Marvel Brings Back Dollar Comics With ‘True Believers” Line
Perhaps the biggest hurdle to getting into comic books today is that they’re so darned expensive. Your average comic book, digital or print, costs $4 and takes 10 minutes or less to read. Unless you’re a collector or you just really love the format, it can get difficult to justify the cost/enjoyment ratio.
Marvel isn’t switching its line back to a dollar a book by any means. That ship sailed when the price increased to $1.25 way back in 1992. But it is announcing a program of budget reprints for fans who who may want to sample some of its most key comics. It’s similar to $1 sample lines already in place at Dark Horse, D.C. Comics and Image Comics.
The True Believers reprints will include fan-favorite titles according to a press release.
“These are some of the most popular stories in recent memory,” says Marvel SVP Sales & Marketing David Gabriel in the release. “We’re proud to bring them to fans in a new format that will allow them to sample some of Marvel’s best and brightest gems. Each of these issues are the perfect place to start for fans curious about Miles Morales, the Age of Apocalypse, Civil War and everything in between.”
The books also provide a bit of backstory for Marvel’s upcoming Secret Wars event, which will revisit many of Marvel’s biggest storylines and is being teased as an apocalyptic event that will reshape the Marvel Universe.
The titles will hit comic books stores in April. The ten titles being reprinted in the dollar editions are:
TRUE BELIEVERS: INFINITY GAUNTLET #1
Reprinting material from INFINITY GAUNTLET #1.
TRUE BELIEVERS: MARVEL ZOMBIES #1
Reprinting MARVEL ZOMBIES #1.
TRUE BELIEVERS: AGE OF APOCALYPSE #1
Reprinting material from X-MEN ALPHA.
TRUE BELIEVERS: CIVIL WAR #1
Reprinting material from CIVIL WAR #1.
TRUE BELIEVERS: PLANET HULK #1
Reprinting INCREDIBLE HULK (2000) #92.
TRUE BELIEVERS: HOUSE OF M #1
Reprinting HOUSE OF M #1.
TRUE BELIEVERS: OLD MAN LOGAN #1
Reprinting WOLVERINE (2003) #66.
TRUE BELIEVERS: ARMOR WARS #1
Reprinting material from IRON MAN (1968) #225.
TRUE BELIEVERS: MILES MORALES #1
Reprinting ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN (2011) #1.
TRUE BELIEVERS: AGE OF ULTRON #1
Reprinting AGE OF ULTRON #1.
It feels a bit gimmicky because all of these comics are from ongoing storylines or miniseries. There’s not one of them that you could read and get anything close to a complete story. But maybe the point is to get people interested so they’ll check out the trade paperbacks.
Unrelated to the True Believers line, Marvel will also reprint first issue of Brian Michael Bendis’ Powers in a dollar edition, under the title Powers Firsts.