Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and characters

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philcom55
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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by philcom55 »

It surprises me how many people who've grown up in the Internet Age seem to look on free access to this sort of material as a kind of human right! :shock:

Louis Crandell
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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by Louis Crandell »

philcom55 wrote:It surprises me how many people who've grown up in the Internet Age seem to look on free access to this sort of material as a kind of human right! :shock:
There are some who seem to think that anything that can be digitally reproduced is therefore free. After all, it costs next to nothing to copy it. What they like to forget, or make excuses to get around, is that there's the making of the thing that still costs.

big bad bri
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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by big bad bri »

i would still rather paper copies over a computer screen yes i would prob buy legitimate discs but perhaps for just printing the odd cover or page purposes .but if DCT did do a website or discs i would hope you would have the opportunity to order a print copy too.

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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by ISPYSHHHGUY »

DCT announced they were scanning loads of old material two or three years back, but sadly nothing more has been heard about this......scanned volumes would do me personally, it's a lot better than not seeing the material at all.

Maybe they just scanned vintage material for storage purposes.

As I said in my last post, a full 10-year disc set from 1960-69 BEANO or DANDY especially, and all the offshoots from the same time would be the top of my 'wants' list and I'm sure others of my age group would buy this sort of thing too.

If these sold well [and I don't see why not] DCT could move onto BEEZER TOPPER SPARKY and the rest, and on to the girls' comics, etc etc---this is a potential goldmine for somebody , and should not be the reserve of the illegal scanners who have moved in to 'bridge this gap'.

Even the illegal scanners have not put this sort of thing out in any definitive collection that I know of.

Reprints on paper and books containing vintage strips is a much more costly venture, I can appreciate why publishers are hestitant there, but I have never understood why proper sanctioned collections of all the famous UK comics of the 50s-70s heyday, when sales were in the hundreds of thousands and even higher, have failed to appear on legitimate digital disc or on a pay-to-view website, considering the low cost of the technology.

Profits generated here could be paid into the company to help finance the present BEANO and I would be happy to contribute.

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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by starscape »

If the scan is of material where the odds on it getting reprinted are virtually negligible and the companies have a blanket ban on outside companies purchasing a license, then it's a victimless crime. The creators don't gain and the comic companies don't lose out.

No worse than buying second-hand copies of comics. Doesn't gain the company or the creator a bean. Also, remember the 'prohibited against selling, lending etc.' at the bottom of the 1st or back page? Is that legal? Or should that also be stopped?
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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by ISPYSHHHGUY »

The only people losing out financially from the sale of vintage comics on pirated disc are the fat-cat collectors [and they still have the actually-of-some-value paper originals].

Comics on disc have no real monetary value in collecting terms. Not everyone is 'into' collectors' items [I'm one of such folks], they just want to see the older comics.

New stuff on pirated disc is a greater crime in my view, affecting creators in the here-and-now.......but yes, if the chances of GIGGLE comic for example even re-appearing properly ever again is nearly non-existant, why not put stuff like this out on disc?

It's either that or allow material such as this to slip into oblivion.

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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by comixminx »

ISPYSHHHGUY wrote:DCT announced they were scanning loads of old material two or three years back, but sadly nothing more has been heard about this......scanned volumes would do me personally, it's a lot better than not seeing the material at all....

Reprints on paper and books containing vintage strips is a much more costly venture, I can appreciate why publishers are hestitant there, but I have never understood why proper sanctioned collections of all the famous UK comics of the 50s-70s heyday, when sales were in the hundreds of thousands and even higher, have failed to appear on legitimate digital disc or on a pay-to-view website, considering the low cost of the technology.
It's a common view, but I don't think it's true that reprinting on paper is much more costly. A lot of the costs are associated with scanning the material in the first place - that's a lot of manual work, especially with the amount of clean up that would be needed, as it would be a case of scanning from printed copies, not from artwork. Yes, the paper and the printing activities cost money but again it's not as straightforward as you might think - it's very normal for publishers to set books up as 'print on demand', so that they are only printed when there is a firm order from a customer, so you know you are going to sell it. You don't have to pay for warehousing or for shelf space, in that case. And even if you produce something as a purely digital edition, you still incur costs for storing it and selling it - you need a website to sell it through, you need to hold the digital copy somehow and make sure that it can be downloaded by the customer or however it is going to be delivered to them. There needs to be security on the site with the digital version, and security around the e-commerce of buying stuff online. Etc etc, meaning that the costs are more even than you'd think.
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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by ISPYSHHHGUY »

Also, proper official collections of dvd disc sets of comics would benefit from having anti-pirate inserts added into the discs, making them dearer still.


Vinyl and even cassette tapes are/were much more expensive to manufacture than cd discs, I do know that---just more stages of production, discs are just 'stamped' and are lightweight to transport.


