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Digital comics definitely need to be cheaper. Readers are already complaining about the increasing cost of print comics. DC and Marvel have even been advertising the $2.99 price like some kind of great service for their readers after the $3.99 price tag didn't pan out.
If you look at the history of comic books, they never had such drastic price increases as they have over the last 20 years. I started collecting comics 20 years ago at $0.75. They had been $0.75 for some time. Before that, 60, 50, 40, 30, 25, 20, 15, 12, 10 (going back to the 30s/40s). In 50 years there were small incremental price increases (and considerable page reductions). In the last 20 years the price has skyrocketed to $3.99 for some 20-page stories.
Many critics of the industry today note the decreasing quality of content, as stories are stuffed with filler to expand them into six-parts for republication in graphic novel form. In the 1970s-1990s readers received high-quality storytelling in single issue stories. Today we get six issues of fluff to go along with the increasing costs. At $2.99 per issue X 6 issues that's $18 for the same quality content we use to get stuffed into one issue for $1.50 just 10 years ago.
With print comics, they can argue the cost of paper, ink, storage, and distribution. How digital comics are the same price is mind-boggling. And the back issue pricing, as others have noted is not in tune with the market. I purchase very few new comics anymore. I wait for the comic convention to come around each year and buy everything I missed for 25-50 cents per book from retailer overstock. This approach fails me occasionally when an issue is "hot" and hits a significantly higher price point than the cover cost, but with all "hot" modern era comics, they cool down by the following year. I would say this is due to the gimmicky nature of comic today. All the "hot" items are spawned out of ridiculous "event" stories that kill, then later revive, a major character. Those books lose their demand fast.
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