Comics I Can’t Afford: Dark X-Men and Marvel Divas

by E. Christopher Clark | Tuesday, April 21, 2009

detail of the cover of DARK X-MEN: THE BEGINNING #1

detail of the cover of MARVEL DIVAS #1

Marvel Comics has released its solicitations for July 2009, and I am angry. I’m angry because I can’t afford to be a comic book reader anymore, and I’m angry because, even if I could afford to buy one or two books, I probably wouldn’t be able to buy these two new books, each of which feature characters that I grew up knowing and loving.

Part of the problem is my own strained budget, but most of it is the greed of comic book publishers. If you haven’t seen Rich Johnston’s examination of the price of comics vs. the rate of inflation, check it out here. I’ve told Joe Quesada on Twitter how I feel about this and, unsurprisingly, have not heard back, but I do wonder if a full-scale revolt on the part of comic book readers might make a difference.

The flipside of this is that, because they’ve been so successful lately in bilking the masses out of four bucks per comic, Marvel is finally able to greenlight comics featuring lesser-known characters who deserve another chance at the spotlight. Dark X-Men will apparently involve Cloak & Dagger, long known to be mutants, but long ignored by writers working on the mutant books. And Marvel Divas will feature my favorite Marvel redhead, Firestar, who has been missing in action since the Civil War crossover. So, even though I kind of want everyone to stop buying Marvel and DC and tell the big boys to suck it, I kind of don’t want that to happen, because I kind of want these new projects to keep on coming.

Kind of. What do you think?