western comics industry is broken. I don't mean that Western comics themselves are broken -- there's a lot of good material coming out all the time. But the industry itself (at least the Marvel/DC/Diamond side of it) is in a hole that it's never going to get out of without making some massive changes to its very foundations.
So, I'm sorry for that. I've got to consider my words more carefully on the internet.
Ditto that. It's easier to be my blunt, straightforward self when speaking, but in text, I have to be more careful, or I come across all wrong. It only gets worse at times like this, where the softer disagreeability(Well, still being disagreeable, just being less of a wanker about it) gets much more force when it's in text where I have to work much harder to convey tone.
So anyway, what points did I make that you think are bad? I did imply that you only read a comic once, which is certainly not the case for everyone, so I'll take that one. But I still think it's a valid point -- you'll listen to a song you like hundreds of times over the years. How many times will you really read a comic you like? Probably not more than a few.
I think that's the primary one. I know a lot of people who are into comics, and almost to a man, they'll often pull out old arcs, trades, or issues and read them again for various reasons.
Hell, I must have read Trasmet a good 20 times now easily, Scott pilgrim a good dozen, and so on. Most of the comics I still own - honestly the majority of comics I've purchased - I will pull out and re-read from time to time, not just for the reading of it, but to appreciate the art and colour(if it's in colour), to refresh myself on storylines, to get context on newer comics I've owned, so on. Lately, I've been cracking back through a lot of my Alan Moore stuff, because it looks like within the upcoming DC Relaunch(since reboot is such a dirty word, now days, isn't it?), because it seems that lately, they've been writing out a lot of Moore's work - For example, when he said "Nah, swamp thing is really just an earth elemental" and now he's back to being a dude, and if you haven't read or heard, Oracle/Barb gordon has been getting feeling and twitches back in her legs and feet - and of course, Killing joke is moore's work, but that's a different discussion. I'm not a bag-and-board-everything-on-sight kinda guy, but I do take decent care of my stuff, and I'm still re-reading comics I bought when I was in my teens.
The people I know who do buy digital comics tend to be much the same - they will re-read comics a hell of a lot. I even know a few who will purchase digitally, and then download a pirate copy of the book, just so that they can archive a version of the book they've bought, so they can keep reading later on, even if the DRM eventually fails and locks them out. I even know a few people who have gone all-digital, and very rarely buy print comics anymore.
$2.99 is a bit much for a digital comic, but in print, well, I suppose it's more reasonable to me, because as usual, I'm used to the "Oh, you're Australian" tax. For the longest time, I was paying roughly five bucks an issue(print, this is before digital gained any traction), so three bucks an issue doesn't seem so bad to me. Don't even talk to me about trade prices - What's that, you want the latest Secret Six or Deadpool collection? Maybe the watchmen trade? $40 bucks minimum, sucka, don't like it, too bad. And down here, the same song that costs you 99 cents costs us a buck sixty or thereabouts - so again, skewing my point of view as to the value of these things - You said it's like they're pissing in your face(I hear Bear Grylls is a big comic fan, nowdays) but for us, it's like they're finally giving us a goddamn break.
I do agree, DC and Marvel have been making quite a few somewhat poor business decisions for quite a while, and they really need to shape up, no matter the quality of the content. The problem is that they're trying to hang onto the way things were before, and trying everything from before over again to see if it works again - when this isn't going to work that well anymore. They're getting to the point where it's going to be either make some big changes(or at least, a bunch of smaller changes over a reasonable period of time) - or they're just going to die out.
Well, as for the other point - I suppose I'm being a bit too pedantic about the "Mainstream" label. I mean, Image is pretty much mainstream now, ditto BOOM!, and there are other smaller publishers who have either mainstream or the next best thing to it titles. I'd even call Bongo Comics mainstream, because you don't get much more mainstream than the Simpsons and Futurama. You did mean the "Big Two", but I don't think that the big two are all there is to "Mainstream", which is a bit too broad of a label - since there are mainstream publishers who are making better business decisions than the Big Two.
