Are weekly comics doomed?

[AndyB]

Wouldn't think so. I'm pretty sure the graphic designers do the colouring as well as the design work and lettering. Unless you want to go all hand-lettered, which I know you personally most certainly do not, that's not an expense you can save on, so you might as well get the pages coloured while you're there at zero marginal cost. I wouldn't be certain the artists get paid a great deal more to do their own colouring either.

The Dandy reduced in the end to one graphic designer, one editor and one deputy editor - the one ordinary sub-editor they had wasn't replaced when he retired. Didn't save the title, and you've complained about a resulting lack of consistency and quality as a result of outsourcing most of the writing.

Kids aren't fooled by reprints, even though the Beano staff worked hard to eliminate anachronisms in the reprinted strips - in fact, I think the only strip to have been running over ten years which didn't go to reprints was Dennis, and the comic suffered for lack of new material, which has been discussed here many a time - the comic has to live within a budget, and that is reality, but we don't have to like the implications of that budget. At one stage, barely over half of the comic was new comic strip.

As for the cycling of IPC comics, that may well be so, but just as DCT's last new comic was Hoot (which failed on its cost as I've noted countless times) which folded in 1986, IPC didn't replace School Fun, and in due course cancelled Whoopee as well. By the time Maxwell bought the titles, there was only Buster and Whizzer and Chips left, and W&C was badly neglected to the point of a truly awful attempted reboot in 1990 when they got extra colour for a higher price and lower page count.

The inevitable conclusion, and I think there is independent corroboration of this elsewhere, is that W&C wasn't so much insufficiently profitable as being outright loss-making. I would guess it was probably similar with Whoopee towards the end. That School Fun only lasted 30-odd weeks and before it Wow only lasted just over a year suggests something far worse than not making enough profit (despite Wow having been excellent) - now, of course, every penny profit is a penny on the bottom line, and marginal profits are good things.

[Kid Robson]

Wouldn't think so. I'm pretty sure the graphic designers do the colouring as well as the design work and lettering. Unless you want to go all hand-lettered, which I know you personally most certainly do not, that's not an expense you can save on, so you might as well get the pages coloured while you're there at zero marginal cost. I wouldn't be certain the artists get paid a great deal more to do their own colouring either.

I believe it's different horses for different courses, although you're right about artists not getting much more to colour their own strips. As I understand it, some artists do their own colouring, in-house graphic designers do some, and doesn't Nigel Parkinson have his done by someone else? I don't think you can call it zero marginal cost, because print some pages in b&w and you could do with one less worker right away, thus saving a wage. And it shouldn't take that many designers to letter the contents; in my ltg days, I could've hand-lettered the entire comic in about 2 days.

The Dandy reduced in the end to one graphic designer, one editor and one deputy editor - the one ordinary sub-editor they had wasn't replaced when he retired. Didn't save the title, and you've complained about a resulting lack of consistency and quality as a result of outsourcing most of the writing.

Didn't save the title, Andy, because the title was mince. And it was more the art (and ltg) I complained about than the writing.

Kids aren't fooled by reprints, even though the Beano staff worked hard to eliminate anachronisms in the reprinted strips - in fact, I think the only strip to have been running over ten years which didn't go to reprints was Dennis, and the comic suffered for lack of new material, which has been discussed here many a time - the comic has to live within a budget, and that is reality, but we don't have to like the implications of that budget. At one stage, barely over half of the comic was new comic strip.

Well, that's a sweeping statement about kids not being fooled by reprints. Calamity James is a reprint - and one of the funniest strips in the comic, in my opinion.

As for the cycling of IPC comics, that may well be so, but just as DCT's last new comic was Hoot (which failed on its cost as I've noted countless times) which folded in 1986, IPC didn't replace School Fun, and in due course cancelled Whoopee as well. By the time Maxwell bought the titles, there was only Buster and Whizzer and Chips left, and W&C was badly neglected to the point of a truly awful attempted reboot in 1990 when they got extra colour for a higher price and lower page count.

Can't argue there. The writing was clearly on the wall for IPC comics, otherwise they wouldn't have off-loaded their Youth Group to Maxwell, who made a total hash of the way they handled things. However, I think it's still true to say that, nowadays, some of these comics wouldn't have been cancelled so rapidly based on the circulation they had at the time IPC sold them.

The inevitable conclusion, and I think there is independent corroboration of this elsewhere, is that W&C wasn't so much insufficiently profitable as being outright loss-making. I would guess it was probably similar with Whoopee towards the end. That School Fun only lasted 30-odd weeks and before it Wow only lasted just over a year suggests something far worse than not making enough profit (despite Wow having been excellent) - now, of course, every penny profit is a penny on the bottom line, and marginal profits are good things.

Scream only lasted 15 issues, but I'd heard that it was cancelled not so much because it wasn't selling, but because of controversy concerning the content and a strike interrupting its run. Could be it was a mixture of all these things 'though.

