I know that print media has faced plenty of tough times lately (of course, most industries have) and so I can’t blame Viz for doing this. It was a pricey magazine on the newsstands, after all, and it really did not run very many ads. (You could say that yes, it was basically an ad for Viz itself, but you understand my point.)

The Shojo Beat line of manga will continue, so not all hope is lost. Still, the magazine will be missed.

Original tip from The Beat

Paul Gitter, who is the president of consumer products, North America, for Marvel Entertainment Inc., says when doing such things, they have to be “very careful” not to “alienate our core” audience — in other words, boys don’t want a bunch of girls wearing T-shirts with Spider-man on them. Or something.

Vice president of product merchandising at Marvel, Susan Fields, also says “Hulk was a big component for us when it came to being eco-friendly, with T-shirts featuring the character and sayings like ‘go green.’ ” I wish I could make this stuff up.

But overall, I’m really pretty OK with this. I’ve often wished that comic book T-shirts came in girly styles (I am not someone who wears an XXL) and maybe in earlier days, some Marvel lip gloss would’ve been a fun purchase for me.

Still, with Marvel’s other attempts at reaching out to young women (including the recent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) makes me believe they don’t really know what they’re doing (but since these are licensing deals, the actual product development will probably be in the hands of people who have experience making products for women).

I don’t think this will get women reading comics, though, and I don’t think that’s really the point. After all, plenty of women connect with the character of Wonder Woman but have no interest in picking up comics about her. This is just about taking the cool iconography of comics and selling it to people. But I’m also OK with that.

Image of Marvel lip glosses, taken from WWD.com

My most recent shipment arrived and it came with extra goodies — my issue of Ribon came with a plastic pencil box and stickers and my issue of Ciao! came with an ice-cream cone shaped bag, a strawberry-scented eraser, a two-color pen and a heart-shaped carabiner.

Do I need any of these things? No. Was I delighted to find that my manga phonebooks came with them? Yes.

Understandably, I don’t think most usual comic book fans are going to want a sparkly pink pencil case to come with their issues of Superman but I think most wouldn’t hate a little plastic figure of some sort.

No, I’m not really serious about wanting to see this happen, but with comic prices hovering around $4, maybe the industry needs to rethink things. These free gifts are certainly gimmicks but to me, they’re ones that work.

I do know that a few of my friends, with no disrespect to their local comic book stores, have turned to mail-order subscription services for their floppies to save money. With the prices of floppies ever increasing (some of which are $3.99 per issue now), I do wonder how long the floppy issues have left. I know, I know, plenty of people have sounded the death knell of single-issue comics before, but the price may push plenty of people to stop buying. (I don’t buy single issues too often, mostly out of laziness so I’m probably not a good one to ask.)

I wonder if a sort of Japanese manga-phonebook style model may work for some comics — say for $16, you get 5 comics (like, for example, all of the X-Men titles) all bound together every month. Sure, it may not have the super-pretty Photoshop colors, but you’d still have a cost-effective way to read comics. And maybe, eventually, individual titles/storylines could be collected in pretty color for a premium price. I’d go for that, personally.

But obviously, for a lot of people who are trying to pay bills and keep their jobs, luxury entertainment items like comics will probably fall away. I think comics (and publishing) in general can weather this, but I think we all know there are rough times ahead.