Official discs would be a lot more expensive than pirated ones, especially if, as you say comicminx, the poorer-state pages were restored and colour-corrected, etc. Sounds great, in fact, and jobs for somebody in the ailing comics business. In some cases, entire feature films are restored on 24 frames per second imagery [!] so surely this could be done with single-page images.

You make some good points.

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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by Lew Stringer »

comixminx wrote: It's a common view, but I don't think it's true that reprinting on paper is much more costly. A lot of the costs are associated with scanning the material in the first place - that's a lot of manual work, especially with the amount of clean up that would be needed, as it would be a case of scanning from printed copies, not from artwork. Yes, the paper and the printing activities cost money but again it's not as straightforward as you might think - it's very normal for publishers to set books up as 'print on demand', so that they are only printed when there is a firm order from a customer, so you know you are going to sell it. You don't have to pay for warehousing or for shelf space, in that case. And even if you produce something as a purely digital edition, you still incur costs for storing it and selling it - you need a website to sell it through, you need to hold the digital copy somehow and make sure that it can be downloaded by the customer or however it is going to be delivered to them. There needs to be security on the site with the digital version, and security around the e-commerce of buying stuff online. Etc etc, meaning that the costs are more even than you'd think.

Yep, all that, plus the necessity of employing more staff to handle it. (Existing editorial staff are busy enough on the current comics.)

Chris, I wonder if it is a "victimless crime" to pirate old comics though? It sets up the expectation that vintage material is up for grabs, so when companies do publish such stuff there's going to be some who either think "I already have it on file" or "Someone's bound to upload it soon". I wonder how much it will impact on sales of the recent Monster and Misty books when some already downloaded those stories when the pirate sites were still active, or bought the illegal discs of Scream and Misty that were advertised on eBay?

A pirated file or disc is completely different to buying a second hand comic. The copyright law regarding piracy pertains to publishing and distribution. That line in the indicia of the old comics you mention was, as I understand, to prevent retailers/wholesalers from charging more than cover price for new comics or repackaging them for higher profit without permission. It wasn't about second hand bookstalls etc selling the odd issue or a schoolkid lending his copy to a mate.

Rab, who are these "fat cat collectors" you often mention? I have many complete sets of comics, including TV21, Scorcher, Pow!, Crunch, Countdown, etc. I'm not going to make them available to anyone ('cos it's illegal, and I don't have the time even if it wasn't) and I don't loan them either ('cos I don't want them getting creased or lost) so does that make me a "fat cat collector" just because I bought them for my own entertainment out of my own hard earned money?
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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by Louis Crandell »

Lew Stringer wrote: Chris, I wonder if it is a "victimless crime" to pirate old comics though? It sets up the expectation that vintage material is up for grabs, so when companies do publish such stuff there's going to be some who either think "I already have it on file" or "Someone's bound to upload it soon". I wonder how much it will impact on sales of the recent Monster and Misty books when some already downloaded those stories when the pirate sites were still active, or bought the illegal discs of Scream and Misty that were advertised on eBay?
A few years ago I was on another forum, one related to Marvel Comics. One of the site admins openly boasted that he was downloading Golden Age comics - "the internet is the best library there is." He even made it clear he was downloading stuff that was available in reprint and that this wasn't because he couldn't afford to pay for those reprint volumes, but because he chose not to - "why pay for something when I can get it for free?"

One of the people responding to him felt this was fine, as to their mind Marvel had long since made their money back on anything originally published in the 1940s - a "victimless crime" as Chris suggested. I pointed out that not every Golden Age title will be available online, and that those that are are frequently poor condition, scanned from microfiche so that the colours are washed out, etc. It cost Marvel more money to reprint Golden Age material than more recent comics, as they had to purchase the back issues (not cheap), scan them, and then have artists clean the scans up. If Marvel couldn't make a profit on their Golden Age reprints, then they would discontinue them, before they got round to the rarer stuff not available online. The crime wasn't victimless - the fans who want to see this material restored and reprinted were the victims.

I suffered a tirade of personal abuse for suggesting it was wrong to download stuff that was legally available and which the downloader could afford to pay for but just didn't want to. I was also told that I was talking rubbish and that it didn't cost Marvel anything to reprint older material. This was a number of years back. It's just under four years since Marvel printed a Golden Age or Atlas Age Masterworks. They used to publish a couple of those a year, mixed in with the more recent material.

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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by ISPYSHHHGUY »

Lew Stringer wrote:
comixminx wrote: It's a common view, but I don't think it's true that reprinting on paper is much more costly. A lot of the costs are associated with scanning the material in the first place - that's a lot of manual work, especially with the amount of clean up that would be needed, as it would be a case of scanning from printed copies, not from artwork. Yes, the paper and the printing activities cost money but again it's not as straightforward as you might think - it's very normal for publishers to set books up as 'print on demand', so that they are only printed when there is a firm order from a customer, so you know you are going to sell it. You don't have to pay for warehousing or for shelf space, in that case. And even if you produce something as a purely digital edition, you still incur costs for storing it and selling it - you need a website to sell it through, you need to hold the digital copy somehow and make sure that it can be downloaded by the customer or however it is going to be delivered to them. There needs to be security on the site with the digital version, and security around the e-commerce of buying stuff online. Etc etc, meaning that the costs are more even than you'd think.

