Would the Megazine be better off with fewer strips?

[TordelBack]

Can't say I've noticed much of a problem remembering things month-to-month, but there's no doubt that proggish-length installments once a month kill the momentum of a story (even Lawless and Insurrection): it's why i can look at a Meg on the shelf, look at a tenner in my hand, and say 'nah' more often than not.

When I'd a spell of decent income a couple of years back I bought up a good long run of backMegs I'd missed, and I was genuinely surprised how very good it all was compared to my memory of sporadic issues - even American Reaper was a really good read. The exception was Dredd, that was much the same, exvept for putting Al Rwing's Deller run togethet in my head.

I interpret my contrasting reaction as down to reading stories without a month's break every half dozen pages.

I don't know how this would translate into the 'fewer  stories' model, but it's probably worth trying.

[Frank]

... there's no doubt that proggish-length installments once a month kill the momentum of a story

Completely agree. I find the same with US comics, so I don't know whether 20-page episodes each month would necessarily solve that problem for the Megazine.

Looking at sales (and cancellations) of US titles, I'm not sure the monthly format has a long future. Lisa Woods' recent Megazine interview made the point that The Kids just aren't buying them, preferring trade collections or original graphic novels.

Obviously, publishers make more cash selling the same story twice, but there's going to come a point where sales of monthlies are so low they might as well move to book format. Rebellion seem to be trying that with their Roy of The Rovers OGNs.

If that works out financially, might not be a bad idea to switch from a Megazine format that's been struggling for 25 years to something that stands a chance of achieving the publisher's stated aim of bringing in new* and younger readers.


* Normals think books are classy; comics are seen as cheap. One of the reasons I think Crisis failed is that it was asking the kind of Guardian reader who picked up Akira and Watchmen from Waterstones to read those kinds of stories in serialised form and in a shitty rag that felt like The Big Issue. People don't know what to do with comics - it feels wrong to throw something an artist has poured their heart into in the recycling, like a magazine, but they don't fit on a shelf, like a book.

[MumboJimbo]

I think most human minds would struggle to remember an ongoing story for which they had 10 minutes' worth of new content each month.

Rereading isn't cheating.

Rereading is the reason most of us loved stories as kids. The reluctance to reread is the reason some of us don't enjoy new comics as much as we love old comics.

Most of us enjoyed Watchmen the first time we read it. I guarantee you everyone enjoyed* Watchmen more the second, third and fourth times we read it.


* And understood it better and noticed new details, too.

There's a difference between rereading for pleasure and rereading for necessity. I love to read stuff I've read before for the reasons you've outlined and do it regularly. However this kind of reread is typically done once you've already read the story a first time from start to finish.

What we're discussing here though, is having to reread previous instalments in order to understand the current one.

[MumboJimbo]

* Normals think books are classy; comics are seen as cheap. One of the reasons I think Crisis failed is that it was asking the kind of Guardian reader who picked up Akira and Watchmen from Waterstones to read those kinds of stories in serialised form and in a shitty rag that felt like The Big Issue. People don't know what to do with comics - it feels wrong to throw something an artist has poured their heart into in the recycling, like a magazine, but they don't fit on a shelf, like a book.

Crisis kinda acts as a counterexample to my idea, as it started with 2 15-pages stories, then went to 3, and by the time it ended typically had about 5 stories, although the page count increased when it when monthly. Presumably the move to more stories per issue with fewer pages was done for a purpose, and may have been due to reader feedback.

I'm coming around to what other commenters have said, that the problem may be lack of a useful synopsis of previous events. But I agree with Tordelback and Frank that a few pages per-month sucks momentum out of the storey if you're reading them as soon as they come out.

I'd hate for the Megazine to be turned into some new GN venture though. I know most modern comic fans would disagree, but I far, far prefer actual - you know - comics than Graphic Novel collections. I don't care if they can't be displayed on a bookshelf. When I first got 2000 AD when I was 10 (after years of Beano, Whizzer & Chips etc) it blew my mind that the story was a continuation of last week's and would continue some more next week. Denice the Menace lived in a world that was reset at the end of the comic each week, but the events in 2000 had permanent repercussions!

