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?
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
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.
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...
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.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 28 July, 2017, 08:52:18 AM
those little Commando pocket books.
Commando is currently inviting submissions, (https://www.commandocomics.com/submissions/) BTW...
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.
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.
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.
Where's that thread about prog circulation (http://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=29248)? 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...
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.
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.
I'm not demanding anything - I just think people overestimate how popular 2000AD, or even Dredd is.
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).
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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.
Absolutely fascinating replies thanks guys. Sometimes I prefer being in a cult fanbase following. Because when everyone suddenly starts jumping in the playground you start to feel resentful lol.
Although shipped of course doesn't mean sold. I suspect these days sales figures are a more accurate guide to the number of paying eyes checking out the Prog. (I suspect quite a few are just downloading dodgy PDFs.)
Also, something I didn't note earlier is that the viability of the Prog is a very different proposition today to decades ago. Once, if a publication didn't pull its weight in and of itself, it was canned. That's still actually the case most of the time today. But sometimes publications end up wrapped into all kinds of other enterprises, for better or worse. (In 2000 AD's case, it's for the better, obv.)
For me while I have no idea the thing I always look to is the fact that they (Rebellion) were scrappin' around for stuff to reprint before they went big with the 'Teasury of British Comics' buy. Surely they'd not do that if trades were struggling. Large quantities of new stuff also goes to trade pretty quickly too, so that must surely be shifting somewhere.
The zeigiest says to me that 2000ad has much greater public awareness than it has for a long time. I remember when ECBT 2000ad was the only boat to sail on. Now we have a glorious harbour full. Merchandise seems to be coming out more and more often in more and more forms. Social Media seems awash with stuff if your looking for it. So yeah its more visible than surely its ever been (even if sales are down cos they are for comics full stop).
Other measures, like the staff resource Rebellion throws at the 'brand' seem so much more these days, continued presence in mainstream shops, the fact The Meg (which you'd assume is selling less than 2000ad) is not just still viable but still using top draw talent, the number of books, films etc about our beautiful thing all suggest moneys to be had from somewhere.
I have no idea about any of that, but all that sort of evidence suggests whatever the sales of the actual comic its popular enough to not only sustain, but support a veritable cottage industry of other stuff.
Oh and the only measure I can be sure of is its my favourite piece of mass entertainment, in any medium - so ya know with me the answer is VERY!
Quote from: Frank on 28 July, 2017, 06:19:34 PM
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.
As a percentage of population, 15,000 UK sales (in 2013) would have made The Galaxy's Greatest comic a top 20 US title.
Number 14, actually
(in between Justice League and X-Men): http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2013/2013-10.html
Using the same pathetically unscientific method of multiplying reported sales estimates by five
(to account for the greater population of the US), applied sophistry tells us that even if Tharg has shed a quarter of the readership since 2013, his magnificent organ is still jammed tightly between the cheeks of Darth Maul and Bruce Wayne (number 18):
http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2017/2017-06.html
[1][1] ... and that five years after a financially unsuccessful cinema version of Dredd, a tie-in comic based on a supporting character still earned enough dollars to buy a used family saloon. It's all reprint, so that's pure profit, baby.
I'm amazed that those little Commando comic books are still going!
I used to love them when I was a boy, would get them when going off on holiday to read on the train/plane or in a xmas stocking.
Surprised that kids would read them now, or maybe it's nostalgic old dudes like us that are buying them...
Cults can be fun, but I'd definitely love the prog to start selling in more deserved quantities. Those Rebellion guys seem like safe hands, and genuine fans. Way the world's shaped now, that MC-1 telly show in a while might just be the point when that sales hike happens. You'd hope.
I agree, and I don't think the Rebellion lot – and notably the Kingsleys – always get their dues. I recall when the original sale of 2000 AD was announced, and people were pretty sceptical. What were these 'games guys' going to do to the beloved Prog? What if they just strip-mine it for gaming IP?
And then we gradually got to understand the level of fans they were, that 2000 AD would have been dead without them, that they had big plans. And when those plans didn't always go to plan (such as the DC deal), that just pushed them on to bigger and better things (ALL THE TRADES!) And then they decided someone needed to safeguard the history of British comics, and it may as well be them.
Naturally, there are commercial decisions underpinning a lot of this stuff, but I really can't think of anyone who'd be better suited to owning all this stuff now, and it would be lovely to see an uptick in sales for that alone.
Indigo Prime im with you Rebellion dont get credit they deserve. Look at all the licensing deals recently and glorious collectables us 2000ad fans can acquire.
Dredd film, upcoming Dredd Tv show, Rogue trooper/Dredd video games, Graphic novels galore, and even Dredd/2000ad partworks etc. I have comic fan friends that were never really interested in anything 2000ad related that in the last few years are suddenly wanting to borrow Dredd/Slaine graphic novels of mine.
2000ad is going from strength to strength in terms of brand recognition and this can only be good in the social media age in my book.
Matt Smith and Michael Molcher and the other great folk working for Tharg all deserve applause.
I wasn't aware that Rebellion weren't getting the credit they deserve for what they've been doing. (Well except maybe on the Is it me or the prog? thread but that's an anomaly.) I thought we all thought they've been brilliant.
2000ad is extremely lucky to have Rebellion as its owner and so by extension are we, its fans.
I get the impression that for them quality is more important than popularity. Although of course they often go hand in hand...
2000ad will always be niche but I get the impression that the readership (whatever it is, is at least reasonably stable)
I think they also understand that collected edition Graphic Novels are the bread and butter of comics now. And the easiest way to penetrate outside the borders of the UK. And a lot of people's complaints about the structure of strips in the Prog today stem from the contents being focused on becoming easily collected editions as its end goal.