I've been resigned to the method of pirating books then buying trades. I don't care if a publisher is obscure or in financial trouble; it doesn't mean that I have to pay up to $3 - $5 for a few pages because the industry is dying out hell print is dying out. I actually prefer reading on a widescreen monitor, I don't know, I'm probably weird that way but on a 30" monitor its like reading everything in Absolute format.
At the moment the comics industry is going through the same crap as the music industry but for some reason aren't learning from other people's mistakes.
Churba why are you buying from Australian stores (for trades) you can still get a bunch of trades for relatively cheap from Amazon.
Churba why are you buying from Australian stores (for trades) you can still get a bunch of trades for relatively cheap from Amazon.
I generally get them from amazon NOW, but when I say "For the longest time" I'm talking about since I was 14-15, when Amazon was a relatively obscure online retailer(and if you weren't in the US, you'd probably have never heard of it) and everything from the states was twice the price because our currency was much weaker against the USD - which meant I'd be paying double(minimum), plus double for shipping to somewhere in the US, plus Double to have a family friend ship it out to me, since Amazon wouldn't ship to Australia for quite a while there - and up until the last maybe three years, it hasn't been practical in most cases, when I could walk down to my comic shop, and grab it for equal or less, or even get it from a second-hand bin.
Nowdays, If I'm buying a trade, I'll cruise down to my local comic shop and see what the prices are like (often quite good), and if it's less than Amazon+shipping, I'll get it there, if it's less on Amazon when I include shipping, I'll get it online.
So now that I'm caught up with Castle Waiting, Amazon recommended Beasts of Burden. Has anyone read this? The story looks interesting enough:
Welcome to Burden Hill-a picturesque little town adorned with white picket fences and green, green grass, home to a unique team of paranormal investigators. Beneath this shiny exterior, Burden Hill harbors dark and sinister secrets, and it's up to a heroic gang of dogs-and one cat-to protect the town from the evil forces at work. These are the Beasts of Burden Hill-Pugs, Ace, Jack, Whitey, Red and the Orphan-whose early experiences with the paranormal (including a haunted doghouse, a witches' coven, and a pack of canine zombies) have led them to become members of the Wise Dog Society, official animal agents sworn to protect their town from evil. This turns out to be no easy task, as they soon encounter demonic cannibal frogs, tortured spirits, a secret rat society, and a bizarre and deadly resurrection in the Burden Hill cemetery-events which lead to fear and heartbreak as our four-legged heroes discover that the evil within Burden Hill is growing and on the move. Can our heroes overcome these supernatural menaces? Can evil be bested by a paranormal team that doesn't have hands? And even more importantly, will Pugs ever shut the hell up?
ell, I must have read Trasmet a good 20 times now easily, Scott pilgrim a good dozen, and so on. ...
Wow. I suspect you might be a bit of an exceptional case, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who re-read stuff quite a bit. Personally, I seldom completely re-read anything (I've got enough stuff sitting on my shelf that I haven't yet read once), but I do like to flip through old stuff if the art is good. So, on that note, I guess the perceived value of a comic varies from person-to-person. But from a production standpoint, it's crazy to think that they feel justified charging $2.99 for a download of a 22-page book. I suppose the price is less to do with the actual costs and more to do with what the market will bear (though I doubt the market will actually bear it so well.) They've blamed the rising price of comics on the rising price of paper for a long time now. If that's true, digital should absolutely be less, what with the only-ever-falling cost of bits. But I think it's just like CDs -- they were cheaper to produce than tapes and records, and they always said they'd be cheaper once they really caught on, and that obviously never happened. I don't know -- I guess the only thing to do is wait and find out if it works.
