Archie vs. Yugi?
While poking around Tony Isabella's section of the World Famous Comics
site, I ran across his
latest
"Tony's Tips" column. Playing around with the
Inflation
Calculator, Tony finds that there are still some good comic book
values
out there. The two biggest bargains according to Tony are Archie
comics (especially the
Digests
and
Double
Digests) and
Shonen Jump.
According to Tony's rough calculations,
Shonen Jump is a
bargain at
$4.95 an issue, since a comparably-sized American comic from 1961 would
cost over nine bucks today:
That brings us to Viz's SHONEN JUMP, arguably the best buy
in comics.
Each monthly issue has over 300 pages of manga and manga-related
articles. The same amount of material in 1961 comic books would have
cost readers about a buck-and-a-half; going by the IC, SHONEN JUMP
should carry a cover price of nine dollars and change. Its actual cover
price is $4.95.
Tony is also a fan of the anthology's content, noting that "there's so
much of interest in each issue of JUMP that you can spend hours
enjoying the comic. It would be a good deal at twice the cover
price." Although I've tired of
Shonen Jump myself (I
won't be
renewing my subscription and I doubt I'll continue any of the series in
trades), I'd still recommend the anthology, especially to younger
readers and comic fans who are looking for a way to sample a large
amount of manga quickly and cheaply.
I wonder if Tony does requests? I'd love to see how $60 worth of
Archie Digests would stack up against the
Manga
Tower of Intimidation.
(And if you're looking for another way to compare various comics,
reader Lank suggests using books'
square
inch size ratio would be a fairer measure than simple
thickness. I'm not sure I agree with (or fully understand) this
proposed form of measurement, but you can read Lank's efforts to
explain it in the
comment
thread for the original Manga Stack entry.)
