Are weekly comics doomed?

[AndyB]

Very much doubt it. It was cheaper than the print version because no distribution was required, but took a lot of design work to animate.

[Ginger]

Andy, you appear to be a DC Thomson company man, so I apologise for any toe-treading I may be guilty of regarding greed, etc. It may also be the case that I don't know what I'm talking about, but I suppose I'm just arguing for the time-honoured economic model of pile-em-high-sell-em-cheap, and suggesting the comics industry has lost sight of this in recent years.

By the way, how much was the digital Dandy? I seem to recall, if it wasn't the same price as the print comic then it was very close to it, and I thought a real missed opportunity to test the market with a truly pocket-money-priced product.

[AndyB]

I'm just an outsider observing the industry. I've learned enough to know that all magazine distributors have to pay stupid money to supermarkets and newsagent chains to get them to stock at all, and that puts a lot on the cover price - which is why subscriptions are much cheaper than the shops (they are also guaranteed sales which aren't about to be returned unsold!)

If you paid for 5,000 credits, the Digital Dandy worked out at less than 60p per issue according to an ad I dug up in a Beano from June. I think it was about the £1 mark at full price.

[Kid Robson]

One thing's for sure - when comics were cheap, they were king. I'm aware that there are now other factors to be considered (larger choice of things for kids to spend their pocket money on, for one), but it's still the best business model going, in my view. If the cost of getting them into shops increases the price, surely that's the best argument for producing them as inexpensively as possible to begin with.

[Ginger]

Good point, Kid.

And Andy, I stand corrected on both points, it seems! I really thought the digital Dandy was more expensive than that. Perhaps I'm going senile.

[Lew Stringer]

Private Eye has always retained the cheap paper, and the low cover price (£1.50), I think they're smart enough to realise they'd ruin it if it went to glossy paper stock. Some publications aren't SUPPOSED to be glossy, and comics are one of those.

Some of the best UK comics ever produced have been glossy: Mickey Mouse Weekly, Eagle, TV21, Countdown, the early issues of Wham!...

Also, glossy full colour comics have been the norm in Europe since the 1960s at least. (Eppo. Spirou, the Dutch Wham! (no relation to the UK one), the Tintin weekly, to name a few.) It took the UK a while to catch up.

As you say, Private Eye is still on newsprint and it's £1.50, which is still higher than the 80p price you'd like for a comic. At £2 The Beano is still the cheapest comic in the country. As can be seen from your Private Eye example, lowering the paper quality wouldn't affect the cover price too much. Publishers would still be paying exactly the same for distribution and retail expenses.

[Ginger]

Some of the best UK comics ever produced have been glossy: Mickey Mouse Weekly, Eagle, TV21, Countdown, the early issues of Wham!...

Interesting point. I didn't read any of those, I think I'm just a little too young.

As you say, Private Eye is still on newsprint and it's £1.50, which is still higher than the 80p price you'd like for a comic. At £2 The Beano is still the cheapest comic in the country.

Well, yes:- so Private Eye, a magazine aimed at adults, is cheaper than any comic in the country aimed at children. Doesn't that strike you as wrong?

[Lew Stringer]

so Private Eye, a magazine aimed at adults, is cheaper than any comic in the country aimed at children. Doesn't that strike you as wrong?

Yes, but it's basic economics unfortunately. If they could put out The Beano at 80p they would.

[Ginger]

But surely if it was printed on cheaper paper and with less colour they could sell it more cheaply? I'm not suggesting they would do this for one moment, I'm just saying it wouldn't be impossible.

I don't understand why comics have become so much more expensive, comparatively. Is it just lower circulations (which becomes a vicious circle), glossy paper and more colour, or is there more to it?

[AndyB]

I would suggest that if the publishers didn't have to literally pay the supermarkets to stock the magazines, the Beano might only be £1.50. Still dearer than one might like, but another upward pressure is that not only do supermarkets want money to carry the magazines, they want a decent retail markup - and independent newsagents need the markup to survive.

Ginger, if it makes you feel any better, I'm too young to remember the glossy kids comics from the 60s and 70s too! What I could talk about is Plug comic, which was glossy and dearer than the Beano and Dandy of the time, coming in at about 1.5 Mars Bars or a bit more. 21st Century Beano at 3 Mars Bars for plenty more pages and all in full colour isn't actually bad - the fact that it is only twice the price of Plug reflects the fact that gravure and litho as printing methods are cheaper than they were in the 70s.

[Ginger]

Plug I do remember, and I didn't like the glossy paper. Maybe it's just me. There's just something about comics on glossy paper that doesn't seem right.

[AndyB]

But surely if it was printed on cheaper paper and with less colour they could sell it more cheaply? I'm not suggesting they would do this for one moment, I'm just saying it wouldn't be impossible.

You would think it would cost less to use cheaper paper, but not necessarily. It's all about the cost of doing a separate print run with the cheap paper against the marginal cost of printing more magazines in the same format on an existing printer without changing the paper roll. It sounds ridiculous, but it's a small case of economies of scale in using the same paper for as much as possible.

[Bigwords]

About those chocolate bars...

And please bear with me on this - I have a point

The manufacturing plants aren't just pumping out their chocolate bars for the UK. Those same bars are going into various wrappers and being shipped to appropriate markets, with some countries getting their own plants due to regulations and whatever dictating contents. The overall price is kept down by not needing a manufacturing plant in each and every territory. There's a reason that the majority of like-for-like chocolate bars taste the same wherever you go.

So back to comics...

If we were to apply the same market-led grand-scale manufacturing on comics (as Top Sellers actually did, back in the 70s) the issues would need to be printed sans text, and plates added for each locality. No matter how wide you want to make the comparison, it is simply true that manufacturing comics is complicated and expensive, and no matter the corners cut you aren't going to see a title which is regularly priced at under a pound.

Maybe 2000 A.D. has the best idea - collected editions (like the Franco-Belgian titles have been doing for donkeys years) giving a permanent visibility for the characters and stories in bookshops, and letting the weekly edition be a bit more experimental in the knowledge that the majority of contents will, at some point, be collected. Asterix, Tintin and Lucky Luke (and lots more besides) all started in weeklies, and have been generating income since their first collected editions.

Which leads back to another question - why aren't there more collections in bookstores?

[philcom55]

As far as the price comparison goes one has to take relative affluence into account. Back in the early 1960s when most comics cost about 6d (2.5p) each I was getting 2 shillings (10p) pocket money each week. Does anybody know how much pocket money today's kids get on average?

- Phil R.

[Ginger]

Good points, both.

By my reckoning pocket money would need to be about £10 a week, then, to be comparable (if we take £2.50 as average comic price) Don't know what the average pocket money is, but I certainly don't give my kids that much.