"I REMEMBER WHEN COMIC BOOKS WERE A NICKEL!"

I had a conversation the other day with a buddy of mine about our respective comic book buying habits when we were kids. He has a couple of years on me but we grew up in the same time period. 

"I used to buy comics for a dime when I was a kid," he said. Which is certainly true. "Heck, I even bought some for a nickel." Which is kinda sorta true.

Comic books, dating all the way back to ACTION COMICS #1 in 1938, were always priced at ten cents. This was the standard cover price until the early sixties when prices rose to twelve cents. Oh sure, there were some exceptions. Dell Comics went from ten to fifteen cents before scaling back to twelve and there were always the giant size comics priced at twenty-five cents. But a nickel?

The only comic books that I know of that had a five cent cover price were the appropriately named NICKEL COMICS, a Fawcett publication which ran for eight issues in 1940. This short lived,  bi-weekly comic featured the adventures of Bulletman along with other Fawcett stalwarts. 

I guarantee you that my buddy never bought this comic because he wasn't born until the 1950s. 

Now, what he may be remembering is purchasing used comics from retailers who marked down older comics to half of the ten cent cover price in order to move inventory. That's entirely possible and it's what many comic book fans of a certain age probably experienced growing up.

But buying a brand new comic book off of the spinner rack for a nickel? Sorry, never happened.