FINAL PART OF UK 'TROLLS': KICKING THE BUTTS (OF BUTT-'EADS)...

Wow!  Who's this handsome buggah?  I'm on the turn!  Oh, it's me!

Some of you may be finding this series of posts a little tedious.  Lemme tell you, they're nowhere near as tedious to read as they are to write.  I'm trying to be as thorough as I can however, because you can bet I'll be accused of having 'conveniently left out' or ignored some part, thereby implying I've distorted or 'twisted' the other fella's words.  In fact, despite my attempts at thoroughness, the charge is still likely to be levelled against me.  Truth to tell, parts of the guy's post are inane and repetitive, and not worthy of attention - but, if I leave them out, I'm 'editing' his words in a devious and diabolical way.  (According to him and his small band of cronies, that is.)

Therefore, any repetition in my own posts is actually dictated by the one I'm responding to, and I don't really see any way around it.  So bear with me for the present, eh?  What I may do when I'm finished, is go back and write another post, in which I summarize the main thrust of the other guy's diatribe, and then I can edit my own responses down to a more concise and digestible level, but you can be sure that I'll be accused of 'manipulating' the facts whatever I do.

    

Anyway, as I said in the previous part, it's now time to look at what constitutes - in real terms - an industry.  Join me after the screengrab below - if you're still awake that is.  Oh, and look how he recommends that you buy some Annuals or Christmas Specials this year.  Despite all his talk about digital comics, note he's recommending the traditional format.  Maybe even he realizes (deep down) that traditional is best.  An interesting point to ponder is this: If you gave a kid a code to access a digital comic as a Christmas present, would the kid regard it as a 'real' gift? Nothing physical to hold in his hands, nothing to see lying at the foot of his bed?  The digital equivalent of a 'No-Prize' perhaps?

It's a bit like those digital Christmas cards people send.  Sure, you can see them on your screen just as well as you can see an actual card on your mantlepiece, but it still doesn't seem the same, does it?  "You can print them out!" you say?  Yeah, but that's a bit like sending yourself a card, isn't it?

Yes, I'm just having some fun.  (But maybe...)

  

Definition of 'industry': 1)  Economic activity concerned with the processing of raw materials and manufacture of goods in factories.

2)  Hard work.

Now, I'd suggest that when most people hear the word 'industry', they tend to think of production lines churning out cars, or machinery, vast sprawling factories, rows of assembly lines, large pallets and heavy crates, sweaty men with oily rags, cranes, ships, girders, vats, etc.  There's just something about the word that suggests huge and bustling enterprise, and that's what I tend to regard as Industry with a capital 'I'. There are also smaller, more sedate forms of 'economic activity', which, to me, is industry with a small 'i'.

At one time, the two largest publishing empires in Britain were IPC and DCT, who churned out magazines, books and comics by the bucket-load.  Enormous presses in almost perpetual production of all kinds of periodicals for sale at home and abroad, printed in their many thousands (indeed millions), resulting in them being relatively inexpensive due to the immense volumes in which they sold.

When it came to comics, they sold because they were cheap disposable entertainment, and because kids loved them. The BEANO, DANDY, EAGLE and TV21 sold, at their height, in the millions, and comics really were a humongous industry at one time, although, truth be told, they were really no more than a sub-division of the publishing industry.  It's been said that comics came into being in order to keep the printing presses running, because it was less expensive and more efficient to do that than have them lying idle for any length of time when they weren't running off some periodical or other.

Of course, things are done differently these days so I understand.  And for a wide variety of reasons, it's now a sad  fact of life that comics no longer sell in the same large numbers that they used to.  Once upon a time, there existed huge publishing corporations that produced all kinds of periodicals and books.  There were editorial staff, art bodgers, office workers, freelance contributors, printing plants, distributors, warehouses, exporters, vans, ships, 'planes, and doubtless all kinds of other cogs in the wheel involved in the production of comics.  Now that's my idea of industry.  C'mon, there's part of you that, however reluctantly, agrees with me, isn't there?

