SPACEWARP - New Venture from Pat Mills

[JayzusB.Christ]

I hadn't heard of that, not having sprogs myself, but I've just looked it up.  Genius!

[Colin YNWA]

Talking of the Phoenix, mini-Solo greatly enjoyed their April Fools issue.

The Spoons issue last year was a masterstroke. Mini-IP was young enough that it did actually catch her out. She was ready for this year's gag, but appreciated their dedication to all things egg. I bloody love that comic. During the rare occasions I get to see it. (Mini-IP sometimes takes pity on me and suggests I read Bunny vs Monkey or something. But I haven't read No Country in weeks now.)

Yep continues to be a delight. No Country is very much on formand continues to be brilliant. I thought the egg gag was a little too close to Spoons Monthly BUT given that was pure fried comedy good I can forgive them!

The boy is getting to an age where he doesn't read it with quite the same gusto as before. The Girl long since stopped. But when the time comes I'll be carrying on the subscription cos I love it too!

[broodblik]

Lets do the spacewarp again, mmm not sure maybe or just no

[IndigoPrime]

If nothing else, interesting to see the gulf in a (weekly) comic ten-year-olds are excited about reading (to the degree there's even an annual convention now, along with regular video drawalong sessions with the likes of Jess Bradley and Jamie Smart) and (a very irregular) one that's ostensibly aimed at the same age bracket, but really feels like it's aimed at people who were ten somewhere between 1976 and 1983.

I'm sure Spacewarp has its fans, and I'm all for more comics. But perhaps it's not a great idea to bang on about it being some kind of panacea to the country's shortfall in children's comics, given that it failed to hit an affordable price point and disappeared for four years. (I've no idea whether the content struck a chord with kids. I've no way of knowing that for sure.)

[Vector14]

Kids generally want something that's new for there own generation. Isn't that what attracted youngsters to 2000AD and Action back when they came out? They were kicking against the the previous generations stuffy old comics. Or at least that's the narrative as told by Pat Mills and others involved at the time.

With first hand experience of that, why would Pat Mills now think that kids would want to revert back to the older style.

Spacewarp looks like it would have far more appeal to old folk who don't get on with modern comics, are big Pat Mill's fans and are nostalgic for early 2000AD. Not many 10 year olds would fit in this category.

It's like trying to convince your kids that they should be listening to your Jethro Tull records instead of that K-pop noise.

[IndigoPrime]

Isn't his argument that comics are now too middle class and that the industry has given up, and that he has the tools and knowledge to unlock comics for a new generation of working-class kids, or something like that?

I mean, he's not wrong in that comics are no longer a mass-market concern. And their circulations have dropped to the point they are out of reach of many families. But then a £10 Spacewarp is hardly fighting against that particular problem. Which leaves, I dunno, attitude? But if people have been reading The Phoenix and even the modern Beano and arguing that it's far too 'safe', I'm not sure they've been paying attention.

Half the time, old men just appear to be rallying against the increased inclusion (and the drop in bullying) in modern comics, and ignoring all the other changes that chime with the current generation. (I even see people arguing that modern cartoons aren't allowed to be rude and anarchic. And my response is: have you read Looshkin?)

[GordonR]

"Comics are too middle-class now!" complains man...

...from his ex-pat gated community home in Spain.

[BadlyDrawnKano]

Half the time, old men just appear to be rallying against the increased inclusion (and the drop in bullying) in modern comics, and ignoring all the other changes that chime with the current generation. (I even see people arguing that modern cartoons aren't allowed to be rude and anarchic. And my response is: have you read Looshkin?)

That's a point of view that has alwayed annoys me as well, and though some of it is fairly dated now Horrid Henry is much more of a s**t than Dennis The Menace ever was!

[IndigoPrime]

I'm not familiar with Horrid Henry. Mini-IP does have some pre-refresh Dennis books that are fairly horrible though. I much prefer the current take on him and Walter, where Dennis is streetwise and Walter is a fun-killing wannabe authoritarian, rather than Dennis kicking the shit out of anyone who is perceived to be 'girly' and effeminate. The dynamic now feels much smarter and has radically reduced 'othering'. (The comic as a whole has also benefited from getting over its 'girls – URGH' framing.)

