Comics UK

I was reading the Billy Whizz article that I wrote on the Comics Wiki and I was struck by something I'd never previously considered. The article is largely based on the Wikipedia article, which states that Billy's popularity had declined by 2003, which I'd always previously accepted.

However, I began to wonder where this came from, and whether there is anything to support this, e.g. Billy's strip performing poorly in reader polls in the comic or on the website. In short, is there any evidence available to suggest that Billy's popularity did decline, or whether it was just a small minority of readers who held this view?

Didn't they consider dropping him, but gave him a new artist instead?

Is there anything to suggest hard evidence of the general popularity of characters at all? I remember a series of half-page adverts which appeared in the mid-2000s (would've been either just before or just after Alan Digby took over, I think) presenting a list of the complete roster at that time and asking readers to rate them all from 1 to 5 or something like that, but that was the only time I remember the Beano being really explicit about it.

Apart from that, I suppose there's just unprompted letters to the editor in general, that market research they do in schools where they pass around prototype comics and/or strips (why did that sort of thing never happen in my school?!), and latterly, of course, comments on the Beano website.

The website didn't usefully exist in 2003, letters to the editor are presumably scarce to non-existent, and explicit market research or reader polls require somebody to spot that some research needs to be done, so I don't know how they'd spot that a strip was on a downward trajectory as it happened, rather than months or years afterwards. On the other hand, the "Side by Side" book has an entire section called "Sidelined" devoted to characters who were rapidly cancelled due to unpopularity - these same characters presumably having survived the initial market research first.

Any marketing execs in the forum?

On the other hand, the "Side by Side" book has an entire section called "Sidelined" devoted to characters who were rapidly cancelled due to unpopularity - these same characters presumably having survived the initial market research first.

I don't have that book, but I wonder whether this was what happened to London B412, which quietly disappeared not long after its introduction - I think it lasted about four months in the comic. Given that there were only a dozen or so episodes, it was highly unlikely that the strip had run out of ideas, which suggests it didn't work with the readers.

I do remember the polls that were run in the comic, though I seem recall that most of them were when Euan was editor. I think the poll would normally ask for marks out of ten for the strips, and sometimes even the fan club pages. These polls generally seemed to be scheduled for issues where most of the characters appeared, so readers would be able to rate the whole roster for that week.

It's possible that Billy was coming near the bottom of the poll on a consistent basis, leading to the Beano staff giving consideration to dropping him. As an aside, I remember there was a two week hiatus between Graeme Hall's last Billy Whizz story, and the first by Wayne Thompson. This does make me wonder whether the Beano dropped Graeme (the inevitable outcome of both the scenarios Digifiend mentioned) before bringing Wayne in, although this is little more than guesswork on my part.

swirlythingy wrote:I remember a series of half-page adverts which appeared in the mid-2000s (would've been either just before or just after Alan Digby took over, I think) presenting a list of the complete roster at that time and asking readers to rate them all from 1 to 5 or something like that, but that was the only time I remember the Beano being really explicit about it.

They were doing things like that fairly regularly in the 90s, you often come across it in 90s Beanos. It seems in that period the Beano were quite on top of seeking readers' feedback. It's probably because of things like this why 90s strips like Danny's Nanny (one I never enjoyed) were dropped. You see a lot less of it in the 2000s, admittedly.

I can't imagine Billy coming at the bottom of reader's feedback lists though.

The most recent reader survey I can think of, and probably the only one in either comic in the last five years or so, was the Dandy's one soon after its revamp - and that was, as well as being exceptionally prominent, unusual enough to be notable.

I just remembered about Comic Idol (and Strictly Come Laughing), which was reader feedback in its purest form - but it didn't give any information about pre-existing characters.

What it boils down to is that a reader of the Beano is defined as someone who reads the Beano, and therefore it's very difficult to solicit opinions about the Beano from people who read it on a meaningful scale without people who read the Beano noticing - which is, after all, the whole point of the exercise. DC Thomson may well always have been kept frequently updated with a wide and representative sample of reader views throughout its history, but if so, I can't see how they're doing it!

It's actually slightly more complex than just a survey in a comic. They have a dept. called DCT Youth Insight which (and I quote from an interview with DCT's John Paul Murphy*) 'tells us what actually makes kids laugh - slapstick, grossness, silliness, exaggeration, wordplay, visual humour, and role reversal being top of the list.'

I don't know how they collect their information, and I'm sure the comic's editorial teams use their own instincts most of the time, but it does show how important this kind of research into demographics is. And it must influence the comics or DCT wouldn't pay for it.

Personally, I think comics work best when they embrace the outsider, the nerd, the disenfranchised, the thinking child....I think they fail when they pursue the lowest common denominator, the average, the mainstream. But, then, hard commercial realities probably make this impossible, and compromise is inevitable.

*http://tinyurl.com/thedrumdct

-MikeD- wrote:It's actually slightly more complex than just a survey in a comic. They have a dept. called DCT Youth Insight which (and I quote from an interview with DCT's John Paul Murphy*) 'tells us what actually makes kids laugh - slapstick, grossness, silliness, exaggeration, wordplay, visual humour, and role reversal being top of the list.'

Yes, I heard about this very department some months ago from Michael Stirling himself, and I confess my reaction was exactly the same... (Admittedly this was in the context of the dumbed-down website, but the jokes about the name itself virtually write themselves.)

-MikeD- wrote:I don't know how they collect their information, and I'm sure the comic's editorial teams use their own instincts most of the time, but it does show how important this kind of research into demographics is. And it must influence the comics or DCT wouldn't pay for it.

Quite. I'm sure it's very important, but as you say it seems to be the stealthiest market research ever undertaken! I always thought the best way to reach readers of a given comic was to use the comic, since you can guarantee they'll be reading it, but that seems to have fallen out of favour in recent years.