So, basically, Andy, here's where we are: I think The Beano would be a better selling (and looking) comic if it was cheaper and ditched the filler-pages. You say it's too expensive to do so - maybe so, maybe no. However, instead of going around in circles about it, answer me this. Cost difficulties aside, if it could be done, don't you think it would be a good idea to do what I've suggested should've been DCT's approach all along. As I say, forget what you claim are the practical difficulties or objections - in principle, what do you think? Cheaper, less filler? Yes or no?

[AndyB]

With the amount of work for the graphic designers, I don't believe it would save a wage. They must be doing more than just creating speech balloons and colouring some art, because otherwise they wouldn't need two.

It's all academic, because it can't be done, but no, I believe it would be an absolute unmitigated marketing disaster to turn back the clock to a formula which had to be ditched in the 80s to even try to keep up with the competition - or, compared to Fleetway, jump ahead of it. Cheap but P**s poor quality? Looking better - are you serious? No chance, it really would be mince. The only serious comic in that style is Viz, and it's not in the same market as the Beano for obvious reasons.

Bright, cheerful, eye-catching, big and quality is the way forward, because cheap sticks out a mile in a bad way, and thin gets lost amongst the cover mounts or written off as a waste of money - and as I keep pointing out into a vacuum, the Beano is still more content for your dough than any other children's magazine (even the Phoenix, at £2.99 has only 22 pages of comic strip, two pages of text story, and eight pages of filler, even though it carries no advertising), and a great deal more content than many magazines for adults.

The Beano is currently carrying a single reprint, and it is not Calamity James.

[Kid Robson]

On the question of graphic designers, that was my point. Perhaps they don't need two. I'm not convinced that the formula had to be ditched in the '8os. I'm of the opinion that, often, when a comic takes a dip in sales, there's an over-reaction on the part of publishers, who feel that something radical has to be done in order to shake things up. It often makes things worse in the long run, in my view. Sales are currently so low on The Beano that, not only did it increase in price by a whopping 50p in one go only last year, DCT no longer make the sales figures available to the relevant quarters. (ABC, is it?) That's hardly bodes well for the future. It seems that the comic is being kept going merely to wring out every last penny that can be got from it, with as little investment in its future as possible. Yes, the comic (with some reservations) looks nice, but glossy paper does not a comic make, nor full-colour a hit. I thought The Beano from about 10 years ago or so was perfectly adequate - now it's merely following in the wake of others when it was once way out in front. (And as I keep pointing out, seemingly into a vacuum, it hardly matters that the title costs less than others when it's still perceived by many parents as being far too expensive.)

It was carrying Calamity James the last time I bought a copy a few months back. Another bad decision to drop it, in my opinion.

[Bigwords]

Y'know, the wording of the thread is wrong.

We shouldn't be asking if weeklies are doomed, we should be asking how they can be saved. Two different ways of coming to the problem, and if we are looking at solutions rather than obstacles it clears the way for more radical suggestions to be put forward.

[Kid Robson]

Well, I'd say we first need to determine whether they're actually doomed (hence the question) before we start trying to suggest ways to save them. After all, if they're not doomed, they don't need saving, do they?

[Bigwords]

The feeling I get from the title - and you can correct me if I am wrong - is that there is a sense of inevitability about the disappearance of the weeklies. That looming d-word, towering over anything else. It may be me reading too much into the thread (and after the seven pages of comments here, I still think there's mileage in weekly comics).

[AndyB]

Kid, I really would suggest that you actually read the comic before passing comment. For example, if you could turn to the back cover of this week's Beano instead of page 3, you might be surprised.

From what little I can tell as a strict outsider, if there is money to be saved on overheads and other fixed costs in DCT, they are currently doing it. With the exception of a third of a page, DCT is however putting a lot of money into brand new content.

I can almost guarantee you that the conversion of the Beano to full colour caused a bounce in figures. How long term I cannot say, but I don't exactly have the figures.

[Ginger]

I think I've mentioned in the past that Mike Stirling organised a pile of complimentary Beanos and other children's mags for the kids' goodie bags at my wedding in February.

Are you sure you're not a company man, Andy?!
By the way, I don't mean to be picky, but this phrase 'children's mags' is almost part of the problem. It's not a 'children's mag', it's a comic, dammit!

[AndyB]

Definitely not a company man - I'd love to be a Beano writer, for example, but I'm not Just a boring Civil Servant in Belfast...

I said "children's mag" deliberately - comics are a form of magazine for children, and alas, apart from the two Beano titles, DCT doesn't publish anything else resembling a comic, and since the demise of Chuggington it hasn't published any nursery titles at all.

[Bigwords]

comics are a form of magazine for children

Some comics are a form of magazine for children. The medium is not the genre, however, and such a definition excludes zines, underground comics, a swathe of Hunt Emerson's work, a lot of Trident's comics, Savoy's output, and ignores the earliest comics origins as political and social documents altogether...

