Comics UK

It's really crumpled, too!

"In the trenches" doesn't necessarily mean literally in trenches. As an expression (and WWI analogy), it means "in the field of battle" or in the thick of gruelling business, or words to that effect.

I can only imagine folk complaining if classic characters are changed. Though I suppose you couldn't really make the Bash Street class more ethnically inclusive without changing the classic line-up.

The Beano is still fairly boy-character heavy, isn't it? Although it is aimed primarily at boys.

I wonder if "more wide-ranging characters" means more ethnically diverse and more females, as per Marvel's recent revamping.

alanultron5 wrote:Did you ever see `Freaks` Rab? Also from 1932 it was made at the very staid MGM of all studios. It was banned in the UK till about 1968.

It finally got a UK release a few years earlier than that - 1963. Then vanished for another 31 years.

Thanks for explaining. Did you get the sense that DCT were rather aggrieved by it?

It's hard to think of any comic company in the early '90s paying that kind of rate just for a cover (around £18,000 in today's money).

Now I think about it, our highest earning funny book creator could well be Scotland's Mark Millar. I gather there are a lot of movie options on his comics, some of which he has sold merely through the mention he's only toying with the idea of writing as a comic (eg 'Chronoauts'). Mark Millar will s...

What about Leo Baxendale, who still gets a royalty from every copy of BEANO sold? By the way, when he got his out-of-court settlement from D C T, his percentage of the profits was pretty small, but sales were relatively healthy then-----wonder if his percentage increased as sales dipped? The detail...

koollectablz wrote: Even then some artists, like Bisley etc, were being paid £7-10k a cover - that's good money for a few days work.

Who paid him that, and for the cover of what?

If I remember correctly they describe the artwork in Sparky as indistinguished and indistinguishable which I thought was very unfair. Unfair!? That is utter gibberish! Who ever wrote that wants both their eyes and head tested! :twisted: Indeed, George Rosie wrote: "In both Cracker and Sparky the ar...

The thing is that when the book appeared (and even more when Orwell's article was written) most serious journalists and academics still thought that comics were completely beyond the pale, and only worth commenting on as a minor social phenomenon. The idea that individual creators could have any ar...

Furthermore I can't see Orwell's Boys' Weeklies being particularly relevant anyway to The Big Four as he was looking at Frank Richards' output. Yes, and wasn't it Richards who took him to task in a lengthy follow up letter, pointing out all the mistakes he'd made? I agree that if you're commissione...

I wasn't too impressed by Edwards' opening admission that he hadn't actually looked at any of the Five titles he was writing about since 1955, and he was relying heavily on E. S. Turner's book and the "pioneering insights" of George Orwell's essay. Wasn't Orwell's essay fairly error-strewn, though?

Let us know your verdict, Raven. I thought the essays had varying merits and quality of research. Some are certainly pretty good. It wasn't quite the Comics Babylon I was half-expecting, but the darker side comes through with elements like the union ban and NUJ contacting staffers to tell them what...