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How popular is 2000ad?

Started by marko10174, 28 July, 2017, 12:23:13 AM

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marko10174


I have been dying to ask this question, but was slightly worried it might cause offence. First off I love 2000ad, currently subscribed to it and I've bought about sixty graphic novels this year and read about thirty via kindle, so I know where my loyalties lie lol. However when I watch the 2000ad youtube channel (love watching the abc count down's) I've noticed the videos hardly get any views. I mean 2D has been going for forty years, what gives?

The Adventurer

#1
i think the answer to that is really complicated. First, popular where? The U.K.? The world? The internet? Just because it's not showing huge YouTube viewer numbers, doesn't mean it doesn't sell just fine at the newsstand. 2000AD readership skews older, so maybe watching YouTube videos isn't a way they pass the time?

Second are we talking popularity of the 2000aD magazine itself, or all 2000AD publications. Because I get the sense that 2000AD reprints are doing gangbusters, even if the weekly is a doing a bit weaker overall then those in change would hope.  So single characters and series might be be quite popular in terms of reprint sales individually notoriety. But that doesn't nessisarily translate to interest or reading of the weekly.

Third, even today 2000AD is a largely regional title in a volitial industry of a Niche genre, and it's always struggled to penetrate very far outside the UK's borders. Judge Dredd is a name that has managed transcend outside the bounds of the magazine, but I'm willing to bet that a very small percentage of American comic readers that even know JD's home comic. Let alone be able to name ANOTHER 2000AD character/series.

So to answer your question. Is 2000AD popular? Yes. For a certain value of 'popular'.  I think people in the industry, savvy comic readers, fans of science fiction & fantasy comics, and people who grew up with it at their local news agent. They know what's up with 2000AD.  But in an industry dominated by super-heroes, it's always going to be overshadowed in terms of youtube views

THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK

M.I.K.

Something else to consider.... I'm subscribed to the YouTube channel but as a long term reader I don't always watch the ABC videos, because I already know all about the stories featured.

Smith

Quote from: marko10174 on 28 July, 2017, 12:23:13 AM

I have been dying to ask this question, but was slightly worried it might cause offence. First off I love 2000ad, currently subscribed to it and I've bought about sixty graphic novels this year and read about thirty via kindle, so I know where my loyalties lie lol. However when I watch the 2000ad youtube channel (love watching the abc count down's) I've noticed the videos hardly get any views. I mean 2D has been going for forty years, what gives?
Its a cult thing...

IndigoPrime

If nothing else, it's a survivor of another time. How many other comics are still going from that era? I can think of three: The Beano, Viz and those little Commando pocket books.

Jim_Campbell

Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

Steve Green

Outside of Dredd, there's a huge drop-off of interest, you also have some fragmentation of views between platforms facebook/youtube etc.

FB views seem to be inflated as they count even a few seconds as a 'view' - example the FB video count for the order is 4,000 and the YT view is 911. What the true figure is, who knows?

There are 70K likes on the fb page, but that's far above the current readership, and in itself still way below what the readership was at its peak.

The ABCs are a bit odd in themselves, especially when covering stories that aren't even collected.
Seems like it would have made more sense to just work your way through what you have coming out, or need to shift stock of in particular, rather than lumbering yourself with alphabetical order.

The ABCs aren't the type of video that are likely to be shared by news sites either - compared to say the announcement of a TV series, or a message from Karl Urban, unless videos get shared they'll just drop off in views quickly.

I've seen similar with the comparison of Minty and Strontium Dog shorts - Minty probably got about 120K views in the first week, Stront has got barely a third of that, and didn't get much interest from the genre news sites compared to Minty.

Daily totals for Minty are more than S/D and it's 4 years + old.

All the other non-Dredd stuff just floats around and maybe gets noticed.

matty_ae

Some measures of popularity are interesting....

1) 2000ad managed to sell out a 1000+ convention at one of the higher one day prices
2) USA brand recognition is rising based on both the old Eagle reprints and the two movies
3) The first print of the Cursed Earth sold incredibly fast and to my mind tapped into a old market who absolutely loved the prog at that time.


Steve Green

I'm not sure how you can take any of those as examples of popularity.

1) Was a one-off event with a fairly limited (by con standards) capacity - also didn't sell out within a month, so not exactly Glastonbury. There's no way they would have filled an LFCC or MCM type event with just 2000AD.

2) Not sure how to state that one way or the other.

