And since I live in a town - in the only nation in the world that takes patriotic pride in its comics - with a statue of Too Much Coffee Man in the town square, and I have a brother who made several grand dealing in comics out of his basement in the 90’s, I can hardly say that I don’t read comics.

I don’t read enough of them, and it’s because I can’t afford the good stuff. I buy a Cerebus phone book every other year, a handful of translation from Japanese comics, and two or three English language graphic novels annually. This last year, all I’ve bought is a few Suske and Wiske (a.k.a. “Bob et Bobette” and “Spike and Suzy”) and that was because they are dirt cheap and I can practice my Dutch with them.

The problem is that given a fixed level of funding for my many literate addictions, I get a better rate of return on novels than on comics. I am constantly finding myself in comic book stores, asking myself, do I really want to pay $20 for this?

I know that comics artists (authors? Is there a designated term?) are not on the whole raking it in. I certainly don’t claim that the reading audience is being overcharged. But it’s very difficult to build an audience when prices are high, and it’s difficult to lower prices unless there is more volume. That is what has happened in Japan and to some extent in Europe, although in Europe, a lot of comics really are all about T&A, which always sells well.

Perhaps that is what the anglophone comics industry needs. As Kip Manley points out, yes, we all know there are good comics out there, that the best comics can hold their own with the best of any other medium. Maybe a little T&A on the shelves would get people used to the idea of buying comics? Or some cheap, quickly made, phone book-sized novels like the cheaper stuff in Japan? Something you can buy at the airport just before you get on the plane that will keep you busy for a few hours.

It’s a lot easier for me to spend $20 on a 200-page comic that at least promises to be titilating than $2.50 on something I’ll read in 10 minutes and may only be somebody’s idea of a prologue, or worse, the middle chapter of a story whose beginning I haven’t got.

I wonder if you wrote this comment before or after I posted about The Right Number?