Look at what the digital comic 'industry' consists of (or will do) in its purest form.  This is the world that's coming.  A guy sitting at home writing and drawing his own comic strips.  Or perhaps there's someone else writing them, or even lettering and colouring them.  (No real change there then.)  Whether it's done at his own whim or at the request of a commissioning editor doesn't make much difference.  However, everything changes hands at the press of a computer key and there's no need for anything else in the digital 'publication', and all the other factors that used to figure in the comics industry are eliminated from the bigger picture at a stroke (or, like I said, the press of a key).

Tell me, if a giant shrinks drastically to a mere fraction of his former size, does he still remain a giant?  Nope, is the honest answer.  Whatever he's become, he's no longer a giant.  If an industry shrinks to a fraction of its former size, does it remain an industry?  And it's just not the shrinkage, it's the jettisoning of limbs and appendages that once contributed to its stature and status.  When an industry is no longer 'industrious' to the same degree - by a wide margin - does it remain an industry and does it deserve to retain its former status and title?  Perhaps in some kind of honorary capacity, but it's been downsized to such an extent that it's not really an industry anymore, is it?  At least, not with a capital 'I'.

And despite all the small press publications and digital manifestations, that's not my idea of an industry in the way that sprang to mind when the word was synonymous with the far bigger picture that I've just painted.  It's strictly small scale, to the point where it's fairly insignificant - a pale shadow of its former self.  "Aha, but a shadow is still a shadow!" you cry!  Okay, but it's not much of a shadow and it's still shrinking - and when the light finally fails, it will disappear completely.  That's why, in real terms, the industry - as it once was (and I've always made that clear) - is dead or dying.  Sure, it's on life-support at the moment, and being kept going artificially, but the spirit has long departed and is unlikely to return.

If the industry has evolved, it's evolved into another species, which bears only slight similarities to the original, and therefore needs be reclassified to take these changes into account.  Now can you see my point?

"Yes, but we still totally disagree with it!" you declare.  That's fine, you're perfectly entitled to do so.  Believe it or not, it's never been the intention of these six posts to change your mind on the matter.  At the end of the day, it all comes down to a mere difference of opinion (particularly on how the words 'comics' and 'industry' should be interpreted).  You have yours and I have mine, and perhaps never the twain shall meet, and that's okay.  However, perhaps now you more fully understand exactly what my opinion is and where it springs from, as opposed to the gross misrepresentation of what it is and what prompts it as presented by a handful of scurrilous individuals, desperate to malign those with a different take on things.  Yes, some people really are that insecure - and nasty.

Finally, if you forget everything else you've read, try and remember this.  No one that I know of (and certainly not me) who laments the decline of the industry, does so out of malice, or from a desire to see it fail for our 'own selfish reasons'.  Nobody is trying to put people out of work, or stop anyone buying comics, or trying to deprive kids from fun reading material that will encourage a love of reading in them.  That's just downright silly to suggest it.  In fact, it's more than that, it's nasty!  To question the reasons and cast aspersions on the motivations of people of a different opinion to them, reveals the shrivelled, evil nature of their souls.  And to describe anyone as a 'troll' for merely expressing a point of view is just infantile.

So let's be clear.  I have never claimed that fortnightly, monthly, or nursery comics 'don't count', or that every periodical which contains some text features automatically doesn't qualify as a 'comic' because of that fact.  These 'silly rules' are a figment of his own imagination, and not based on anything remotely resembling truth.  In failing to supply even one shred of evidence for them, he has likewise failed to comply with the 'proper journalistic behaviour' as defined and expected by one who sprang to his defence and apparently endorsed even the spurious sentiments of the post by cross-posting it on his own blog.

  

Here endeth the lesson.  Everybody shout Hallelujah and Amen!  (Twenty times.)