My Lazarus Dilemma.

I almost skipped out on posting anything this week because;

A. New Year has only just began and I wanted to pace myself.
B. All my bills and insurance need rearranging straight out of the year.
C. Work is murder and..
D. I didn't really have anything to talk about.

Fortunately, that all changed yesterday (Thursday) when I saw an announcement on Twitter which has since had me thinking long and hard about how I move forward with my comic book buying.

Therefore, I figured I'd lay it all out here just to clear my head.

So, here's how it is. Previously, I saw a tweet retweeted by Lazarus artist Michael Lark about an article announcing the return of his and Greg Rucka's series with a new title and new issue 1. Lazarus Risen is the new Quarterly format following on from their original run which was promised last year around the release of issues 27 and 28.

Lazarus: Risen #1 (Image from Comixology).
But  why the new series?

In one sense, I'm excited about this as Lazarus is a fantastic series and the fact it's still on my pull list after all the cullings I've had is a testament to its quality. However, from another perspective, I find myself rather nervous in regards to it's release.

Now, this new format will contain 44 pages relevant to the main story as well as an additional short story and a supplement to the Lazarus roleplaying game and beyond. Now this is an incredible amount to hold within a single comic and for that I'm totally ok with.

However, this new extra size requires extra cost and, according to Image previews on their website, this comic will now be going to $7.99, or £6.99 at my local comic book shop. For me, this is an awful lot of money (I could get two other comics for this), especially in light of the fact that I've had to tighten my belt and reduce my pull list to almost nothing. As a result, even if I take into account that this is a quarterly book (meaning I only need an additional £2.33 a month), I'm unsure if I can truly justify increasing my budget by even this meagre amount and if I do, how do I live with myself that I have dropped perfectly good (regular priced comics) and now am going about face for this one.

And this brings me to my dilemma; what do I do from here? Ultimately, I really enjoy Lazarus and, for that reason alone, I should really consider continuing to collect it. However, this is a lot of money with (at present) no end in sight.

However, there are alternative options. firstly, I could wait for the trades. I suspect these would be of a larger price than other trades on the shelves but at least they would be cheaper overall than the single issues. The problems I see with this are 1. it messes up my collection of so far single issues and 2. If I can't afford the trades at release, I could be waiting a long time.

The other option is, of course, digital. #1 of  Lazarus: Risen is priced on Comixology at £5.49. This, while still expensive, is cheaper than the print copy. Also, after 30 days, Image comics tend to reduce in price on Comixology, meaning only a month delay to save some money. Then there are more likely to be sales on Comixology which allow me to pick up either the singles or the trades for bargain basement prices and all for the need to wait until such sales occur.

Again, however, going down this route would mean messing up my collection of Lazarus single issues, as the story would be read physically (which I'm starting to get back into) before having to transfer over to digital for the final half. A transition I'm not particularly fond of (despite how it may appear).

As I come to the end, I find myself every bit as conflicted as I was when I started. I know for a fact that, probably against my better judgement, I will not just drop this series as I'm already too invested in the characters, story and world to give up now. And, ultimately, I suspect that I will cave and just buy the single prints, regardless of the additional costs. However, as of this moment I'm in a serious quandary over this, a rather trivial decision by all accounts.

So, if anyone has reached this far, do feel free to weigh in with your opinion.

I think I could do with all the help I could get.