3) They underestimated how much a hardback of previously uncollected material would sell, so they wouldn't be stuck with a load of expensive hardbacks that they'd then have to discount to shift.


sheridan

Where's that thread about prog circulation?  I certainly know a lot of people of a variety of varying ages who used to read 2000AD at some point in their lives (any time from the 1970s to 1990s).  Wasn't there a ballpark figure of Tooth in its heyday* having about half a million weekly readers (on the assumption that each comic would be read by, on average, two and a half children)?

*sales-wise - content-wise is an entirely different thread...

IndigoPrime

Although in magazine terms, popularity is relative. In the 1980s, a magazine with a circulation of 10,000 would be considered to be circling the drain. These days, 10k would be seen as pretty good in anything that's relatively niche. (Some publications I've written for have been considered viable on as low as 3,000.)

It's hard to know what the overall popularity is from a branding perspective, but it's interesting to note that:

- Reprints continue to happen, rather than slowing down
- 2000 AD and the Magazine are still running, with only costs-associated price-rises, and with no pissing about with format, paper quality, and page count for a long time now
- The Treasury of British Comics has got a decent amount of traction, and add to goodwill for 2000 AD as a whole

Dredd – anecdotally at least – broadly inoculated that brand against the virus of Stallone, and has made people excited about the future of that character in TV land. That in turn seems to have resulted in an uptick in general awareness of the character and also related publications. How that impacts on 2000 AD as a whole remains to be seen. (It'll be interesting to see whether the partwork goes ahead, in that sense.)

Which is all a bit woolly, but my take is that it's popular enough to survive, with the potential for gradually increasing reach, and probably never likely to be a major point on a lot of people's radars. Not the worst place to be.

matty_ae

Quote from: Steve Green on 28 July, 2017, 12:46:02 PM
I'm not sure how you can take any of those as examples of popularity.

1) Was a one-off event with a fairly limited (by con standards) capacity - also didn't sell out within a month, so not exactly Glastonbury. There's no way they would have filled an LFCC or MCM type event with just 2000AD.

2) Not sure how to state that one way or the other.

3) They underestimated how much a hardback of previously uncollected material would sell, so they wouldn't be stuck with a load of expensive hardbacks that they'd then have to discount to shift.

These are all measures of popularity. You seem to be demanding zeitgeist-shifting figures. I would take 'going along quite nicely bigger than a cottage industry, smaller than mass market' popularity.

I'd challenge that in terms of IP all these are OK measures of popularity.

Steve Green

I'm not demanding anything - I just think people overestimate how popular 2000AD, or even Dredd is.

jacob g

Other perspective.

Nowadays in Poland we have two independent publishers with interest in 2000AD (there's also a third one with plans for Buttonman but since it's only an announcement I'll ignore them). First, called Studio Lain, reprints various 2000AD stuff, from Dredd to Halo Jones in something like 500 to 800 printed units. The second one, called Ongrys, reprints only Case Files with higher print run (but I can't say how many since they don't want this to be public knowledge, at least for now).

So here in Poland you can sold at best 500 copies of a book that is not "Dredd, drawn by Bisley or written by Moore" reprint, but if it's one of Dredd, Moore, Bisley trio you can go a little higher (people still love Bisley here, really).

We have only one LCS that orders 2000AD/JDM here, and from what I remember they only have like two clients who order the weekly (myself included).
margaritas ante porcos

Frank

.
Depends how you define popularity (see debate above).

Four years ago, Tharg told The Guardian his readership was around 15,000. Three years later, Tharg told this board that readership of all newsstand titles (including, presumably, 2000ad) had declined significantly in the previous three years. [1]

As a percentage of population, 15,000 UK sales (in 2013) would have made The Galaxy's Greatest comic a top 20 US title. The cover price and weekly publication schedule meant 2013ad was more lucrative than all but the top five US titles.

Multiple sources confirm Tharg shipped around 100,000 copies per week for most of the eighties, which the voodoo economics of publishing/advertising reckon meant 250,000 eyeballs took a squint at 2000ad every week for a decade. [2]

If you're an optimist, you could figure that as a potential audience of one million plus [3] former readers who could be tempted back into the fold, or - more likely - might buy Judge Death boxers out of nostalgia if they saw a pair in Asda.


[1] Click on HOW MANY PEOPLE READ 2000AD in my signature for links to The Guardian and Tharg's post on this board

[2] On the basis that most copies were also read by the purchaser's siblings, parents and friends. See the 1988 2000ad annual.

[3] Those 250,000 eyeballs weren't the same 250,000 eyeballs for the whole decade; neither were all of the 50,000 readers in 1995 the same people who were reading in 1990. The reckoning was that most readers aged out every three or four years.