Well, as for the other point - I suppose I'm being a bit too pedantic about the "Mainstream" label. I mean, Image is pretty much mainstream now, ditto BOOM!, and there are other smaller publishers who have either mainstream or the next best thing to it titles. I'd even call Bongo Comics mainstream, because you don't get much more mainstream than the Simpsons and Futurama. You did mean the "Big Two", but I don't think that the big two are all there is to "Mainstream", which is a bit too broad of a label - since there are mainstream publishers who are making better business decisions than the Big Two.
Yeah, the last thing I want to do is argue about the meaning of a word. When I wrote "mainstream", I meant "big two", and that's all I meant. If that's not the right word, I'm fine with that. The idea of there even being a "mainstream" in comics is a bit strange anyway, comics being such a niche industry, and superheroes (usually synonymous with "mainstream" in comics) being such a niche genre outside of comics. So what is it that makes you say that Image or BOOM! are mainstream? Certainly they produce a lot of subject matter that's closer to "real" mainstream tastes, but they're still an extremely small piece of an extremely small pie. Aside from Walking Dead, which people only know from the TV show, and maybe Spawn (which doesn't have much to do with "modern" Image comics, really,) are there any Image or BOOM! titles that your average person-on-the-street will have heard of?
I generally get them from amazon NOW, but when I say "For the longest time" I'm talking about since I was 14-15, when Amazon was a relatively obscure online retailer
Sorry I missed that line, I did the same I was reading comics that I was buying from Australian comic book shops since I was 12 but at that time I was still spending $3 a comic I would buy 5 single issues at once and go into back issues. I didn't start buying trades till Preacher started releasing trades, I initially started buying from the comic book store but then found the cheaper prices internationally.
It sucks that Amazon hasn't got a store in Australia, but lots of tech related stuff sucks in Australia. Its depressing but not worth moving to the US for (I already tried the UK and didn't like it).
So what is it that makes you say that Image or BOOM! are mainstream?
Mostly size - they're some of the better known comics publishers outside of the big two, Image being in the top five(They're right behind Marvel and DC, with Dark Horse and IDW a hair's breadth behind them), and boom being not far off.
Aside from Walking Dead, which people only know from the TV show, and maybe Spawn (which doesn't have much to do with "modern" Image comics, really,) are there any Image or BOOM! titles that your average person-on-the-street will have heard of?
Depends in what way - I mean, image has GI Joe, KISS: Psycho Circus, Mask of Zorro, Masters of the Universe, Power rangers, TMNT, Tomb Raider and Voltron, just from memory, And BOOM!'s mainstream strength comes from their licensed titles and re-prints, like HERO, the warhammer 40K comics, Die Hard, 28 Days Later, Jennifer's Body, Farscape, Eureka, The Incredibles, The Muppet Show, Toy Story, Wall-E, three mickey titles, two Disney label titles, four duck titles(Donald, Scrooge, Darkwing, and Ducktales) and the Rescue Rangers.
Wow. I suspect you might be a bit of an exceptional case, but I'm sure there are a lot of people who re-read stuff quite a bit.
It helps that Whenever I get a bit down, I read my comics. If I feel like I can't write, I read some transmet, for example. I am a statistical extreme, I'd suppose - it grew from the habit with regular books, where when I was a kid, my parents couldn't afford to keep up with how fast I read, so I ended up re-reading a lot.
But from a production standpoint, it's crazy to think that they feel justified charging $2.99 for a download of a 22-page book. I suppose the price is less to do with the actual costs and more to do with what the market will bear (though I doubt the market will actually bear it so well.)
I agree. While with a paper comic, you have to actually produce a physical object and cover costs, so I can kinda see where they're coming from, but a digital comic, as soon as you sell enough to pay for the artist's time, you're making damned close to 100% profit. The market is bearing it for now, but it will eventually kick back on them.
They've blamed the rising price of comics on the rising price of paper for a long time now. If that's true, digital should absolutely be less, what with the only-ever-falling cost of bits. But I think it's just like CDs -- they were cheaper to produce than tapes and records, and they always said they'd be cheaper once they really caught on, and that obviously never happened. I don't know -- I guess the only thing to do is wait and find out if it works.