Yep, all that, plus the necessity of employing more staff to handle it. (Existing editorial staff are busy enough on the current comics.)

Chris, I wonder if it is a "victimless crime" to pirate old comics though? It sets up the expectation that vintage material is up for grabs, so when companies do publish such stuff there's going to be some who either think "I already have it on file" or "Someone's bound to upload it soon". I wonder how much it will impact on sales of the recent Monster and Misty books when some already downloaded those stories when the pirate sites were still active, or bought the illegal discs of Scream and Misty that were advertised on eBay?

A pirated file or disc is completely different to buying a second hand comic. The copyright law regarding piracy pertains to publishing and distribution. That line in the indicia of the old comics you mention was, as I understand, to prevent retailers/wholesalers from charging more than cover price for new comics or repackaging them for higher profit without permission. It wasn't about second hand bookstalls etc selling the odd issue or a schoolkid lending his copy to a mate.

Rab, who are these "fat cat collectors" you often mention? I have many complete sets of comics, including TV21, Scorcher, Pow!, Crunch, Countdown, etc. I'm not going to make them available to anyone ('cos it's illegal, and I don't have the time even if it wasn't) and I don't loan them either ('cos I don't want them getting creased or lost) so does that make me a "fat cat collector" just because I bought them for my own entertainment out of my own hard earned money?

Hiya Lew: the 'fat cat collectors' I sometimes mention is not aimed at yourself personally or anyone else in particular: it is aimed at those elitists who sell for gross financial profit, something absurd like hundreds of pounds for the first issue of a 1960s UK humour comic. To me this is simply artificially high sums, the same sort of madness that has polluted the housing market [a much more serious problem, actually, but the idea is much the same].

The 'problem' of artificially highly-priced older comics of course is much greater in the USA, where some early comics are kept in sealed bank vaults and have a crazy market value of hundreds of thousands of dollars---enough to buy a good house, in some extreme cases.

There are definitely those who buy a brand new comic and seal it and store it in mint condition----without even turning a single page----- in the lame hope of cleaning up financially a lot later on.

Are these people really comics fans? I don't think so---unless, of course, they buy two copies, one to store and one to read. Some of these people are fat-cat chancers, exploiting the capitalist system and milking others for all they are worth. Some are happy to pay these high sums, fair enough: but this sort of crazy prices is something I would personally rather avoid, even if it means me taking up pirated copies instead----they are two seperate evils of course:---but which one is the worst, the distribution of illegal copies spread cheaply so many can read the material, , or the elitist few hoarding a finite amount of material, and hardly anyone else getting to see the stuff? Again, I am not having a go at you personally.


The main thing I have got against this approach is that the gross profits made in auctioning rare comics is going to capitalist profiteers, and not to the creators themselves.The exact same result as pirating comics on disc: the creators are losing out on the profits---the net result of both approaches is just identical, problem-wise.




And no, I'm not a snivelling Commie, Lew; [!] There is good and bad in the Western system, the same as in most systems.

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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by starscape »

I agree with Louis. Downloading comics that have been reprinted by a company that have an active interest in rereleasing their history is not victimless...

...but it's hardly the point I was making.
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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by Phoenix »

ISPYSHHHGUY wrote:There are definitely those who buy a brand new comic and seal it and store it in mint condition----without even turning a single page----- in the lame hope of cleaning up financially a lot later on.
30th Century Comics have recently been offering for sale at quite high prices a number of what they refer to as slabbed issues of American comics. Unless I am completely misunderstanding what the word slabbed means, this process will only allow the purchaser to see the front cover, and be forced to take on trust the existence of the rest of the comic below it, although I don't doubt that the pages are there. I like Fine condition copies of my story papers as much as the next guy but all mine are for reading, and if one gets a bit torn it does not lead to great wailing and gnashing of teeth.

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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by ISPYSHHHGUY »

Slabbing sounds extreme to me, Phoenix, although I have certainly heard this term somewhere and I certainly believe this exists.

However, the more people 'slabbing' obviously decreases the long-term value of each copy being 'slabbed'.

I bet some folk have air-conditioned conditions especially installed at home. to preserve the booty in question!

Institutions like film and TV companies have to do this of course: a lot of archive material has been lost through tapes and film getting corrupted through wrong storage conditions.

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Re: Rebellion acquire Egmont's archive of strips and charact

Post by big bad bri »

fat cat collectors in my mind are those that buy multiple copies of a comic to sell for profit later om ,and people on ebay like hannahzoe who charge ridiculous money for even common items.

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