The Cost of War

War is expensive. I just finished reading Civil War. Not the trade paperbacks, but the whole kit and caboodle, the whole enchilada, the actual comic book issues. Yes, I know that happened like 2 years ago, but what can I say I let myself get side tracked with little things like work and family, nothing as important as reading comics. Now, you have an idea why it hasn't taken me so long to post this blog entry. For the uninitiated, Marvel launched a mega event that crossed over to so many of their individual titles, the basis is that the there is a major incident in which the misuse of some super powered heroes directly relates to the death of a lot of innocent people. Being modern times like they are it is all caught on TV, so the public demands the government do something to monitor those that would put on a cape and mask. In response the super hero registration act comes about in which all people with super powers are required to register with the government. They also are required to become de facto government employees and be trained and work at the will of the government. Civil war erupts amongst the super heroes and villains with everyone picking a side as to be pro or anti registration.

About 2 months ago I got my hands on the Road to Civil War - 12 issues, all of the Civil War cross over titles - 107 issues, and 84 issues of the Initiative. The Initiative is the name given the titles that are post Civil War as things get shaken up and the Marvel Universe is quite a bit different than before. I think I missed some of these, but I read the majority that interested me.

All of these titles and events happened over 2 years ago and there is not much to say to add any new insight for my comic friends that have not already been discussed. I will assume by this time you know the highlights and if you were going to read them you would have already. So, yes Captain America was killed at the end. Peter Parker came out publicly and announced to the world he was Spider-man. Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, became Director of SHIELD. Yes, all of these topics have been bounced around from message board and blogs for over 2 years, nothing new to say about all that. At least now I have the trivial knowledge of what events transpired during the course of Civil War. Like whom does Speedball from New Warriors become post Civil War? Penance and now I understand why, if you want to know more than I suggest you start picking up some issues and get reading.

There is an interesting angle on this topic that I thought of while I was reading my "collection" of books and it was spawned by my wife’s comment about catching me with my nose in comics lately ..."You know this is really starting to affect our relationship." She of course may have been somewhat joking, but my thoughts wondered what are the actual costs of Civil War, both hard and soft costs. So let me take a stab at it from a financial perspective.

The total comic book issues that I mentioned earlier totals 203 total comic books. Without going back and looking up each one I am going to take a liberty here and say they cost $2.99 per issue which is the recommended retail price printed on the ones that I took the liberty of rechecking for the benefit of this blog entry. Assume you live the great Sunshine state and sales tax is 6% that puts you at $3.17 per issue. So the cost of the collection that I mentioned above would put you out the door with a grand total of $643.39. To keep this simple I will not try to compute any price involved in bagging and boarding each one, like I am sure you would.

I said a little something about soft costs, well to read each one dear reader will take you something that you do not always have an abundance of ... that being your time. In an attempt to assign a value to your time, let’s stick with Florida where the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. I clocked myself (believe it or not) into how long it took me to read through a standard size comic book (22 pages excluding advertisements and no time to ogle over the cover art) and I averaged about 15 minutes per book. With calculating reading 4 comics per hour, I figured a time commitment of 50 hours and 45 minutes is roughly what it would take you to get through the entire collection. Back in Florida if you were on the clock, besides having an awesome job of being able to read comics all day and get paid for it, you would earn $367.94 for the time commitment of reading the entire glory that is Civil War. Grand total of actual cost of buying each issue and soft cost of your time is $1,011.33. So, yes, war is expensive.

In my case the actual costs could also end up including lawyer fees, alimony, and getting an apartment with an extra room to store my boxes of comic books. I love you, honey.

My next blog entry will be about how I am now a convert to the church of Mark Millar, you sir are a god among comic book writers.