I suppose it's possible they're just passing a questionnaire around some local schools, but that sounds a bit sloppy and prone to distorting factors to me. Still, the existence of the 'Sidelined' section proves they don't always get it right, so maybe the errors are introduced by this secretive mode of operation after all.

Another possibility would be the old trick of advertising for opinions and comic strip reviewers via publications and other mediums (such as direct school liaisons) which are not the Beano, but aimed at a similar target audience. Yet again, you can't guarantee you're reaching kids who would be likely to buy the comic or hold the same opinions as those who do (unless you combine it with a marketing drive, but there are simpler ways of doing that). I'm sure most readers of the Beano would jump at the chance to get sneak previews and help design strips to appear in the future, so why aren't they being offered it?

I can't imagine Billy coming at the bottom of reader's feedback lists though.

I find it difficult to imagine Billy coming bottom of the poll as well Jon, but if it did happen, it may have caused the Beano staff to review whether he should be kept in the comic. I'm not absolutely sure which strips would have been near the bottom of the poll in early 2003 though, so I'll investigate this further:

In Beano issue 3159 (dated 1st February 2003), there was a 'top 10' coupon which asked the reader to list their favourite ten stories or features in the week's issue. Not counting the Rhyme Time and Beano Club pages, the roster of comic strips was:
Dennis, Billy Whizz, The Numskulls, Little Plum, Ivy, Ball Boy, Tim Traveller, the Bash Street Kids, Freddie Fear, Minnie, Crazy for Daisy, Calamity James, Bea, Robbie Rebel, Roger, and Gnasher and Gnipper (I think the only character from that time who was missing that issue was Les Pretend).

Looking at that list, none of those strips strike me as being especially unsuccessful with the readers. However, Tim Traveller was effectively dropped a few months later - after that May he made only sporadic appearances for the next year before disappearing completely. This leads me to think that he might have been at or near the bottom of the poll at that time. I would suggest that this was because of the enforced change of artist after Vic Neill's death, as apparently Euan Kerr didn't like the style Keith Reynolds used on it. I assume the strips that appeared after May 2003 were stockpiled and used whenever a page in the comic needed filling.

Calamity James is another possible, as Alan Digby said that he was usually near the bottom of the poll, but I doubt he'd have been rock bottom as while some readers hated him, the James fans will have probably put him at or near the top of their list.

Tim Traveller only appeared five times between May 2003 and May 2004, when he disappeared for good. Definitely looks like he did poorly on that poll.

Regarding Tim, after the poll in issue 3159 he appeared in the following issues (the date of each issue is in shorthand):

3160 (8/2/03)
3163 (1/3/03)
3164 (8/3/03)
3165 (15/3/03)
3173 (10/5/03)
3175 (24/5/03)
3176 (31/5/03)
3190 (6/9/03)
3204 (13/12/03)
3213 (14/2/04)
3228 (29/5/04)

This suggests that Euan stopped comissioning new stories from Keith early in 2003, possibly after Tim came bottom of the poll. Of the four post-3176 issues he was in, two (3190 and 3228) were 40-pagers. I seem to remember that issue 3213 had more comic strip pages than the standard Beano of the time, as the Bash Street Kids got six pages and Calamity James got two (even Tim's strip was one and a half pages).

Billy may have been in the same boat as Tim, because Vic Neill drew them until his death. I think they both declined in popularity under the replacement artists, but Billy was kept on, albeit with Wayne taking over as artist.

Jonny Whizz wrote:Billy may have been in the same boat as Tim, because Vic Neill drew them until his death.

Really? Did he change his name to Graeme Hall in 2000?

Apart from that, where are you getting this miraculous supply of information from? A Kim Peek-style memory, or do you have access to some database I don't know about?

No, Vic died in 2000. You'd be surprised what we can recall between us.

Most of my information about the Beano comes from one of three sources: this forum, Wikipedia and my own collection - that's how I was able to record which issues after 3159 Tim appeared in.

Andy's correct about Vic's death. Of the Beanos I picked up at a fair from 1999-2001 (not continuous for the most part, unfortunately) the last issue I have where Vic drew Billy was from March 2000. I think his Billy Whizz strips had run out by May 2000 at the very latest, as I have an issue from this time where Graeme drew Billy. This means that Graeme must have taken over as artist at some point during that two month period, although Vic will have died before his last Billy Whizz appeared in the comic due to the stockpiling of strips (another example is that Bob Nixon's Rogers were used for three months after his death).

By contrast, Vic's Tim Traveller strips continued to appear into 2001. I suspect this was because Tim wasn't appearing as regularly as Billy, so there were still quite a lot of stockpiled strips left to use before a new artist had to be found. Also, Tim's story in the 2002 Beano book was drawn by Vic. I'm not sure when Keith Reynolds became Tim Traveller artist as I don't have any issues between 3067 (April 2001) and 3117 (April 2002, when I started reading the Beano).

Jonny Whizz wrote:By contrast, Vic's Tim Traveller strips continued to appear into 2001.

Ah, that must have been what I was thinking of - I thought I'd seen his work much later than 2000!

If you really are looking things up in your own collection, all I can say is that you must have a lot of time on your hands. I've occasionally gone searching for things, and it's a very effective way of losing an entire afternoon - not just because the physical process of take box down, mark place, select comic, turn page, check header, turn page, cheack headers, repeat sixteen times, put comic back, put comic back without scuffing bottom edge of cover, mark new place, repeat for each comic is so slow, but because by its nature I often get dragged into reading stories which catch my eye, from where it's a small step to reading an entire issue despite having found nothing I was searching for. Comic collecting was not meant for comic lovers!