Are weekly comics doomed?

[Ginger]

Yes, they are. I've had this conversation on here once before and I remember someone arguing about it, but it seems to me irrefutable:- Comics used to cost the same as a chocolate bar. How much is an average snack-size chocolate bar these days, about 50p?

[Digifiend]

More like 75p, and they're about to rise even more due to a poor cocoa harvest. But yeah, still a lot cheaper than the cheapest comic (which is The Beano at £2).

[Kid Robson]

More like 75p, and they're about to rise even more due to a poor cocoa harvest. But yeah, still a lot cheaper than the cheapest comic (which is The Beano at £2).

Depends where you buy them. Farmfoods sell Mars Bars, etc., for 49p, and the Pound shops sell them 3 for £1.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

Ginger: it was me who came up with the 'chocolate-bars-used to be the same-price-as-a weekly-comic' anology [or at least I certainly mentioned this on here once], and I'm chuffed you remember this!

Yes, I remember when you could buy a modest chocolate bar like Pink Panther or Super Mousse for a princely 2p! [the same cost as a Beano or Dandy at the same time]-----I'm not sure how much the 'posher' Mars Bars were, but the likes of Curly Wurly cost 3p, when the SPARKY set you back two-and-a-half 'new pence'.


If we use a guide geared to inflation, the modern BEANO costs about the same as a large-sized, deluxe Cadbury's chocolate bar, [about 2 quid] of the sort of out -of- range to many kids' pocket money of the early 70s [unless you were Ivor Lott, of course]......

[Digifiend]

More like 75p, and they're about to rise even more due to a poor cocoa harvest. But yeah, still a lot cheaper than the cheapest comic (which is The Beano at £2).

Depends where you buy them. Farmfoods sell Mars Bars, etc., for 49p, and the Pound shops sell them 3 for £1.

Well, I'm referring to the standard RRP, as usually charged in newsagents. Those cheaper prices are surely cases of products being sold at a loss in the hope you'll buy other items.

[Ginger]

The point is, something like 50p-80p is what a kids' comic should cost these days, if their price increase was only due to inflation. That's a LOT less than the £2-£3 price tag we're seeing.

[AndyB]

I agree with Digi - also the pound shops are often supplied with special packages designed to be sold at £1 - the individual packets being smaller than the normal full price packets, but since the full price packets in the supermarkets are covering the fixed costs of production, the wholesale price for the special pound shop packages is just extra income into the pockets of the manufacturers. This applies to all major brands stocked in pound shops, not just chocolate manufacturers.

It's always worth pointing out that while the Beano may now be worth three Mars Bars rather than one, the Mars Bar may still be 57g/2oz but the Beano is nearly twice as thick, is printed on better paper in full colour and the unit costs are pushed even higher by the lower circulation.

It doesn't mean that we wouldn't like them to be cheaper, but it would be incredibly difficult to imagine a 20 page newsprint comic with 4 pages block colour, 8 pages spot colour and the rest black and white selling enough copies to be able to be sold at less than £1 now - consider how much Commando costs due to its circulation. Faced with full colour competition in a cut-throat market, a 1970s size Beano would have no hope.

[Kid Robson]

One thing we have to bear in mind 'though, is that we're not comparing like-with-like. Back then, The Beano had only 16 pages, of which 4 were in full-colour, the rest in b&w and spot colour, and was printed on cheap paper. Nowadays, it's 36, full-colour, glossy paper pages (although it now carries ads), which makes a direct comparison with its '60s and '70s incarnation difficult. However, these new developments have only pushed up the price without necessarily making it appeal to a wider readership. There's a good argument for producing the comic as cheaply as possible and reducing the price.

Oops, written before Andy's above comment had appeared.

[Ginger]

I agree, Kid, I think there's a very good argument. I'm not convinced kids give a monkeys about glossy pages and full colour. I've argued this before on here, but I personally prefer the cheaper paper, there's something about it. I used to love the old Radio Times, it was never the same when it wnet glossy. Private Eye has always retained the cheap paper, and the low cover price (£1.50), I think they're smart enough to realise they'd ruin it if it went to glossy paper stock. Some publications aren't SUPPOSED to be glossy, and comics are one of those. They're supposed to be cheap, of course they are:- so kids can buy them with their pocket mony. I'd love to see a comic printed on cheap paper, not full colour throughout, old style; and costing maybe 80p.
Andy, it might not succeed, you may be right, but I'd still love to see a publisher try it.

[AndyB]

Ever heard of Classics from the Comics, which would probably have a cover price of £2.99 if it were still in production?

I think you're right to say that the kids may not care so much about the glossiness or otherwise, but for all that the content is written for kids, the cover is designed to stand out where adults will spot it, and they (even though I'm 40 myself!) are going to look for publishing bling like free gifts to keep the kids quiet and colour.

[Ginger]

Not quite sure what you're trying to say. Yes, I remember Classics, but although it was printed on cheap paper and non-colour, it still, as you say, had a high price tag; so it doesn't really fit the model I was talking about.

Ah, you've edited! Yes, the plastic tat thing is a curse. But The Phoenix never has free gifts, and seems to be doing alright (DESPITE costing three quid!)

[AndyB]

Together with Fun Size Beano and Dandy and several other projects including (at the time) Oor Wullie and the Broons and the Bunty books, Classics was run by two staff and cost two pieces of artwork each month - cheapest production costs. Everything else was cost of printing and distribution.

[Ginger]

...and profit? Maybe they were just greedy.

[AndyB]

If Classics had been profitable, I think that it and the Fun Size comics would probably have survived the change of printers even with the increased printing costs, although I would have liked to have seen them keep going on better paper, as Commando did.

Classics could probably have been printed by litho on the same paper as the Beano for less than it would have cost to keep printing it on newsprint with a shiny cover.

The reason is that the marginal cost of printing one magazine to the same spec, give or take a few sheets of paper, as another existing magazine is less than printing a single run of a magazine with a printing format unique to that magazine - the difference between spreading cost of a printing run across several magazines, and having to accrue all of the costs of that printing run to one magazine.

[Ginger]

I guess what I'm getting at is that if a comic was cheap enough then it might sell in the kind of numbers that would make it profitable. Maybe. Just maybe. Who knows?

What I'm pretty certain of is that comics are too expensive, but I acept that what I'm suggesting is far less likely to happen than say, a cheap comic distributed digitally. I think the digital Dandy was way too expensive for a digital product. Wasn't it the same price as the print comic? Surely the whole point of getting rid of all the printing and distribution costs is that you can offer a much cheaper product? Again, was it just greed?