Over at The Beat, I snuck in a little update about Marvel Comics that has been flying under the radar: since April 2026, the company has been gradually phasing out their $3.99 books.

Some behind the scenes details:

  • This information has been lingering in the back of my head for a while. Each and every week as I modify invoices into something my point of sale and subscription systems will like, I need to list comics by their price point to ply the Canadian exchange rate to our costs. Each week, the list of $3.99 books kept shrinking to the point where I dug in to check where the change was happening. That's when I discovered the bits included in that article.
  • I rarely read the comments on sites that I don't run myself, but I wanted to know the reaction people were having to this news. Surprisingly, there were quite a few folks in the wilds of the internet talking about how this meant they would have to cut back on their Marvel books. But here's the thing: there has been one single $3.99 book in Marvel's line up, dating back to July. This basically confirms two things that I've known for a while: most people don't actually read articles they share or comment on, and most comic buyers don't actually clock the price of their comics.
  • You might think that last bit is crazy, but in my 20 years of selling comics, a staggeringly small amount of people budget and pay attention to these kinds of price increases from comic companies. This year to date, I have had zero customers clock or talk about Marvel increasing the prices on their books. A small fraction ever have. I'm sure there will be a breaking point eventually, but I haven't found that quite yet.
  • The second half of the article talks about how it looks like the "free" digital downloads Marvel has included in their books for well over a decade (with a three month blip they quickly reversed course on) might be coming to an end. Shortly after I wrote about it, another shoe dropped: Marvel will shut down its Marvel Unlimited app later this year, replacing it with one ran by WEBTOON. There are still a lot of question marks about what might happen to purchases and downloads people have made on the Unlimited app. Rest assured, I'll be keeping an eye on how things proceed.

What are your thoughts about these changes? Feel free to hit the comments below. This is one of the very few places I'll respond to anything, and I'd love to hear your feedback.

As this is posted, I'll still be sleeping after spending the night running a Midnight opening, for Midnight comics. There were ring pops, for reasons.

Stay tuned in the next week for an article over at The Beat, featuring my take on the moves Marvel made to try an ensure their Midnight launch was successful. While time will tell if it can rival DC's Absolute turn around, they took some huge swings. Also, more posts here! I actually have a bit of a backlog for once, so that's nice.

Thanks for sticking with me at this new venue.

Talk with you soon,

-B.