The Only Issue I'm Buying AKA X Men Schism #1 Was Good, But Why Does it Cost $4.99?

X Men Schism #1
This was a pretty enjoyable comic. It had action, humor, and interesting plot development. One big problem stands out though, and to give you a hint I mention it in the title of this post.

Look at the cover image to this comic. Look closely. Does anything seem off? I'll give you a clue, there are 33 pages of actual comic-content in this issue. Still haven't found the nagging problem? Let's focus in on it:

Yup, it's is $4.99. I guess if Marvel is going to start charging $3.99 for their 22 page comics they are going to charge $4.99 for their comics that go beyond this. I don't know about you, but paying a cent under five dollars strikes me as a tad bit absurd--I mean, wanting me to pay $3.99 for just over 20 pages is already testing what I'm willing to buy. It seems the next issue is back to the regular $3.99, but I already have too much of a bad taste in my mouth from this, and didn't really enjoy the comic enough to want to pay $3.99 for it. No, this is my only issue of X-Men Schism. It's a shame, because it is a pretty good first issue.

Jason Aaron is a great writer. He shows a building threat against the X-Men but injects a bit of his wackiness into the story with this Kade Kilgore character who is only 12 but has the aspirations of a grown adult and none of the empathy older folk sometimes develop. We start seeing the seeds of a split in the X-Men, Cyclops delivers a great speech, Wolverine shows his soft side while also not hesitating to get violent--yeah, it's a good issue of the X-Men. I mean, it uses Cyclops well, and that is a writing feat that has me taking my imaginary hat off to Jason Aaron.

As I said, I liked this. It's just....five dollars? Marvel really wants to go there for 33 pages? I'm sorry, but I just can't be a party to that. Plus, even if I did enjoy this issue I need four stars of enjoyment to want to spend $3.99 on the next issue, and considering how I'm pretty much dumping all the X-Men books anyways (not X-Factor, never X-Factor!), what does it matter if I don't read Schism? I don't need it to understand the upcoming X-Men books I won't be reading, and I'm not into it for enjoyment. Nope, this was good, but I'm done.
3.5 out of 5 stars.