So all of a sudden I was being asked from various sources about a price increase for “X-Factor.” I knew nothing about it. Eventually I traced the source of the rumor to a thread on Comic Book Resources, the website that I’d put in my rearview over a year ago because of the frequently toxic environment. There I discovered a lengthy thread keying off some sort of early solicit material that declared the price was now $3.99.
Some people used it as an opportunity to complain about Marvel in general. Some used it as a chance to slag the book or me or both. Others steadfastly declared that the book was easily worth the additional money and they felt that Marvel had been disrespectful by not giving me a heads up. One or two even recalled when I went to the mat over a price increase some years back with “Captain Marvel.” Right. A tactic that: nearly destroyed my career at Marvel; got me widely derided by the professional community with exactly zero words of support; and eventually resulted in “U-Decide” which prompted many fans to decide that it had all been a publicity stunt from the get-go. So I lost credibility with pros, fans, and the book was cancelled two years later anyway. Yeah, THAT worked out. A repeat performance? I don’t think so.
Well, guess what. Turned out the preliminary info was wrong. The reason Marvel didn’t tell me was because there was no price increase; just a typo. The actual final solicits had it at $2.99.
Some people, combining conspiracy theories with self-aggrandizement, decided that it hadn’t been a typo at all, but rather a trial balloon, and that the fan responses had deterred Marvel from raising the price. Saying it was a typo was allegedly only a cover story.
But some others decided to put the blame for their being upset on the real culprit: Me.
“Do you know what, Marvel and PAD we’re (sic) aware of the ‘mistake’ and did nothing to put peoples (sic) minds to rest until today.”
“Marvel could have put people right on this at any time…Why didn’t PAD post something?”
“I agree, this whole episode has reflected badly on PAD. Very negligent behaviour.”
Hard to believe I left the mutant boards at CBR behind, huh.
PAD
• 
Considering how Marvel has moved a number of titles up to the $3.99 price point over the last year or two, the variety of reactions (save those blaming you) are understandable.
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Hard to believe I left the mutant boards at CBR behind, huh.
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It sounds more and more like I should be thankful I never thought to participate in their forums in the first place. 🙂
Indeed; the idea of paying $3.99 for a comic is still a bit tough to stomach, but X-Factor is a book I would pay $5 bones for. I think it’s that good. Nevertheless, I’m glad it’s not $3.99, although over the years, my ‘buy list’ has continued to shrink rather than expand (Winter Soldier is the first new book I’ve picked up in a while) because most writers just don’t put a product out there that I can get behind like X-Factor. (Secret Avengers and Justice League are the next books I can see myself not reading in a few months)
Hmmm. I check CBR News more-or-less daily, but I’ve never frequented the site’s message boards. Perhaps it’s just as well.
I have no issue with the news side, or various blogs. But the X-boards can be real snake pits.
PAD
The other boards aren’t terrible. But yeah, the X-Board is like that Red vs. Blue video: “Imagine going to your local middle school chess club and handing out crystal meth and guns.”
I post on the DC boards and it’s not bad, I mean, sometimes a thread gets nasty but for the most part… but despite reading a few X books (Including X-Factor, of course) I don’t post on that section…
It’s good to hear that the price increase was a mistake.
I agree. Depends on the specific board. The Hellboy Forum, for instance, is a big lovefest.
The CBR X-boards can vary between being treacherous and just being downright weird. The other boards are okay, but vary. Interestingly, of the different boards on there that I actually go into, it’s the ones for other media that are often the best. For example, the TV/Film board is usually pretty solid. Also, on the times I’ve used the Books or Games boards, I’ve had no complaints.
Cripes! And I really used to enjoy your question and answer sessions over there.
Was it Professor Farnsworth who said, “The Internet can be used for more than just pornography.” ?
Yeah: complaining.
I remember that prior to U-Decide, Marvel was moving in a direction where writers that had been with the company for a long time were being phased out or marginalized in favor of a new crop. Given that you’re the only writer remaining from that earlier era, I’d argue that U-Decide worked, in that it raised your profile and prevented you from being cast in that same “old, out-out-touch, irrelevant” bin so many other writers were. But it was definitely a gamble.
Although it helps that he was one of the few mainstays that was still actually good at writing…
I guess it’s a matter of taste, but I can think of quite a few writers from that era whose writing I really enjoyed and are now relegated the occasional miniseries or back-up story.