See, one of the problems that British comics has to overcome is the idea that comics are only entertainment for children, just as US titles often struggle to get past that "is it about superheroes" hurdle. I would love to see an adaptation of Nicholson Baker's The Fermata, or Umberto Eco adaptations, or even something approaching the "ground level" of life in Britain in the same way that The Wire brought aspects of life in Baltimore to light.

If British comics are to thrive, then opening the doors to new stories, and new markets, is something which should be applauded.

I've been through this rant - in various degrees of complexity - so many times that people must be getting bored stiff of the repetition.

[Ginger]

Very good point, Bigwords.

I would also argue that a magazine is a different thing to a comic, anyway.
A magazine is, in my dictionary, 'a publication containing miscellaneous articles by different writers'. I think it's broadened out even more nowadays (old dictionary) but importantly it's characterised by this 'miscellany':- a hotch-potch of different things, puzzles, quizzes, short stories, whatever. Hence the expression magazine TV show, meaning a show with a miscellany of features.

A comic (if indeed it is a real comic) is characterised by containing mostly comic pages; less of the miscellany. As I said elsewhere on this forum recently, a lot of the publications on the shelves masquerading as comics are actually kids' magazines, full of filler material, some with no comic strips at all. For me, they are a different thing from a real comic.

Sorry if this seems pedantic, but as I said, for me this is actually part of the problem, the perception of these awful kids' magazines as being comics. They're not.

[colcool007]

...If British comics are to thrive, then opening the doors to new stories, and new markets, is something which should be applauded...

Now that statement alone is worth a whole new thread.

But going back to the question in the main. If there are any savings to be made, then DCT, Rebellion, etc are doing them. If there are any ways of boosting sales while not cutting profit, they are being used. A good exampe is the many artists/backroom staff going to Expos, ComicCons, etc and not getting paid for it.

Could content be more comics and less fillers? Then, I heartily would wish it to be, but I am a realist and know that the market is shrinking annually and know that the last weekly comic will eventually disappear/switch to monthly publishing as the bottom line, the mighty god PROFIT can no longer be sated.

I applaud the attempts to stave off the inevitable as people put their money where their mouth is (Phoenix, Strip) and would ask that people respond positively to these examples rather than putting on the metaphorical THE END IS NIGH sandwich boards and saying it's all rubbish and the editors are killing them. As it would be extremely foolish to think that the editors want the comic to close as that would be tantamount to them saying, I hate your job so sack the lot of us!

[Bigwords]

A magazine is, in my dictionary, 'a publication containing miscellaneous articles by different writers'. I think it's broadened out even more nowadays (old dictionary) but importantly it's characterised by this 'miscellany':- a hotch-potch of different things, puzzles, quizzes, short stories, whatever.

If specifics are required to differentiate comics from magazines, then the important aspect would be unrelated things, puzzles, quizzes, short stories, miscellany and analecta. All of those things, to confuse matters, are present in comics ranging from Krazy through to the recent ThunderCats title...
The one thing I would nix, given half a chance, is stupid joke pages, with half a dozen illustrated gags which have nothing to do with anything else in the comic - those nearly always make me shake my head in despair.

full of filler material, some with no comic strips at all.

Could content be more comics and less fillers?

The repeated "filler is bad" sentiments ignore something that has always amused me - when the strips, short stories, puzzles and other elements converge into something whole. When the comic is so perfect in the balancing of everything, that the loss of one of those "filler" pages would diminish the overall comic. The one example which comes to mind is an old Tony Broke & Ivor Lott strip where Ivor (for reasons which I can no longer remember) has a pyramid in the grounds of his mansion - there is a puzzle page which references this by using a maze constructed in the shape of a pyramid. It is a small detail, but by removing either the strip or the puzzle page there would be something missing.

[Kid Robson]

Kid, I really would suggest that you actually read the comic before passing comment. For example, if you could turn to the back cover of this week's Beano instead of page 3, you might be surprised.

It's the comic's job to 'pull me in', Andy - it failed. And it's not as if I don't want to like it. However, it's now too much like the relaunched Dandy, which I loathed. These Funsize Funnies pages are a complete waste of space.

From what little I can tell as a strict outsider, if there is money to be saved on overheads and other fixed costs in DCT, they are currently doing it. With the exception of a third of a page, DCT is however putting a lot of money into brand new content.

A 'classics' page or two of reprints would save even more. As a 'strict outsider', Andy, you don't really know what they're doing any more than I do. Several proofreaders for one comic (if what you say is true) seems excessive to me.

I can almost guarantee you that the conversion of the Beano to full colour caused a bounce in figures. How long term I cannot say, but I don't exactly have the figures.

It's a safe bet that it sold more for a while, but once full-colour became the norm it probably lost some of its lure. That's why Summer Specials started to decline. They wasn't anything particularly 'special' about them any more, compared to the weeklies.