WAAAAA! Comics and graphic novels are SO expensive. WAAA!

Ugh. Headdesk. People are idiots.

Dude just quibbled the *high* cost of Kick Ass in hardback graphic novel. Erm, it was eight issues long at £2.35 an issue. That's £18.80 if you'd bought it individually. It's £18.95 now bound together in a shiny hardback. That's not a high cost fella.

Seriously people, comics and graphic novels cost more than books and yet the British seem appalled by this. A book has maybe three direct personnel involved outside of the publishing house.

Writer, agent, cover artist. The latter is often in house any way. Yes there's an editor, but I consider that role to be part of the publishing house staff.

Sequential art narrative requires a writer.

Then a penciller.

An inker (who will trace a chalk outline around your dead body you fuck!).

A colourist.

A letterer.

And a cover artist.

Often one artist does all the art duties and the writer handles the lettering. But it's still much more work than a book.

A comic script is comparable to a film script. Yes, less prose, but just as much craft, dammit.

The art duties take hours and hours. I know an incredibly talented illustrator who won't do comic art even though he got into art THROUGH a love of comics. And he trained to do Sequential Art Illustration at university.

Why won't he do it? Because sequential art requires on average five or six images to be created per page. The average comic is 22 pages of artwork - 30 for a premium title like Blackest Night. That's a minimum average of 110 images every month. For less money than he gets for doing say twenty images for an illustrated history book.

Comics are ART and LITERATURE. They are unique in that form and yet they get lambasted by the general public for being a derogative medium. If you think that, get your head out of your damn ass you pompous prick.

Comics aren't just superheroes. You may consider yourself to be too intellectually adroit to watch soap operas, but you'll watch a documentary or a period drama. You choose your genre.

Comics are not a genre - they are a medium. If you feel you are too clever for superheroes, it doesn't mean you wouldn't enjoy a comic like Blankets or Local.

Ugh, I am off topic. Comics aren't cheap. There's many, many (hu)man hours involved in crafting a graphic novel. Suck it up.

I know that guy is going to go and try to buy the graphic novel from Amazon. But this edition is now sold out at supplier level. Amazon are sold out. Ha. Small moral victory.

And don't get me started on the rise of internet shopping over high street retail. If you want to live in a town that has one big Tesco Walmart with north, south, east and west entrances, fifteen in-store Starbucks and an in-store Ikea, then be my guest: continue to use internet retail.

But you live in a town where Badlands Records has won BEST INDEPENDENT RECORD STORE IN THE UK. Cheltenham and Gloucestershire as a whole can support independent retailers.

Keep it up.