Comics UK

I got £3 a week in the 90s, when the Beano's price was 40p. The same ratio would equate to £15 now!

Comics like Eagle, TV21, Countdown, etc., were the exceptions of their day and weren't all full-colour. They usually had fewer pages than their less expensive counterparts and also carried ads (unlike DCT publications back then), so they're still not direct equivalents of The Beano today. And whether contemporary comics are expensive or not compared to other things, they're perceived as being so by parents. I remember when Classics from the Comics was around £1.20- £1.40 or so, hearing parents saying to their kids "I'm not paying £1 for a comic!" and telling them to put it back on the shelf. And I've heard other people relate the same tale. Comics are seen as short-term, throwaway entertainment and there's still an expectation for them to be cheap. The Beano should have no filler pages (a contents page? Gimme a break), have around 20 pages, half of them in colour, the most inexpensive paper available, and sell for the lowest price possible that would still make a profit. That's the only hope of ever increasing circulation, because all that's happening now is that those who do buy it are being asked to pay more and more as time goes by in order to compensate for diminishing sales. Eventually, they'll price themselves out of the market.

Yet the market is saturated with kids' magazines with fewer pages, less content and a higher price than the Beano. That's the fault in your logic. FIller pages are a consequence of living within budgets.

I think you've also totally ignored my point about it being more expensive to do special print runs on cheaper paper. Cheaper raw materials are irrelevant when the costs of actually printing would rise.

AndyB wrote:Yet the market is saturated with kids' magazines with fewer pages, less content and a higher price than the Beano. That's the fault in your logic. FIller pages are a consequence of living within budgets.

I think you've also totally ignored my point about it being more expensive to do special print runs on cheaper paper. Cheaper raw materials are irrelevant when the costs of actually printing would rise.

Perhaps the fault in your logic, Andy, is that it would surely be better to leave out the filler pages altogether - do without the pages in other words - which, to my mind, is the surest way to living within a budget. To be honest, I'd rather pay, say, £1.50 for a 20 page comic choc-full of comic strips, than £2.00 for a 36 page comic with pages that aren't really required. Not having to produce needless pages would surely save money right from the outset. And I wasn't talking about doing special print-runs on cheaper paper - I'm talking about doing the whole comic on cheaper paper as the standard practice. (I'm not quite convinced that printing on cheaper paper means that the cost of actual printing would rise. Or at least, I don't see why it should have to.) And as for those other magazines with fewer pages, less content and a higher price, surely that only demonstrates that they're even more expensive than The Beano, not that The Beano isn't more expensive than it needs to be? (Relatively speaking.)

Kid Robson wrote:I'm not quite convinced that printing on cheaper paper means that the cost of actual printing would rise.

Not if it was a regular thing, but doing a one-shot - and the ancillary costs which comes with that - means per-page costs are more than a comic which has been running for a while.

I don't think anyone has pointed out that DCT sold their own presses yet - this out-sourcing might add to the overall cost, but without explicitly asking anyone there, it is merely a guess on my part...

Kid, you've missed the point altogether once again.

If you're doing your own printing in-house, as long as you have the necessary printing line you can print what you like at a marginal cost of precisely the paper, the ink and the electricity.

If you're outsourcing, it doesn't matter if you're doing a "special" run once a week or once a year. It will still be cheaper to print six magazines in one format than to print five in one format and another in a special format that can't be done on the same line. As soon as you ask the printers to use a second machine, you've doubled their fixed costs before you even start, and they will charge accordingly. As I understand it, that is what did for Classics from the Comics and the Fun Size comics - doing two "special" runs each month was completely uneconomic.

Any decision about paper is going to come down to that: what is the cost of changing? If the marginal cost of printing on the current paper is less than changing to printing on paper which in itself is cheaper to purchase, they'll stick to the current paper - and of the types of paper that DCT use for their magazines, it's easy to believe that they are already using the cheapest that is appropriate for full colour gravure or litho (cf the high standard paper used for the pull out comics in Dennis and Gnasher Megazine - presumably this is one of their "standard" paper types in the printing contract)

I still think that making the Beano thinner would be a terrible mistake. Parents would go "£1.50 for that wee thin thing on cheap paper? Forget that, here's some expensive magazine with tat on the cover" and supermarkets may well go "Here, where's our markup if you cut the price?"