Oh man, I remember those days. I don't know if it's going to work either.
Sorry I missed that line, I did the same I was reading comics that I was buying from Australian comic book shops since I was 12 but at that time I was still spending $3 a comic I would buy 5 single issues at once and go into back issues. I didn't start buying trades till Preacher started releasing trades, I initially started buying from the comic book store but then found the cheaper prices internationally.
Yep - Much the same here. Not to mention Swap meets, where I could pick up whole arcs for a couple of bucks, or trade shows.
It sucks that Amazon hasn't got a store in Australia, but lots of tech related stuff sucks in Australia. Its depressing but not worth moving to the US for (I already tried the UK and didn't like it).
You can buy from Amazon and get them to ship here now, but failing that, there are postbox services available where you have it sent to a US address, and then the people who run the service automatically get it and ship it to your real address for you.
After a discussion of Marvel chronology yesterday, we came to the conclusion that I have read some of the worst story arcs ever written. After getting out of Marvel comics around 1993, I later got back in for two horrific stretches: the Spider-Man Clone Saga and the X-Men Grant Morrison era. Good lord.
I'll give you the Clone Saga as being horrible, but you'd put Grant Morrison's New X-Men in the same category? Wow. I LOVED what he did when he was writing X-Men. I thought he really shook things up and actually evolved the comic in directions that Marvel, and previous writers, would never have dared go.
I have to agree Grant Morrison was great on X-men but got flak because he was changing up from the status quo so the X-Fans have said negative things to chirp about in regards to a very well written arc.
I have to agree Grant Morrison was great on X-men but got flak because he was changing up from the status quo so the X-Fans have said negative things to chirp about in regards to a very well written arc.
Also, Frank Quitely can be polarizing. Personally, I love is expressive, puffy characters.
I don't get this at all, Quitely is a freaking amazing artist IMHO. I think most Morrison / Quitely team ups are awesome, similar to Andy Diggle / Jock, Ennis/Dillon and Loeb / Sale (in the Batman universe).
Comments
"Mainstream" comics are broken as fuck, and they're barely even trying to fix it.
EDIT: Okay, looks like it's actually $2.99, but that's still the same price as their print books. And seriously -- $2.99 for a DRMed digital file that you'll finish reading in five minutes? That's abjectly stupid. You pay $.99 for a song you'll listen to over and over and over. I don't know what the economics are on the back end, but out here, among the people who might actually want to buy these things -- it just feels like they're pissing right in my face. When I said "mainstream comics", I meant Marvel and DC, and I also meant their business practices more than their content.
Now Pardon me, I have to go dump the contents of my wallet in the "Stupid jar". I put a buck in there every time I do something stupid, and I forgot which forum I was saying something non-negative about American comics on. That's at least a fucking fiver right there. Shit, I better get out of here before I say something like "Hey, Irredeemable and Incorruptable ain't bad, and I kinda like Tank Girl!", because that'd be another tenner gone to the jar.
EDIT: And now that sounds dickish. What I mean is that I don't think we really disagree much about anything here. I just think DC's latest move here is far too little to help anything much.
So anyway, what points did I make that you think are bad? I did imply that you only read a comic once, which is certainly not the case for everyone, so I'll take that one. But I still think it's a valid point -- you'll listen to a song you like hundreds of times over the years. How many times will you really read a comic you like? Probably not more than a few. I just feel that $2.99 is way too much to charge for a download of a 22-page comic. Hell, I feel like it's too much to pay for a print copy of a 22-page comic, but I understand that the economics of the whole situation make it pretty unlikely that it could be any other way. That's a big part of why I think that the Western comics industry is broken. I don't mean that Western comics themselves are broken -- there's a lot of good material coming out all the time. But the industry itself (at least the Marvel/DC/Diamond side of it) is in a hole that it's never going to get out of without making some massive changes to its very foundations.
