I've been collecting Simpsons Comics since 2004 when I was in college, with the UK edition of Simpsons #88, or rather the US Simpsons Comics #78. Back then I collected the UK editions as they were the only real editions available to me easily, the quality of them comics wasn't something to write home about, but it was decent enough.
Like the US editions, it featured fan mail and artwork with dedicated sections for each. The artwork ranged from superb to outright cringe worthy. I'm not here to judge the art of what could be seven year old kids. The letters were 98 percent of the time outright obnoxious, always asking for the star letter prize, or to have the "Junk Mail Guy" reveal his identity, who I'm fairly sure would be the editor (who was Paul Terry at the time I started collecting), it was really annoying, and not only that, the person "replying" was really rude in their responses by sarcastically responding to some perfectly legitimate questions.
In recent years the quality has gone downhill drastically. The covers have changed what type of paper they used. Originally, they had a smooth glossy feel to them, but now, they use a rougher, non-glossy type of paper.
These days, practically every issue comes with some sort of a "Free" gift. I put free in quotes because it's not really free, to pay for the production of these so called gifts, which have nothing to with the Simpsons at all, unless it's something extremely simple such as pin badges, stationary sets or door hangers, the comics have risen in price extremely fast. The gifts are made out of the cheapest of materials, and are attached to the front cover of the issues with tape, and it's pretty strong tape too, so when you try to pull it off carefully, the tape sticks to the issue, pulling off part of the front cover, ruining it, and destroying any collectors value. Apparently it's too much work to put the gift and comic in a bag.
Like I said before the price is extremely high, and the way Titan Magazines who publish the comics in the UK, treat their customers with how they charge for the comics. According to images I've seen the first few issues cost £2.00 in 1997, then slowly rose in 10p incraments to £2.50 when I started to buy them in 2004, which doesn't sound like a lot, but now, the comics cost somewhere in the region of £3.00, which again, isn't a lot, but given the fact that the comics in the UK are actually known to split stories in half, thereby effectively making issues cost £6.00 instead, this was most notable with Futurama rather than The Simpsons, but it did happen with The Simpsons, a specific example was Simpsons Comics #100 in the US which was split into #100 and #101 in the UK, and not only that, they raised the price of each issue from the then £2.50 to £2.99, then when they lowered it back for issue #102, it was lowered to £2.60.
With these factors, I eventually just stopped buying the comics from UK stores, specifically WH. Smith. Which treated the comics very badly on their own. With comics with torn corners, bended in half, and just in general shown no care, but that'd probably be more to the customers fault than the employees. I'm now collecting the US editions which are better quality, and priced more reasonably, even after being imported to the UK, the store on eBay where I buy them, A Place in Space, only charges £2.20, and they come combined with free postage, which makes it all the more awesome!
Gary
February 15th 2012
