DC and Marvel Announce Price Drops for 2011

Yesterday Jim Lee and Dan DiDio of DC Comics announced that they will be dropping the price of many of their $3.99 titles to $2.99 for beginning January 2011. While annuals and other one-shot issues, will still remain at $3.99 due to their larger size, the standard 32 page monthly issues will be reduced to $2.99.

Dan DiDio released the following comment via The Source:

“As Co-Publishers, we listened to our fans and to our partners in the retail community who told us that a $3.99 price point for 32 pages was too expensive. Fans were becoming increasingly reluctant to sample new titles and long term fans were beginning to abandon titles and characters that they’d collected for years.” said Dan DiDio, DC Comics Co-Publisher. “We needed a progressive pricing strategy that supports our existing business model and, more importantly, allows this creative industry to thrive for years to come. With the exceptions of oversized comic books, like annuals and specials, we are committed to a $2.99 price point.”

About an hour after DC made their price drop announcement, Marvel Comics made a similar announcement. Marvel Senior VP of Sales and Circulation David Gabriel announced that beginning in January of 2011 new Marvel titles will be sold at the $2.99 price point. He stated that the gain in popularity of digital comics as being the reason why Marvel can afford to reduce the price of new titles. Marvel did not comment on how widespread their price drop will be.

Now, if we can only get them to drop the price of trades to $9.99.

Sorce: The Daily Blam