Hell, I must have read Trasmet a good 20 times now easily, Scott pilgrim a good dozen, and so on. Most of the comics I still own - honestly the majority of comics I've purchased - I will pull out and re-read from time to time, not just for the reading of it, but to appreciate the art and colour(if it's in colour), to refresh myself on storylines, to get context on newer comics I've owned, so on. Lately, I've been cracking back through a lot of my Alan Moore stuff, because it looks like within the upcoming DC Relaunch(since reboot is such a dirty word, now days, isn't it?), because it seems that lately, they've been writing out a lot of Moore's work - For example, when he said "Nah, swamp thing is really just an earth elemental" and now he's back to being a dude, and if you haven't read or heard, Oracle/Barb gordon has been getting feeling and twitches back in her legs and feet - and of course, Killing joke is moore's work, but that's a different discussion. I'm not a bag-and-board-everything-on-sight kinda guy, but I do take decent care of my stuff, and I'm still re-reading comics I bought when I was in my teens.
The people I know who do buy digital comics tend to be much the same - they will re-read comics a hell of a lot. I even know a few who will purchase digitally, and then download a pirate copy of the book, just so that they can archive a version of the book they've bought, so they can keep reading later on, even if the DRM eventually fails and locks them out. I even know a few people who have gone all-digital, and very rarely buy print comics anymore.
$2.99 is a bit much for a digital comic, but in print, well, I suppose it's more reasonable to me, because as usual, I'm used to the "Oh, you're Australian" tax. For the longest time, I was paying roughly five bucks an issue(print, this is before digital gained any traction), so three bucks an issue doesn't seem so bad to me. Don't even talk to me about trade prices - What's that, you want the latest Secret Six or Deadpool collection? Maybe the watchmen trade? $40 bucks minimum, sucka, don't like it, too bad. And down here, the same song that costs you 99 cents costs us a buck sixty or thereabouts - so again, skewing my point of view as to the value of these things - You said it's like they're pissing in your face(I hear Bear Grylls is a big comic fan, nowdays) but for us, it's like they're finally giving us a goddamn break.
I do agree, DC and Marvel have been making quite a few somewhat poor business decisions for quite a while, and they really need to shape up, no matter the quality of the content. The problem is that they're trying to hang onto the way things were before, and trying everything from before over again to see if it works again - when this isn't going to work that well anymore. They're getting to the point where it's going to be either make some big changes(or at least, a bunch of smaller changes over a reasonable period of time) - or they're just going to die out.
Well, as for the other point - I suppose I'm being a bit too pedantic about the "Mainstream" label. I mean, Image is pretty much mainstream now, ditto BOOM!, and there are other smaller publishers who have either mainstream or the next best thing to it titles. I'd even call Bongo Comics mainstream, because you don't get much more mainstream than the Simpsons and Futurama. You did mean the "Big Two", but I don't think that the big two are all there is to "Mainstream", which is a bit too broad of a label - since there are mainstream publishers who are making better business decisions than the Big Two.
I don't care if a publisher is obscure or in financial trouble; it doesn't mean that I have to pay up to $3 - $5 for a few pages because the industry is dying out hell print is dying out.
I actually prefer reading on a widescreen monitor, I don't know, I'm probably weird that way but on a 30" monitor its like reading everything in Absolute format.
At the moment the comics industry is going through the same crap as the music industry but for some reason aren't learning from other people's mistakes.
Churba why are you buying from Australian stores (for trades) you can still get a bunch of trades for relatively cheap from Amazon.
Nowdays, If I'm buying a trade, I'll cruise down to my local comic shop and see what the prices are like (often quite good), and if it's less than Amazon+shipping, I'll get it there, if it's less on Amazon when I include shipping, I'll get it online.
It sucks that Amazon hasn't got a store in Australia, but lots of tech related stuff sucks in Australia. Its depressing but not worth moving to the US for (I already tried the UK and didn't like it).
I'm interested to see how other people depict these sorts of feelings.