You're not far wrong on the economics of the thing for consumers. I have heard people discuss the price of Beano/Dandy and react in that way as it appears to be "less bang for the buck" for the casual buyer. Losing a filler page may seem like a good idea, but if it helps to "puff" out the magazine and appeal to the casual consumer, then it has to be good for the magazine as I am sure that DCT pays less for a spot illustration than a full comic page. I don't know this for sure, but simple economics would dictate this.

As to the out-sourcing, I notice that the People's Friend/My Weekly stories are the same size as Commando. This seems to support the idea that DCT are outsourcing their publishing in a set format. These are the stand-alone stories, not the magazines themselves as I have no idea what they look like. (And if you believe that whopper, then may I interest you in this lovely statue for sale?)

I am sure that someone in the know would be kind enough to let us know if it's not breaching some confidentiality clause.

I have no idea what format My Weekly and People's Friend are, but I would reckon they are exactly the same as the Beano - same paper, although the cover may or may not be heavier. Same print run, any other title in the same format is marginal cost.

Andy, one of us has certainly missed the point, but I'm not convinced that it's me. Who's talking about a 'special' print run apart from you? I'm talking about doing the comic on the same type of paper (cover and interiors) all the year round. All that "It will still be cheaper to print six magazines in one format than to print five in one format and another in a special format that can't be done on the same line" has nothing to do with what I'm suggesting. The 'old' Beano was printed on the same paper at one time, colour and b&w pages. If it had been just as cheap (or cheaper) to print the whole thing in colour, then why didn't they back then? Surely the fact that they didn't was something to do with economics?

Now, I'm aware that things are different nowadays, but when The Beano was a mere 16 page slip of a thing, it sold far better than it does today. (And yes, I'm aware that there are other factors involved.) So let's consider, shall we? Every single thing that DCT have done over the last 10-15 years has failed to halt the decline. Print on glossy paper? Sales still fall. Attach a load of tat to the cover? Perhaps a slight rise depending on the toy, but overall, doesn't help the decline. Make the comic full-colour? Still selling less than it did in its heyday. Eventually one has to wonder whether it's the actual treatment which is killing the patient.

Part of the problem was that comics were once printed merely to keep the presses running, because it cost more to let them grind to a halt. Therefore any money made was a bonus. It was probably a major mistake for DCT to have closed their printing plants and outsourced the operation to other hands.

Interestingly, when The Dandy was relaunched, it was printed on thinner paper than The Beano (but cost more). Before too long, The Beano switched to the same paper as The Dandy and the price increased with that very issue. Makes one wonder, therefore. whether DCT were actually pursuing the less expensive option.

As for potential readers buying a thicker comic, I rather think that when they see how much content is pointless, it would tend to dissuade them from buying the comic again as opposed to becoming regular readers. Parents, in my experience, usually tend to go for the cheaper option - certainly as far as comics are concerned. However, we're now at a point when even the cheaper option is perceived as being too expensive. No, I don't have the solution, but it doesn't hurt to at least recognise part of the problem.

Kid, you failed to note that every single thing every other comic publisher over the past 10 to 15 years has done has also failed to halt the decline in sales. Otherwise, Buster and Oink! would still be with us as well.

There are only five "real" comics still around that were out in the 90's (2000AD, Megazine, Viz, Beano and Commando) and they have all suffered the same decline in sales. You can't really single out DCT as no-one seems to have a magic bullet to bring mainstream comics back up to the sales level they once enjoyed.

No, Kid, you are missing the point entirely.

DCT will have established a contract with printers to print their magazines on certain paper at certain rates. You can bet your bottom dollar that those rates decrease as they ask for more to be printed. Those are economies of scale.

To move a publication to another print line would lose those economies of scale, and is therefore incredibly likely to cost more irrespective of the cost of the paper. I also believe that the 2010 Dandy may have been printed outside DCT from the beginning, and that explains why the Beano was brought into line.

I don't know whether closing the Kingsway printing presses was a mistake or not. I do know DCT will have taken into account the amount of printing they needed to do, bearing in mind that even reprint comics require editorial teams to be paid, and almost certainly the capital outlay required to modernise their presses, which if not due at that time, would have been due in the next few years, as well as the need for temporary accommodation while the Courier Building is closed. It may well be that all models showed it being cheaper to outsource printing, even if there was an increase in printing requirements, by the time that replacement plant was avoided and staff had been laid off.

