The perilous price of post

The world has changed a lot since the SSAE issue was a thing, and we're a lot more connected and everything is much more accessible than ever - but I still live on a island nation that is very fucking far from the rest of the world, and getting comic books here will always be hellishly expensive.

After an endless tyranny of distance, the internet opened up the world to Aotearoa more than 20 years ago. And while that means that many of my friends and neighbours have turn into barbarians when they minds got poisoned by the rot of social media, it also means I can bid on ebay auctions for old annuals I never saw and order direct from US comic shops and get any 2000ads I miss direct from the source (and I've been missing a lot lately). So it ain't all bad.

But there's no escaping that sheer distance and there are great deals for things all over the world which are no damn good to me, because the post is still a goddamn nightmare.

The actual book I'm after might be going ridiculously cheap, for just a couple of bucks, but those gains are wiped out by when the post often reaches $50 - I just saw a Judge Dredd annual I desperately need for $10, which sounded great, and $89 in postage, which wasn't so great.

I know this is for the slickest, most reliable postage there is, but I don't care if it arrives next week, and will happily pay for snail mail. It might take months, but that's fine. I'm not going anywhere. This pandemic teaches us all some bloody patience.

Because it's not just the cost that is an issue, it's the time. A lot of things I've been keen for have got stuck offshore, the local bookstore told me tonnes of books are sitting just off the coast in container ships, as the global shipping industry has a huge brainfart

So now I'm more than 20 issues behind the UK on 2000ad (usually it's about 10 weeks delay), my subscription copies of Empire magazine arrive at startlingly odd intervals, and things show up at the comic shop whenever.

It's not going to get any better, anytime soon. The raw materials are going up in price, the shipping costs are getting bigger, and places like the US have cut back on a lot of overseas postage altogether.

I know it's a pitifully petty thing to worry about during a global health emergency that has caused misery for millions, but it's the petty shit that helps us get through the heavy shit. And when we're more connected than ever before, money and time still keep a lot of things painfully out of reach.