Tue Jan 6, 2009 4:44PM2 comments ›
Tue Jan 6, 2009 — by Glenn Hauman
Are comics really recession proof?
The general consensus is that during hard times, people stay at home and turn to cheap entertainment to save money. And various and sundry players across the net have claimed that comics always do well in recessionary times.
Except, it turns out, those two widely held beliefs are in direct conflict.
Aaron Albert at About.com (you can tell he's in comics with alliteration like that) runs the numbers on entertainment bang for the buck per minute, and comics are the worst deal of the bunch:
If we suppose that it takes 15 minutes to read a standard comic book what kind of deal are we getting?
- $3.99 Comic - ECPM's - 27 cents
- $2.99 Comic - ECPM's - 20 cents
- Movie - $10 (Average running time lets say 1hr 30 min.) - ECPM's - 11 cents
- Rental Movie - $5 (Same time as above) - ECPM's - 5.5 cents
- DVD - $20 (Typical 2 disc with, say, 2 hrs bonus material) - ECPM's - 7 cents
- Video Game - $60 (Average length, around 15-20 hrs to complete) - ECPM's - 5-7 cents
- MMORPG - (A game like WOW costs $15 a month with the average player putting 22 hrs a week...its scientific, I Googled it) - ECPM's - 2/10 cents (yes that's two tenths of a cent per minute)
The conclusion is obvious, particularly when you see how many people will read free comics available online.
Jump to comments (2) 
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Comments (2)
Neil Ottenstein (8:09 AM on Wed Jan 7, 2009)
In terms of "entertainment bang for the buck minute" the 32-page comic appears to get worse year after year. Now if you start to consider trade paperback collections which often are less expensive than the individual comics put together, then you start getting a better deal. Those Marvel Essential collections should be quite good.
Of course, the best deal in "entertainment bang for the buck minute" probably is a standard paperback book. (Of course you could consider free over the air television or radio as truly the best deal. )
Anonymous (5:36 PM on Tue Jan 6, 2009)
That's not really the thrust of the linked article. To the contrary, the author is saying that, while mathematically, it seems like a bad choice compared to other entertainment options, many people, the author included, still do it. As he notes, there are far more variables involved than time and money, like the amount of sharing possible, collectability, etc.
If comics are "recession proof" (if there even is such a thing), it's because of the emotional attachment the buyers have to the medium, dating back to childhood, and the escape they provide. Statistical analysis doesn't enter into the picture for most people.