It reminds me of the scene in After Hours, where Griffin Dunne’s character spends much of the film ceing chased around downtown New York by a variety of strange people. Pausing for breath on a fire escape, he suddenly witnesses somebody being shot. Dunne’s character shakes his head in disgust and mutters, ‘I’ll probably get blamed for that!’
I just skimmed through that thread… it looks like one or two idiots, and everyone else telling them to shut up.
People are nuts.
Conspiracy theories as explanations for anything and everything have really supplanted actual thought and reasoning since the dawn of the age of the internet.
Oh, sure, that’s just what they want you to think…
Shhh !!! Don’t say that out loud or they’ll know that your on to them. And if…*Falls to floor, DEAD ! Curtsy of three throwing knives in his back.*
To be fair (and much as I hate to say ‘to be fair’ about a forum that frequently doesn’t deserve it), I took the ‘negligent behaviour’ comment to be sarcasm aimed at the first poster’s attempt to blame you for not correcting the error. In general I think most of the posters thought the 3.99 thread was needless scaremongering and that no-one was to blame for the misinformation except the thread starter who didn’t wait for the official solicits. But then again, with CBR you never know.
I don’t think that the thread starter is really to blame for assuming that the initially announced price was correct. Now all sorts of reactions to that may have been silly, and the idea, after the error was corrected, that it was anything but an error was silly. So would be the position that a lag of what, a few days? a week? in correcting a misposted price for something not on sale for months is somehow unacceptable.
Oh, I wasn’t suggesting *I* blamed the thread starter for raising the subject, just vaguely paraphrasing the gist of what I read over there. I think in their shoes I’d probably have waited for the official solicits – just in case – and then posted more of a ‘WTF? Different prices on different sites, has X-Factor gone up?’ type of thread. But that’s just me (and in truth, I wouldn’t start a thread at all because the dogpiling that happens over there makes it hardly worth it).
I am really enjoying X-Factor! Is Marvel going to put you on any other titles? It seems to me like they could be doing more with having you exclusively!
Diamond’s order forms for March still show X-Factor #235 and #236 as $3.99 each.
http://www.previewsworld.com/support/previews_docs/orderforms/MAR12_COF.pdf
They’ll probably put a correction in the Diamond Updates they release at the end of the week.
Yeah, but in the copy of Marvel Previews I downloaded from the Diamond retailer site they also listed both issues as being a single one-shot, which is a pretty good tip-off that it was a typo.
Every wonder if readers treat writers at the New York Times like this?
I guess that’s the difference between “readers” and (so-called) “fans”.
Wait until they discover that it was you behind everything all along.
Image format and price increases becoming the industry standard format? You and Image “adversary” Todd conspiring to fleece the readers and become millionaires.
Bookshelf format and special additions with multiple variant covers? All your doing and planned back in your sales days to maximize your profits once you skipped over from sales to creative.
Devaluation of the dollar and increased gas prices? All your doing to push your liberal “green energy” agenda.
Republican primary voting filled with voting irregularities, controversy and possible fraud so that the GOP gets either a moderate flip-flopper that the Right hates or a religious fanatic doomed to be slaughtered in a general election? All you pulling the strings to protect your boy Obama and insure his second term.
Think you can use some of that power and get my department a raise this year? It’s been a while and we could really use one.
I was also the second gunman at the Grassy Knoll; I helped D.B. Cooper get away, and I wrote the book of love.
PAD
But did you write the very first song?
According to expert testimony, you also let the dogs out and put the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder.
And you let the dogs out too right?
And were you the one on first?
I thought that Guido wrote the book of love.
This just in: Recently recovered footage shows that PAD killed JR! (He later went on to shoot Mr. Burns.) He started off this crime spree by offering some really potent ‘shrooms to Pam, causing her to dream an entire season.
(I have nothing to say here, I just wanna check out the new blank line ability…)
But did you put the bop in the bop-shoowop-dowop?
But. did you put the bomp in the bomp sh-bomp sh-bomp? Or the Ram in the ramalama ding dong?
What about the ramalamadingdong? Don’t tell me that was you TOO…
(I couldn’t have done it, at least; not enough RAM.)
And you turned me into a newt!
(Fortunately, I got better.)
I can’t do most message boards – just gets too ugly. Occasionally I’ll look one over but not for too long. I can’t even read the comments attached to comics-related FB articles.
In fairness to comic fans, they don’t exactly have a “lock” on such behavior. It seems news, sports, tv and movie boards get the same kinds of unthinking, ugly remarks.
