SPACEWARP - New Venture from Pat Mills

[AlexF]

I bought the digital edition and actually thought it was... pretty good?
I even think it DOES appeal to younger readers than me, it's not a million miles from X-Men in terms of teen angst. And that still sells, like... dozens of copies each month.
My two comics-reading 11 year-olds have no interest, based on casual glances at the cover.

As someone who doesn't especially enjoy comics aimed at children I'm not planning to buy more issues. That said, Pat is showing off that he still knows how to craft characters and settings and even have an entire anthology comic which is all part of a single narrative - I admire all that. It even has that air of 'some parents might think it was dangerously subversive' which is great. And I'm all for more comics that give new artists a chance to work with an editor and get their stuff paid for and published.

But I'm with the crowd on this one - who is going to buy this regularly, and how can they possibly expect to find enough readers to make it remotely profitable? Let alone get it enough press to get it 'banned' by idiot dults.

If you wanna make money making comics for children, I'd have thought the lead to follow is the one set by Raina Telgemaier, Dav Pilkey etc. Make big books, not little pamphlets... 
These sell for a tenner most of the time - not pocket-money prices, but it is Birthday book token from your second-favourite uncle prices.

[Link Prime]

Got an email from the Getmycomics website recently, seems the "Personalized signed bookplate edition" is legit a chance to get Pat to write a message about pretty much anything (within reason).

Thought about getting an amusing quote from Nemesis or ABC Warriors, but decided against it as this is non-Tharg related.
Will let Uncle P scribble whatever profanity comes to mind.

[Dr Feeley Good]

Might go with a Marshal Law quote.. 

[Robin Low]

Might go with a Marshal Law quote..

"If you're the new messiah, I'm going to be the one to drive in the nails."

I cut that page out of Strip back in the day and had it on my wall at university, along with a lot of 2000AD covers.

Regards,

Robin

[SmallBlueThing(Reborn)]

I know this has been a bit marmite with some people, but I very much liked that. It is *very* Pat Mills- so if you dont like that, you wont like this. But I do- and Pat writes comics I want to read, and which I am incapable of reading without a huge grin and a feeling of being ten again- so this ticked my boxes.

Favourite things were Slayer, Jurassic Punx and Hellbreaker. The art is uniformly great throughout and I would love to be afford two more copies, one for each of my boys. But I cant because it's an expensive comic. Hopefully he'll get a version in newsagents, at some point and in some form. Because there is a ton of potential here.

SBT

[rogue69]

I got the printed copy of this the other day, the comic itself is a real good quality print and cover. I felt that the price is a bit high for my liking, but the again it was self published and had no ads to help cover the costs. If he tried to sell it as in the style of the European annual comics this might have help sell it  to a few more people so you're not sat thinking when is the next issue coming out it has been weeks/months since the first issue.
Still I will most likely get the second issue when it comes out

[judgeurko]

Pat Mills appears to be losing the plot a bit on twitter now.

[Colin YNWA]

Yeah its being discussed over at the Forthcoming Thrills - 2021 thread (for some reason?)
https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=46806.0

Lots of folks in agreement with you alas - not alas they agree, alas they thing Uncle Pat isn't coming across well at all. We owe him so much and he's a fine storyteller when on form, but this isn't reflecting well on him.

[judgeurko]

Yeah its being discussed over at the Forthcoming Thrills - 2021 thread (for some reason?)
https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=46806.0

Lots of folks in agreement with you alas - not alas they agree, alas they thing Uncle Pat isn't coming across well at all. We owe him so much and he's a fine storyteller when on form, but this isn't reflecting well on him.

I think Spacewarp hasn't been quite the success he hoped for. What kids are going to buy a £10 b & w comic?

[TordelBack]

Yeah its being discussed over at the Forthcoming Thrills - 2021 thread (for some reason?)

Spun out of the revelation that forthcoming Sláine was also final Mills, I think.

[broodblik]

Yeah its being discussed over at the Forthcoming Thrills - 2021 thread (for some reason?)

Spun out of the revelation that forthcoming Sláine was also final Mills, I think.

It looks like it will run for 10 episodes

[IndigoPrime]

I think Spacewarp hasn't been quite the success he hoped for. What kids are going to buy a £10 b & w comic?