[davidbishop]

The Megazine was originally intended to have a longer Dredd story [16-20 pages], with a couple of back-up strips [America, in particular, was designed to appear over 3-4 issues, not the 7 it did]. But the vogue for painted art made that impractical during much of the 1990s.

The Meg did shift to longer Dredd stories in each issue from 3.39 [the issue that introduced Preacher reprints], and stayed that way for a couple of years. Andy Diggle downsized the Dredd strip page-count from 3.63 - probably for budgetary reasons, at a guess.

[MumboJimbo]

Interesting! - always good to hear some good insider info, David

[Jacqusie]

For my 10 pence, I find the Meg a pain in the arse to read (It's probably just as hard to make out on the newsagents shelf) with the bag thing going on. The txt features have been poor for a while with some really tenuous links to 2000AD.

So I'd trim these to one feature a meg and ditch the floppy and cover print thing, reduce the price and concentrate on the strips... it's all got a bit scrappy and unnecesary of late and a back to basic's with a cheaper comic would be my plan...

[Jim_Campbell]

So I'd trim these to one feature a meg and ditch the floppy and cover print thing, reduce the price and concentrate on the strips... it's all got a bit scrappy and unnecesary of late and a back to basic's with a cheaper comic would be my plan...

ISTR Molch-R saying that the Meg was one of the few monthly titles to gain sales on the high street last year (?) according to their distributor, so they must be doing something right. I'm unsure about the merits of the bag/floppy myself but there's a lot of bagged stuff with a freebie on the shelves and I'd rather have extra content bundled in than the piece of plastic tat that seems to come with other bagged titles.

[sheridan]

Crisis kinda acts as a counterexample to my idea, as it started with 2 15-pages stories, then went to 3, and by the time it ended typically had about 5 stories, although the page count increased when it when monthly. Presumably the move to more stories per issue with fewer pages was done for a purpose, and may have been due to reader feedback.

No doubt the answer is in Thrill-Power Overload, but wasn't the idea with Crisis that two fortnight's worth of anthology stories could be repackaged for the US market as non-anthology monthly comics?

I'm coming around to what other commenters have said, that the problem may be lack of a useful synopsis of previous events. But I agree with Tordelback and Frank that a few pages per-month sucks momentum out of the storey if you're reading them as soon as they come out.

I'd hate for the Megazine to be turned into some new GN venture though. I know most modern comic fans would disagree, but I far, far prefer actual - you know - comics than Graphic Novel collections. I don't care if they can't be displayed on a bookshelf. When I first got 2000 AD when I was 10 (after years of Beano, Whizzer & Chips etc) it blew my mind that the story was a continuation of last week's and would continue some more next week. Denice the Menace lived in a world that was reset at the end of the comic each week, but the events in 2000 had permanent repercussions!

When I were a lad, the first narration box of a story had a quick recap of previous events  (more than one if the narrator was somebody like Sam C Slade - the 'c' stands for 'condense').

I'm pretty sure that if Rebellion switched from collecting previously published stories which appeared in an anthology to publishing original graphic novels instead - we'd find that Rebellion wasn't publishing anything new after a while...

[broodblik]

The meg as it is now works for me. The only exception is as mentioned before is do a better synopsis. Now if you complain about the meg try keeping up with Heavy Metal (which is released every 3-4 months)

[Proudhuff]

The Megazine was originally intended to have a longer Dredd story [16-20 pages], with a couple of back-up strips

Now that floats my boat!

[Proudhuff]

I think most human minds would struggle to remember an ongoing story for which they had 10 minutes' worth of new content each month.

Rereading isn't cheating.

Rereading is the reason most of us loved stories as kids. The reluctance to reread is the reason some of us don't enjoy new comics as much as we love old comics.

Most of us enjoyed Watchmen the first time we read it. I guarantee you everyone enjoyed* Watchmen more the second, third and fourth times we read it.


* And understood it better and noticed new details, too.

There's a difference between rereading for pleasure and rereading for necessity. I love to read stuff I've read before for the reasons you've outlined and do it regularly. However this kind of reread is typically done once you've already read the story a first time from start to finish.

What we're discussing here though, is having to reread previous instalments in order to understand the current one.

I can't re-read as I pass mine on asap, so its up to thee leetel grey braain cells... which isn't good