DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE - Complete Online pdf files

[abacus]

The single most important factor for why kids don't read comics so much now is the cost. Comics are now expensive (in a ratio of cost to time entertained) compared to just about any other form of entertainment, and there are a lot more things competing for those kids' money.

I agree and that is why I have mentioned in earlier posts that if local newspapers sell for around 80p or even the freebie newspapers that are produced although of course advertising is involved then why can't comics be produced at a cheaper rate.Comics like Viz increase their prices from time to time and it must have a damaging effect on their sales.Obviously I'm not looking at it from their financial perspective.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

Readers today are also paying a higher premium to cover the costs of glossy paper stock/full-colour, etc, unlike in the 50s and 60s when the comics were churned out en masse using el-cheapo newsprint.


The results were less than luxurious back then to be sure, but it certainly helped to keep the costs down, and nobody really complained at the time.

[Lew Stringer]

The single most important factor for why kids don't read comics so much now is the cost. Comics are now expensive (in a ratio of cost to time entertained) compared to just about any other form of entertainment, and there are a lot more things competing for those kids' money.

I agree and that is why I have mentioned in earlier posts that if local newspapers sell for around 80p or even the freebie newspapers that are produced although of course advertising is involved then why can't comics be produced at a cheaper rate.Comics like Viz increase their prices from time to time and it must have a damaging effect on their sales.Obviously I'm not looking at it from their financial perspective.

As was explained the last time you brought this up, sales of daily newspapers far exceed that of comics, so the unit cost is lower. Also, newspapers carry a lot of advertising from huge companies who can afford to spend a lot on an advertising budget. Comics (and newspapers, and everything else) put their prices up out of necessity. If they could publish an 80p comic they'd be doing so.

[abacus]

Maybe that's how it has to be, but if the the goverment want you to stop drinking or smoking they suggest putting up the prices.

[Lew Stringer]

Maybe that's how it has to be, but if the the goverment want you to stop drinking or smoking they suggest putting up the prices.

So it's a government plot to stop people reading comics?

[abacus]

You know what I mean Lew prices can deter people from buying comics unless they are special comics.Generally speaking when I am at carboot sales there are comics that I am not too bothered about but will take them if the price is very low and other comics that I really want and will pay a lot more for.I will pay for comics that impress me in shops but otherwise I don't want to pay a lot for general reading matter when money can be spent on other things.It is up to the comics artwork and story to make me part with my money in a similar way a pop record can induce someone to buy it.

[AndyB]

And as I usually point out, traditional newsprint comics don't sell to children. Look at the glossy covers with tat attached and tat within - the Beano and 2000AD (the latter of which is not available in supermarkets) offer real content, but still need the gloss of eyecatching covers for marketing to compete with the tat.

That doesn't come cheap, but unit sales would be even lower if they didn't. See also under Classics from the Comics for a magazine of quality reprints and sales figures so low that it wasn't economic to keep it going when DC Thomson changed printers.

[Lew Stringer]

And as I usually point out, traditional newsprint comics don't sell to children. Look at the glossy covers with tat attached and tat within - the Beano and 2000AD (the latter of which is not available in supermarkets) offer real content, but still need the gloss of eyecatching covers for marketing to compete with the tat.

That doesn't come cheap, but unit sales would be even lower if they didn't. See also under Classics from the Comics for a magazine of quality reprints and sales figures so low that it wasn't economic to keep it going when DC Thomson changed printers.

Exactly. This is the point. People wanting comics to revert to the old style forget that the old style was no longer appealing to children. That's why they added more colour and glossy paper. There's no point in thinking 'Well, they appealed to me when I was a kid'. The comics have to appeal to the kids of today, not the children of yesterday. Tastes change, and always have. Otherwise comics would still be 8 page tabloids with stories about funny tramps falling over.

Agreed, price plays a huge part in putting potential buyers off, which is one reason The Beano keeps its price down by not having gifts with most issues. But it's still a risk, and a fine line to judge whether gifts (and a higher cover price) would lead to more sales or not.

[Phoenix]

Agreed, price plays a huge part in putting potential buyers off, which is one reason The Beano keeps its price down by not having gifts with most issues. But it's still a risk, and a fine line to judge whether gifts (and a higher cover price) would lead to more sales or not.

It was ever thus. In the twenties and thirties Thomsons regularly gave away excellent items with their text story papers, often 52-page booklets lovingly put together on topics of real interest to boys. Of course, at the time boys were in the habit of reading, and the price of the papers was stable at 2d from 1921 to 1951. Even after the war most of the free gifts had some value and longevity, but in the sixties, when The Rover was the sole survivor of The Big Five, almost all the free gifts were issued with The Victor and other picture papers such as The New Hotspur, The Hornet, Bunty, Judy, Diana and Mandy, although I can't recall any that required any significant reading ability. They were definitely poor things in comparison with the pre-war items but they were a great deal better than today's tat.

[abacus]

Look at the glossy covers with tat attached and tat within
.

It doesn't look like there will be many long term comic readers giving a nostalgic look back at today's comics does ir?

However I'm optimistic that new comics will be produced .

[philcom55]

If nothing else I'd imagine there will be plenty of fans who collect the British comics which reprint American superhero stories.

[Phoenix]

If nothing else I'd imagine there will be plenty of fans who collect the British comics which reprint American superhero stories.

Here is a very early one from 14 October 1939. I was told many years ago at the Book Palace, where I bought this issue of Triumph, that the Almagamated Press had been given permission by D.C. Comics to reprint some stories of Superman very soon after they had first appeared in America. It is a four-sider so I will need two posts for it. I may have posted these images previously.

[Phoenix]

Here are the other two pages.

[Raven]

Exactly. This is the point. People wanting comics to revert to the old style forget that the old style was no longer appealing to children. That's why they added more colour and glossy paper.

Possibly wonky thinking on their part, though, as that's implying that comics were no longer appealing to children because they didn't have more colour or glossy paper, which would be ignoring the facts that 'golden era' comics that did have glossy paper and more colour, like Vulcan and Scoop, didn't necessarily last very long, the addition of glossy paper and more colour appears to have done absolutely nothing to stem the plummet in sales, and manga, the comics which did have a huge surge in sales in recent years and actually brought girls in, had neither colour nor glossy paper.

See also under Classics from the Comics for a magazine of quality reprints and sales figures so low that it wasn't economic to keep it going when DC Thomson changed printers.

Classics had terrible distribution though, and many found it near-impossible to find; also, it was reprints of often archaic material that would have been most likely to be bought by a fairly small adult readership, anyway.

[Lew Stringer]

Look at the glossy covers with tat attached and tat within
.

It doesn't look like there will be many long term comic readers giving a nostalgic look back at today's comics does it.

Of course there will. Today's comics are tomorrow's nostalgia. I thought the same as you in the 1980s, but now I'm always encountering people in their 30s/40s who think the comics of the eighties were the "best ever".

I've told this story before but in 1969 my grandad thought IPC comics of the sixties were "not proper comics" like Illustrated Chips that he read in 1900. The golden age of comics is whenever the reader was a child, and modern comics never measure up to that.