And I have to say – X-factor is a great book. If I had to pay it, it would be worth the extra dollar.
It’ll probably go up in a year or so anyway – unless Marvel turns around and decides the $3.99 price point is too much for the rest of its titles (which, frankly, it is).
Personally, I’m more concerned that the phenomenal talent that is Emanuela Lupacchino will be siphoned off into one of those better selling titles.
Hëll, They Keep Killing Madrox is so dámņ good I’d pay 5 bucks an issue!
It’s rarely a good idea to encourage price increases. However I will confirm that I’ve been entertained and intrigued by They Keep Killing Madrox. Plus you’ve introduced new questions to compensate for revealing that Jamie’s middle name is secretly “Susie.”
Peter, you should know by now that, as Quark once said to Rom:
“Everything is your fault. It’s in your contract.”
Count me with those that would pay 3.99 with no complaint.
Apropos of nothing (who, by the way, I’d love to see more of in some form) DC has just announced on their website that they’re going to re-launch said website in March, and that the current message boards will be closed down. No word on whether or not a “new improved” message board will be forthcoming or whether the whole “leave your feedback and chat with other fans” idea is being deep sixed completely. Considering that I haven’t been to the boards in over a year, because of all the repetitive negativity on there, I’ve gotta wonder if DC isn’t feeling that message board privileges are something that the “fan” of today simply isn’t mature enough to handle.
The DC boards are notorious even among internet boards and even among the comic book fan community. They’re like the pop culture answer to Matt Yglesias’ comments section in political blogging.
The DC boards are a bit like CBR though, they’re so big that they have pockets of discussion that are totally fine even when other parts of the board are absolute troll-fests. I never strayed out of the WildStorm (now Stormwatch etc.) bits of the DC boards, and they were/are usually pretty decent.
“Blame the author” seems to be in this week. A dear friend of mine has suffered twice as Amazon inexplicably released her new novel two weeks early, leading to some utter asshats to blame her for the mistake.
I LOVE the x-boards at CBR!!! People are passionate there- they either love or hate something, and there seems to be no middle ground. You can’t take anyone there too seriously- it’s like the cast of the Muppets.
Example: how much distress do you really think people are experiencing by the price of X-Factor increasing a dollar? :/
Book increase price all the time. X-Factor has been around so long that I don’t think there are too many fence-sitting readers. If you’ve been on board this long, you are in for the long haul. Of course, all of the new readers who joined for Havok/Polaris might feel differently.
how much distress do you really think people are experiencing by the price of X-Factor increasing a dollar?
Have you looked at the state of the comic book industry lately? For everybody that would be willing to pay a 33% price increase for X-Factor, there are probably a lot more who would just drop the title in favor of something else.
I know I pretty much dropped every Marvel title that went up to $3.99, and chose to spend some of that money on smaller publisher’s titles instead.
And now Marvel has dropped page down by 2 pages, as well. Ugh.
The real problem for comics is what you’re getting for what you’re paying. They’re just not worth it anymore (they’re generally not at $2.99, either).
That paperback book, where the price apparently increases ‘all the time’? It was generally $5.99 in the 90’s, and then $6.50 or $6.99 for most of the previous decade. They’re $7.99 now.
That’s basically the same percentage of increase as comics… but over 2-3 increments and more than a decade. But they also give me a helluva lot more than 5-10 minutes of reading.
Comics & going to the theater have the same problem vs books & video games: the former are getting a lot more expensive compared to what you’re getting, while the latter will remain the far better bang for your buck.
I agree with you. My comic reading habit has been reduced to a couple of paperbacks a year from amazon when they go for sale for a really good price.
Video games on the other hand have become less and less appealing to me with the years. There is no emotional investment in it for me or sense of accomplishment anymore. It may be my age.
I doubt it’s age itself, but one’s interests change with time, regardless. I’ve been a comic book reader all of my life, as well as a video game player, book reader, and so on. And I hope to remain all of those things. 🙂
But the amount I do of each does shift every so often. I’m certainly reading fewer comics than I did a few years ago, with no guarantee that I’ll increase the number again in the future.
On the other hand, I still play a lot of video games, but I’ve shifted from consoles back to PC gaming, and then with more indie and smaller publisher titles than those from major companies.
I can understand having a breakdown over the general increase in prices across titles. That’s fair.
