IS THERE A FUTURE FOR BRITISH COMICS IN PRINT?

Image copyright D.C. THOMSON & Co, Ltd

I'm afraid we may have to consider the distinct possibility that nothing can be done to save comics in print form in this country and that their eventual demise is inevitable.  Perhaps they really are a dying breed and the digital dimension is the only way in which they can possibly continue.  (Strictly speaking, they wouldn't really be comics then, though they would still be comic strips.)

However, assuming they can be saved, here is perhaps a way to do it.  We all know that newsagents and supermarkets prefer to stock more expensive items as their percentage from sales is bigger, but they'd be foolish to ignore lower-priced items selling in large volumes.  After all, it results in the same thing - profits.

So, what can comic companies do to help their products perform better on the shelves?  Off the top of my head, here are a few suggestions which I think may be worth considering:

1)  Start employing writers who can produce consistently funny strips on a weekly basis. No more editors slumming as writers to supplement their earnings and churning out tired, formulaic, unfunny stories that merely fill space.  Stop aiming strips primarily at an infant audience and start crafting stories which not only children can enjoy, but also teenagers and adults who thumb through a copy in their idle moments.  Remember Dennis the Menace at his finest, when his capers weren't written down to an infant's mentality?  Kids and parents could both find things to laugh over in his exploits.

2)  Give kids stories they can relate to - which are funny - that reflect things they have experience of.  (Conflict with parents, teachers, authority, etc.)  No more ridiculous and repetitive concepts like Gnipper, Rasher, Thrasher, Basher, Crasher, Donner and Blitzen, or however many pets Dennis currently has.  (I might have invented a few there, in order to make a point.)  No more ex-army neighbours with tanks in their back gardens and nonsense of that sort, or flying around in rocket-powered Dennis mobiles.  Keep it real, but make it funny.  (Of course, if the concept of the strip is about a boy with a rocket-powered vehicle or a menagerie of pets, then the above 'restrictions' need not apply.)

3)  Hire artists who can tell a story without merely repeating one panel throughout the length of a strip, or is just a series of talking heads.  Artists who can make funny things funnier by the way they draw them, who have a good grasp of sequential storytelling and whose depiction of events can be understood at a glance - and which don't induce eyestrain and a headache.  Oh, and who don't draw like six-year olds.

4)  Use lettering fonts which are instantly legible and pleasing to the eye, not ones that look as if a chicken has walked through ink and scampered all over the page.  Use a consistent style throughout, to give the comic a sense of unity, rather than just being a hodgepodge collection of random strips.  One cannot seriously defend upper and lower case lettering on the grounds that children (or anyone) find it easier to read, when one is using barely legible amateurish scrawls.  A scrawl is a scrawl, whether rendered in upper case or upper and lower.  You'd think this truth would be obvious to all.

5)  Keep the costs as low as possible by perhaps reducing page count (The Beano and Dandy had phenomenal sales when they had only 16 or 20 pages, remember), using cheaper paper and exploiting traditional, familiar characters that'll prompt parents to buy comics for their children out of a sense of nostalgia.  One of the main factors in The Beano's and Dandy's longevity was the 'nostalgia-factor'.  This alone, of course, won't sustain a comic if it isn't any good - it still needs to be well-written, well-drawn and funny.  Humour comics have fallen into the habit of being faintly amusing - and then only sometimes - over the past couple of decades (with exceptions of course), and this needs to be reversed.

6)  Cut the price.  Which can be done if production costs are kept to a minimum.  Investigate supplying to 'pound shops' - they're springing up all over the country and are perhaps an avenue which can be exploited.  (Back issues could be sold, three in a bag, for a £1, rather than just being pulped.)  Another thing which should be emphasized is the educational aspect of comics and how they can help children develop an appetite for reading, along with the ability to do so.  Parents need to be encouraged to renew the once-popular custom of buying comics for their kids, and the educational aspect could be a way of doing it.

Well, these are just a few ideas for the purpose of kick-starting reflection and discussion on how printed comics can not only survive, but thrive, in the decades to come.  Thirty years ago they said that Cinema was dead with the advent of the video, but a reversal in its fortunes was achieved which can surely be emulated by comics if we all put our minds to it.

So how about it?  Anyone else got any ideas?

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(A version of this post was first published on another site.)