Anyone miss Fleetway titles....could it work today?

[Peter Gray]

Anyone miss Fleetway titles....could it work today?

Looking and scanning these comics has made me wish they were around today...

They were different to DC Thomson...
what do you think are the main differences?

Looking at the old Fleetway summer specials...hoilday specials..at comicsuk...the memories...they must have produced so many at the time...also it was good for the Beano...Beezer..Topper...Sparky..Dandy...Plug...Buzz...etc...to have competiton to make an even better product...

When The Beano reached 50 years it got into merchandising in a big way...[b:c941729e04]and that seemed to be the moment 1988 when things changed...[/b:c941729e04]

I wished Fleetway had done the same and got money from bed covers..curtains..lamps..figurines..MC Donald toys...animation etc..money going back into the comic and kept Whizzer and chips and Buster going...

I miss them...But great for a collector as there is so many to collect

I'm sure if Buster had new artists...it could have made it...
1995 seemed to be a another bad moment...when the reprints took mostly over.....

[AndyB]

Yes, they really have capitalised on the Beano brand.

Fleetway - the problem is that the brands were never as strong. Even Buster, Joker (RIP!), Sweeny Toddler and Junior Rotter weren't as strong as Dennis and Dan... but more could have been done.

[Captain Storm]

Yeah,I suppose characters such as The Spellbinder,Adam Eterno,Kid Pharaoh,Capt Hurricane etc could have made great figurines,bedsheets,etc....but alas a missed opportunity....the U.S. had cottoned onto this yonks ago...sad really.....As for these types of comics today(adventure/fantasy)...certainly if I saw one at a newsagents,I'd grab it with both hands...I know some new comics are coming out,but they seem to be copies of their American cousins(numbered series usually about one character)and not comics in the British sense of the word.If only a publishing house would take a chance and cash in on all this nostalgia(it really does sell gentlemen!).D.C. Thomson are perhaps the last of what was once a huge publishing Empire.I can't believe they don't take a chance and release something along the lines of Bullet or Hotspur and see what happens....!Here's what would happen,the thousands of fans of these types of comics,with a little t.v. advertising would rush to their nearest W.H. Smiths or Woolies to snatch it up!

[Lew Stringer]

[quote:d037af9d3d="Captain Storm"]Here's what would happen,the thousands of fans of these types of comics,with a little t.v. advertising would rush to their nearest W.H. Smiths or Woolies to snatch it up![/quote:d037af9d3d]

Problem is, readers [i:d037af9d3d]weren't[/i:d037af9d3d] rushing to their newsagents, which is why all those comics eventually closed.

Lew

[philcom55]

Don't be so quick to write off Fleetway's legacy. Long ago when AP (later Fleetway) originally launched [i:cd6f8220ac]Knockout[/i:cd6f8220ac] as their answer to [i:cd6f8220ac]Beano[/i:cd6f8220ac] & [i:cd6f8220ac]Dandy[/i:cd6f8220ac] they decided to specialise in adventure strips while DCT concentrated on humour. It's appropriate then that the last survivors of the Fleetway line today should be [i:cd6f8220ac]2000AD[/i:cd6f8220ac] and the monthly [i:cd6f8220ac]Megazine[/i:cd6f8220ac], whereas DC Thomson have cut back to [i:cd6f8220ac]Beano[/i:cd6f8220ac] and a couple of funny monthlies (not counting [i:cd6f8220ac]Commando[/i:cd6f8220ac] which belongs to a somewhat different tradition). What's more, Characters like Judge Dredd have probably been merchandised throughout the world even more successfully than Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan.

- Phil R.

[Kashgar]

It seems to me that Thomson's have a very keen sense of what still sells in the comic market place as it exists now, after all they are at the comic 'rock face', and the nostalgia based titles they do produce 'Classics from the Comics' and the yearly 'Best of' books featuring Dandy and Beano characters and Oor Wullie and the Broons are about as much as the available market will take.
Of course I'd love to see a return of the boy's picture papers that Thomsons were rightly famed for but those days are gone.

[Agent G]

I seriously doubt the Judge Dredd licensing programme is anywhere near as succesful as Dennis and The Beano brand.
Licensing is a very difficult and competitive game. Trust me - I know.It's led by the retailers personal preferences rather than the IP owners.
As for taking a chance on publishing material such as Bullet and Hotspur for the newstand again. Forget it - there's so much more to getting stuff on the shelf than just deciding to print it.
There's a whole load of hidden costs that some fans are unaware of just to get it into the shop in the first place. If your only going to sell a couple of thousand (and I seriously doubt you would) then your looking at a huge financial loss.
Publishing the material in book form is a better option.

Lew has got it right again - The mainstream stopped buying them so they folded. The die-hards just aren't enough to keep a title alive. Comics are a business for the publisher not a hobby.

[philcom55]

[quote:67b2fd0e65="Agent G"]I seriously doubt the Judge Dredd licensing programme is anywhere near as succesful as Dennis and The Beano brand.[/quote:67b2fd0e65]

You could well be right Agent G; I'm certainly no expert on the matter. Nevertheless it does seem to me that having an international audience (particularly in the US) and a big budget film behind him tends to give Judge Dredd a marketing profile that is potentially much larger than that commanded by Dennis, whose popularity - as far as I know - is mostly restricted to these shores. In that respect the difference between them could almost be compared to Elton John and Garry Glitter in the 1970s.

- Phil R.