What I think is misinterpreted is people specifically freaking out because of X-Factor to the point of getting pìššëd øff at PAD. What are the chances that X-Factor is the only title in someone’s regularly purchased stable of books (as small as it may be) that is getting a price bump? If it’s one title, it’s manageable. If it’s ALL of your x-titles, you get pìššëd and blame the x-office, not PAD.
I think it’s like PAD said a while back; people aren’t looking for reasons to pick titles up, they’re looking for excuses to drop them.
This remains a completely silly diagnosis. Nobody is obliged to keep reading a comic. If you don’t like it, nobody needs an ‘excuse’ to stop reading it.
Hi Peter, I am the guy that started the thread on CBR. As I explained in the thread the month prior there was a typo in the solicitations and Diamonds order from was cited as having the correct information. This made it look more likely as an actual price rise, also the fact that both issues listed had the same price. It also was made to seem more likely when Midtown comics who also had the solicitation information also had both issues marked as $3.99.
Now I’m not going to pretend I’m a fan of many of Marvels business methods and yes I often take the chance to shine a spotlight on what I perceive to be decisions that I feel damage a company that I used to hold in such high regard.
A lot of what followed though was due to a hardcore group of Marvel fans taking this as a chance to personally attack me and undermine my usually vocal view on Marvels tactics. When the error was revealed, the original topic was lost in a battle where I was just defending myself and my right to post information from what I considered an official source, Marvels distributers.
I hope you agree that had the mistake no been made that thread would never have happened. Yes I jumped the gun, but even you yourself on Twitter didn’t seem sure about what the situation was, just that if it was the case you hadn’t been informed.
Now I was also the person that claimed that somebody from Marvel including yourself could have posted something to put paid to the rumour. Again, I don’t feel it was expected of you but it was more in defence on the attacks made on me for posting the thread in the first place.
I’m not here to defend my actions to you as such. More to explain to you that none of it was done in with malice. X-Factor is by far my favourite Marvel book and if you look back on my previous posts you will see that If it was up to me I would pretty much have you writing all of Marvels books. I can’t explain to you how much joy your work has brought to my life over the years. None of this was meant to take anything away from you as a writer or you as a person.
I don’t think anyone seriously thought Marvel had backtracked although as you can imagine it did look like a posibility at least. But no, I think that was just thrown in there because some people were getting quite nasty.
I was also the guy that remembered the Captain Marvel fiasco. Despite what somebody claimed, I was not suggesting you repeat it. I also remember who that panned out. Although I have to say as a fan at the time I had nothing but respect for you for what you tried to do.
So anyway, I am sorry you feel any of this reflects on you. The original point just got lost in a Pro-Marvel Vs Anti-Marvel throwdown. I’m happy the books is still $2.99 and despite starting the thread, would have continued to support the book even at the cost of other Marvel books on my pull list. How could I not with the promise of revelations regarding Longshot and Shatterstar’s connection. I’ve only been waiting about 20 years.
Again sorry, please remember that despite how you perceive out online persona’s we’re just fans and to us it is just comics no matter how passionate we seem about the situation. Nothing I post is meant to be personal. That would be all kinds of nuts.
Darren (Sabrewulf)
In fairness, there was a followup thread where the detractors were torn apart by the Snake-pit.
There’s a peculiar sense of humor to the X-boards, it’s highly offensive but for the most part it’s in jest.
@tomdaylight
Talking of Emanuela Lupacchino, she has indeed been snatched away from X-Factor, if this link is anything to go by
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/03/10/emanuela-lupacchino-to-draw-second-castle-graphic-novel/
:-(((
Just catching up on blogs from recent weeks, after a spell in hospital, and I came across this.
I really wish I could say that I can’t believe the kind of responses you got on CBR over this. But sadly I can’t. I’ve been registered there since 2005, and browsing for a few years before. The X-Men boards used to be a great place to actually discuss books, actually pretty constructively. But over the last three years that has really changed.
“Toxic” is absolutely the right word to use in association with a lot of what gets posted up there. My own experiences have been of a board which has been overrun by a small number of posters who seem determined to derail any serious discussion, fill up the board with allegedly funny memes about domestic abuse, and a free-flowing air of xenophobia which genuinely makes myself (A British poster) feel pretty dámņëd unwelcome.
It’s become a really hateful place to visit.
I’ve really been enjoying X-Factor, btw. I probably would pay the extra dollar if Marvel chose to raise the price. But I will Toady no further… 🙂