I think the basic aim of Spacewarp was fine, but something got lost along the way—mostly due to reality. One of the key problems of modern comics is accessibility, not the actual content. Mills appears wrapped up in this 1970s view of subversive counter-culture, but there are other ways to get ideas across. There's a blog post Mills wrote a while back, talking about his new comic being available for pocket-money prices in digital:

The print price is likely to be £8, although this is something we're still thinking about, because we want it to be financially viable for the artists. So it may be a little higher, particularly if we end up with more than 36 pages of strip art.

The digital edition will be priced much lower, so it falls within a kid's pocket money range. Feedback from our beta readers agreed that many kids will happily read on their tablet or phone.

Well, that didn't happen, presumably because the comic expanded in size and costs need to be recouped. So now it's seven quid in digital and a tenner in print, for 66 pages. That's not a bad value proposition per se, but it does align the comic with everything else that's currently out there, rather than differentiating it on content AND accessibility. And that leaves the question: who is this for? If you're aiming away from the middle class comics crowd, how does that work when your product costs so much money?

[judgeurko]

I think Spacewarp hasn't been quite the success he hoped for. What kids are going to buy a £10 b & w comic?

I think the basic aim of Spacewarp was fine, but something got lost along the way—mostly due to reality. One of the key problems of modern comics is accessibility, not the actual content. Mills appears wrapped up in this 1970s view of subversive counter-culture, but there are other ways to get ideas across. There's a blog post Mills wrote a while back, talking about his new comic being available for pocket-money prices in digital:

The print price is likely to be £8, although this is something we're still thinking about, because we want it to be financially viable for the artists. So it may be a little higher, particularly if we end up with more than 36 pages of strip art.

The digital edition will be priced much lower, so it falls within a kid's pocket money range. Feedback from our beta readers agreed that many kids will happily read on their tablet or phone.

Well, that didn't happen, presumably because the comic expanded in size and costs need to be recouped. So now it's seven quid in digital and a tenner in print, for 66 pages. That's not a bad value proposition per se, but it does align the comic with everything else that's currently out there, rather than differentiating it on content AND accessibility. And that leaves the question: who is this for? If you're aiming away from the middle class comics crowd, how does that work when your product costs so much money?

A lot has changed since I bought 2000AD regularly but I remember how accessible comics used to be before comic book shops took over. I know Mills has talked a lot about going for the young audience, but maybe it just isn't there. I think kids will run to the latest Marvel movie or play the latest Marvel game but will they buy the comics? I think it is basically a medium mainly for older audiences & even with Mills' best intentions it was never really going to work. Who knows it even exists apart from 2000AD fans, who may buy it for themselves rather than their kids. Mills will never say he is wrong, so maybe all this rage is his frustration at the failure misdirected.

[TordelBack]

Is it really "rage", though? Isn't it the same Pat that writes all those brilliant forewords to his collections where he turns into a comics version of Henry Sellers at the start of the second column, just this time with a twitter box blinking at him, and people to bait him and egg him on in real time? 

I object to his current targets because I'm very defensive of my beloved comic and the droids that labour in its thrill mines, and I really don't need to see any more false accusations that 2000AD is staggering along like a corporate zombie version of its former self, but I also think it's just Pat being Pat, with more than an eye to drawing the attention of lapsed fans to his own project (a laudable goal, stripped of context).

It's not like he hasn't said mean things about editors and creators before (about professionals on this very forum, even), and it's not like it isn't something that goes on in the wider comics industry, and the public sphere in general. That's not to defend the behaviour, these are real people with real careers getting a public put-down by a bona-fide comics legend, but perhaps it is just business as usual in Pat's head, rather than some moment of crisis.

I think I'd better stop commenting on this stuff from here on, no matter what I write it seems like I'm standing in judgement on  a guy I consider to be one of the greatest comics creators of all time, whose forcefully expressed not-always-fully-informed opinions have always been part of the magic.

[CalHab]

Apart from anything else, kids are reading comics. They're just not reading the same kind of comics or in the same format as previous generations. I hope Spacewarp works out, but is it really for kids?