[BadlyDrawnKano]

I'm not familiar with Horrid Henry. Mini-IP does have some pre-refresh Dennis books that are fairly horrible though. I much prefer the current take on him and Walter, where Dennis is streetwise and Walter is a fun-killing wannabe authoritarian, rather than Dennis kicking the shit out of anyone who is perceived to be 'girly' and effeminate. The dynamic now feels much smarter and has radically reduced 'othering'. (The comic as a whole has also benefited from getting over its 'girls – URGH' framing.)

Perhaps I'm looking at it through rose tinted glasses, and I don't remember Dennis being that violent towards Walter, but I really fricking hate Horrid Henry, I had to read it to my godchildren and I feel he might be the fictional character I despise the most!*

*Well, when it comes to mainstream kids fare, anyway.

[BadlyDrawnKano]

I'm not familiar with Horrid Henry. Mini-IP does have some pre-refresh Dennis books that are fairly horrible though. I much prefer the current take on him and Walter, where Dennis is streetwise and Walter is a fun-killing wannabe authoritarian, rather than Dennis kicking the shit out of anyone who is perceived to be 'girly' and effeminate. The dynamic now feels much smarter and has radically reduced 'othering'. (The comic as a whole has also benefited from getting over its 'girls – URGH' framing.)

Perhaps I'm looking at it through rose tinted glasses, and I don't remember Dennis being that violent towards Walter, but I really fricking hate Horrid Henry, I had to read it to my godchildren and I feel he might be the fictional character I despise the most!*

*Well, when it comes to mainstream kids fare, anyway.

Frustratingly DC Thompson have had all of their comics removed from a popular blog so I was unable to check to see if I was wrong or not, but I did manage to track down the 1980 annual and I do see your point. It's not quite as brutal as I was worried it might be, but Gnasher bites one of Walter's friends and Dennis soaks them in lemonade, and there's some other moments like that which make it a bit more unpleasant than I'd remembered.

[A.Cow]

I mean, he's not wrong in that comics are no longer a mass-market concern.

Seems to me that -- just like the steam train -- comics have had their time and will never be mainstream again.

When I was a kid, movies and action-packed TV shows were occasional treats -- so we took our in-between hits of cinematic excitement in the form of the printed picture strip.  When VHS tapes and home computer games came along, that all changed.  Replaced by visceral excitement on-demand.

It's no wonder that kids today ignore comics; they can already interact in 3D worlds where the Hulk trashes a city or aliens shoot at them, in a far more immersive way than a sequence of flat images can.

[Funt Solo]

Comic book market size in 2023 USD 16.05 billion. Not as much as video games and movies, but not to be sniffed at.

[A.Cow]

Comic book market size in 2023 USD 16.05 billion. Not as much as video games and movies, but not to be sniffed at.

Wow -- that's more than I was expecting.  Thanks for that info, Funt.

From what I can see, North America is about USD 6 billion of that USD 16 billion figure.  Given a 600 million population and extrapolating from the (surprising) statistic that 37% of US adults say they read comics at least once a year, we're probably looking at a mean average annual spend of USD 27 per reader.  I'd imagine that about 10% of the readership are whales accounting for half the sales, which would lower the mode to probably around USD 15.

(That 37% figure is far higher than I imagined, even for the US.  Nice to see it's not quite as bleak as it seems.)

[IndigoPrime]

I should also note that it's not the medium that's in danger of extinction – it's the delivery method. One line, I quite often see old farts moaning about how kids don't read these days. I can only go by mine and her friends, but they read loads. However, almost none of them read comics. And very, very few have a regular order for one of the few newsstand publications remaining for children (be they comics or magazines).

The habits are what's shifted. A generation of parents never themselves had the comics habit and so have not passed it on. Many who pick it up again (most notably through The Phoenix's six for a quid offer) still find it effective with a certain cohort (roughly, 6–10). But mostly, kids are reading collected editions.

The sad thing there is this erodes that very British notion of the comics anthology. So Dog Man is huge. Some Marvel books do well. Manga clicks with teens. And it was wonderful to hear Jamie Smart has now sold more than a MILLION books at his current publisher. What's in danger of winking out of existence is the comic with a whole bunch of different things to discover. But then that's the case in media more widely. People these days head immediately to what they think they want or need. There's little time (bar, perhaps in music streaming) for a mix of things they might discover, based on broader interest.

In other words, it's not just newsstand comics that are heading to oblivion, but also things like newsstand magazines and linear broadcast television. Comics seem to slot into that change as much as anything. (And to wrench that back to the subject, that makes Spacewarp an even tougher sell outside of the nostalgia market.)