[Lew Stringer]

[quote:0fa26a1059="philcom55"][quote:0fa26a1059="Agent G"]I seriously doubt the Judge Dredd licensing programme is anywhere near as succesful as Dennis and The Beano brand.[/quote:0fa26a1059]

You could well be right Agent G; I'm certainly no expert on the matter. Nevertheless it does seem to me that having an international audience (particularly in the US) and a big budget film behind him tends to give Judge Dredd a marketing profile that is potentially much larger than that commanded by Dennis, whose popularity - as far as I know - is mostly restricted to these shores. In that respect the difference between them could almost be compared to Elton John and Garry Glitter in the 1970s.

- Phil R.[/quote:0fa26a1059]

The Dredd film didn't do the comics much good IIRC. Most of the audience didn't realize or didn't care that it was based on a comic strip. (Not to mention the film making a mess of the character.)

There were a handful of 2000 AD action figures released in 1999, and a couple of new Judge Dredd and Judge Death figures were released recently, but nothing near the amount of merchandise that The Beano have out there.

I agree though that Fleetway/IPC/Egmont should have done more to promote their characters outside of comics. (2000AD and Judge Dredd are no longer owned by Egmont Fleetway of course, being sold off to Rebellion several years ago.)I think longevity is the reason Beano characters are marketable. The Beano stalwarts have been around for 50 years or so, but Fleetway tended to swap and change their characters around a lot. Therefore they never became part of the British culture in the same way as Thomson's characters.

Lew

[philcom55]

[quote:882272c467="Lew Stringer"]There were a handful of 2000 AD action figures released in 1999, and a couple of new Judge Dredd and Judge Death figures were released recently, but nothing near the amount of merchandise that The Beano have out there.[/quote:882272c467]

Of course you'd have to include items like novels, US comics, trade paperback collections and - above all in today's market - computer games. As far as the film's concerned I agree that it was a huge disappointment which tended to flop at the box office; having said that however I get the impression it's since gone on to acquire a much more receptive audience through DVD/video sales (and I was particularly surprised to see the Radio Times giving it four stars recently while the Star Wars prequels were lucky to get three!). While I concede that you're likely to be right about Dennis the Menace merchandising being much more successful to date I still think the latter is seriously limited by its lack of penetration in the US market. For that matter does anybody know what name he currently goes by in the States, bearing in mind that Hank Ketcham's character is the one that most Americans think of as the 'real' Dennis the Menace?

[quote:882272c467]I agree though that Fleetway/IPC/Egmont should have done more to promote their characters outside of comics.[/quote:882272c467]

I know that DCT already have an embarrassment of riches in their own files but I can't help but wonder if they've given any thought to buying up some of the unwanted Fleetway properties that have now ended up in the hands of Egmont or Warner/DC - particularly the humorous ones that [i:882272c467]didn't[/i:882272c467] get tied up with [i:882272c467]Buster[/i:882272c467]. (Anybody care to speculate what these would include btw?)

- Phil R.

[felneymike]

I think IPC/Fleetway where notorious for being the exact opposite of DCT when it came to original artwork. One company carefully filed it away, the other used it to prop up wonky tables... so there wouldnt be an awful lot left for them to buy up. They'd have to create new stories of the characters, which would mean more expense and more of a risk if it failed (which is sadly likely... then again the Dangerous Book for Boys seems to have spurred on a "boy's own" market, a plunge ought to be taken somewhere i reckon, but launching an all-new title might be a bit much...)

[Lew Stringer]

IPC gave up on tv advertising when declining sales of all their comics no longer made it economical to promote them on tv.

I don't think the traditional Fleetway comics have any more chance of success today than [b:f9de1551a2]Funny Wonder[/b:f9de1551a2] or [b:f9de1551a2]Comic Cuts[/b:f9de1551a2] would have had if they'd been resurrected in 1980. British comics have always evolved. Better to look forward than resurrect the past.

Lew

[steelclaw]

It would be nice if a new Fleetway comic or something similar started today, but there are literary thousands of comics to collect from the 60's 70's 80's still at reasonable prices, even if you paid £2 for an old comic it would still only be the price of what you would pay for a comic today.

I've been picking up old Lion comics from 1970's on wards, all for around 75p each or even less mostly from ebay and even with the p&p they still only cost about £1 each. There is so much out there to find and collect I can't believe everyone has every single comic, errr maybe Kashgar has.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

I agree......the internet has made it easy to get a hold of long-defunct comics for those who really want them......I searched for years trying to obtain now-vintage 'SPARKY' comics [even placing adverts in 'BOOK and MAGAZINE ' collector.....not a single reply!]---and lo and behold--------on the very first day I was ever online, the specific comics I desired were freely advertised on E-BAY.

there seems to be an unofficial, unwritten consensus that the finest comics are all from the past; the 'GOLDEN ERA ' [if it ever existed at all] belongs in the 50s-70s era.

Dramatically declining sales in today's comics market simply reinforce the notion that 'proper' comics are those from the now-distant past...a sad reflection, yes, but is a much-changed world, obviously.

I personally am quite content to savour and appreciate the gems of vintage comics [the only advancement today is in the field of colour] and, perhaps unfortunately, have given up any hope of seeing a true resurgence of COMICDOM'S former glories.

[AndyB]

To what extent is the market at saturation? How do sales of Lucky Bag, the assorted kids mags etc compare to sales of the Beano or the Dandy? How do they compare even to sales of Classics from the Comics even?

I suppose the question I'm asking is whether the market is at saturation in terms of the genre.