Bluntly, you need to accept commercial realities. One of those is that the Beano has been in decline for a lot longer than 15 years - and as long as the competition is upping the paper quality and printing style, DCT needs to follow suit, or preferably get ahead of the game, and that means full colour and good page count (even with filler). Reducing any of that would be a retrograde step, and would affect the attractiveness of the publication - Fleetway didn't keep up, and they met with disaster.

I'm not missing your point, Andy, but I don't consider it to be as relevant to my point as you seem to imagine. Here's why. My point is that DCT shouldn't have limited themselves to such an operation to begin with. (And it's not quite as simple as you seek to suggest. There are other variables to consider.) What I'm suggesting is what they should have done earlier, before the system they're now locked into (in your view) became the norm. I quite see that you're saying that such an option as I suggested is perhaps no longer available to them, but that's not what I'm getting at. To reiterate: I'm proposing what they should have done in the light of how things once were, not as you say they now are. Also, the picture you are painting is one of surmise, not based on what you definitely know of DCT's situation. If DCT are getting all their publications printed by the one printer, then I'd image (surmise on my part too, admittedly) that they'd be at least slightly flexible to DCT's requirements. As to your point about other publishers 'upping the game', it's worth remembering that Thomson's comic publications were always in the shade (appearance-wise) of other, glossier, more expensive periodicals. What gave Thomson's the edge in most cases? Being cheap and cheerful, without the fringes. My whole point is that when DCT didn't try to compete (in terms of paper quality and quantity) with glossier, bigger, more expensive titles, they led the field, they weren't lost in the mire.

As for retrograde steps, that's merely your opinion, and has no more validity than mine. I pick up a comic, see two filler pages on page 2 & 3, so I put it back on the shelf. I doubt that I'm the only one who is less than impressed with a 36 page comic with too much filler material. I'm looking for quality, not quantity, and I believe that others feel the same. However, that's open to debate, but it would be pointless to do so. As for Fleetway, what really went wrong there was that Robert Maxwell bought the Youth Group before he went swimming and immediately started to make cutbacks. Egmont followed suit. When Buster was cancelled, I'd imagine it was selling far more than The Dandy when it met its demise. All I'm saying is a simple, well-established truth: If there's money to be made from something, usually the best and least expensive product will prevail - if anything can. (As long as it's perceived to be.) Perhaps it may be, however, that there's no longer money to be made from weekly comics and that it's well past time to call it a day.

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007, I didn't 'fail to note', I just didn't think there was much point in stating the obvious. The whole point of this thread is whether weekly comics are doomed. It may well be so.

Both the Beano and the Dandy were way behind on content in the 80s. Euan Kerr and Morris Heggie gave them a much-needed shot in the arm.

I would suggest that whatever printers are working for DCT now would be perfectly happy to be very flexible about the paper they use, and would charge accordingly for the privilege. I would also suggest that if the contract wasn't tied into two or three types of paper, we would see more variety between titles, rather than the homogeneity we have. These days it's probably not significantly dearer to print in colour rather than black and white, which is quite different from years ago - indeed, it may be that the contract assumes all internal pages of a given magazine are the same - either black and white or colour, and nothing inbetween.

I'd suggest you spend some time in the children's magazines section of a newsagent. Note how many titles (not just comics) have a contents section. Note how many have it on page 3 (there's an extremely good reason not to put it on page 2, by the way.) Note the purpose of having a contents page (not so much to tell you where to find what, but to advertise that the characters and features are there without you having to look!)

Also note the prices and the quality of the paper where they aren't bagged. Have a look at the DCT titles such as Jacqueline Wilson etc.

Then come back here and seriously try to tell us that a 20 page comic selling at £1.50 just to cover its costs could hope to compete. It's not realistic, and if that model worked, the Beano, Dandy, Beezer, Topper and Nutty would still be with us. The Beano still is the best and least expensive product on the market, demonstrably so, and that is reality.

I tend to agree with the received opinion that an old-style low-priced Beano on cheap paper couldn't survive in today's market conditions. On the other hand, I can't help wondering whether the producers of Viz have thought about test-marketing a children's comic in a similar format to their adult title. Personally I loved their 'Pathetic Sharks' Special! (even though it did have glossy covers).

- Phil R.

I loved that, too, and it's a great idea, Phil, but perhaps that was their market test.

I wonder if Lew can shed any light?