Inspired by some discussion in another thread about it being difficult to track some of the long-running stories, and it perhaps also being difficult to define the comic (in terms of core thrills), I wanted to throw some data at the perception and see what happened.
So this chart is Thrills per Year (1977 to 2021):
(https://i.imgur.com/gG9Hct7.png)
(I also did one that adjusted for page count, but it doesn't change the overall picture, really. Small two-parters, such as Maze Dumoir, count as equally as a 26-part epic, and I didn't combine the analogy thrills such as Time Twisters and Future Shocks. So - lots of small, bitty thrills can throw things off a little.)
What will also be interesting to see is the total number of writers per cycle as well then I am sure we will see that we have more writers contributing today then in the yearly years.
Firstly and most importantly can I salute not the hard work that has gone into this but rather the simply magnificent names you have used to express the peaks and troughs. Genius sir.
The graph demostrates an absolutely fascinating trend of progressive increase in the number of thrills being seen year to year. All be it with clear ups and downs.
For me the really interesting bit is the massive impact of Sinister Dexter and Nikolai Dante on the Prog. I've long held the theory that David Bishop's use of these two thrills, alongside Wagner Dredd, saved the Prog and gave it the stability needed to make the mistakes that the restless experimentation of the time necessitated.
I think the experiementation and peak in numbers now is for different raises to the peak ahead of S&D and Dante. Then change was needed as the Prog needed to find its. It was suffering horribly in quality and nothing was sticking as nothing was good, until those two thrills (again with Wagner Dredd) provided the strong base.
Now the change needed now is different. There is arguably too much quality and not enough time to fit it all in and for creators to craft the thrills. The change needed now is in audience. We're getting old and Tharg needs to find a way to open to doors to new readers, so that quantity and quality has a vehicle, however patient we have to be to get to it.
Thanks for doing this Funt Solo.
What I find interesting here is that the highest peak bar the current one was 2000 AD's nadir. Whatever people might think about the current state of the Prog, it's objectively significantly better than back then, even if it could sometimes do with giving certain strips a boost in momentum.
Colin's theory is accurate. Suspect I may have stated it somewhere in TPO. Short version: inspired by Steve Mac's Golden Age, I opted for a similar strategy: longer runs, use Dredd and two reader faves as the tentpoles front, centre and back. Then the second and fourth slots were free for new strips, experiments and places for emerging talent to experiment/learn their craft.
Both Sin/Dex and Dante were commissioned before I moved over to the weekly on 18 Dec 1995. It took another 15 months before Dante was ready to run, with enough episodes in the plans chest to give the strip a decent residency in the comic. Sin/Dex got extended as a stopgap when another strip [Slaine? Finn?] wasn't ready. By the end of that initial run S/D was rising up the reader poll, building an audience.
Once S/D and Dante proved they had legs, I was very happy to make them the new tent poles so the likes of Friday and Johnny Alpha-free Stronts could be retired.
It wasn't a strategy that could last forever, but seemed more likely to succeed than a poker player asking for four new cards every chance they got in the hope of finding something better.
Thanks anyway my favorite AD strip of all time is Dante and you allowed it to become the strip we have today.
When the quality is that good, get out the way and let the creators do their thing.
Quote from: davidbishop on 30 January, 2022, 02:16:20 PM
When the quality is that good, get out the way and let the creators do their thing.
Something you get the impression 2000ad has long been good at for a long time, but other, bigger companies don't seem able to learn.
Excellent
What happens if you remove the Regened though? I know technically they are in prog numbering, but they are also deliberately stand alone
One other graph I'd like to see is the top five/ten stories of each decade in terms of page count and how often they were in the prog as a percentage from first to last (on going) appearance.
Quote from: Leigh S on 30 January, 2022, 03:08:29 PM
What happens if you remove the Regened though? I know technically they are in prog numbering, but they are also deliberately stand alone.
It'll be quite easy to treat those as specials. The data I've used is prog-only, so no Megs, no Sci-Fi Specials etc. I'll do a chart that adjusts Regened out, and I'm also curious to see what happens if I take out little two-fors like Superbean or Maze Dumoir, and consolidate some of the sporadic anthology thrills.
Quote from: Leigh S on 30 January, 2022, 03:08:29 PM
One other graph I'd like to see is the top five/ten stories of each decade in terms of page count and how often they were in the prog as a percentage from first to last (on going) appearance.
I could relatively easily do that in terms of episode count - page count would be trickier to tease out.
yeah, episode count works just as well
(https://i.imgur.com/RUAZOQt.png)
This one ditched Regened and blips (one or two-parters), and consolidated anthologies where it seemed to make sense. The blue line is the strict number of thrills, with the grey line adjusting for page count (as 1980 had 1504 pages to 1995's 2056).
The little grey-line leap at the end is where the pages of Regened get taken out but the prog is still producing the same amount of its own thrills. [Insert joke about Tharg and the efficacy of his mighty organ.]
That's almost exactly the opposite of the graph of the amount of each year hachette have reprinted so far (https://imgur.com/p4llPOz.png).
I guess this makes sense given the nature of the Hachette collections. The Ultimate Collection has tended to focus on the longer running epics over the one and dones. The troughs on your graph are the eras where those epics were in heavy rotation so unsurprisingly they're also the years where Hachette have reprinted the greatest amount of the stories from the prog.
Tables Unite! That's great, sintec.
Okay, I know I've typed "appearances" incorrectly on all five of these charts, but I can't be arsed editing it now...
(https://i.imgur.com/1CWnMaJ.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/zMFRS92.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/j5pIxZZ.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/6DCCJgZ.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/Vp8ptam.png)
That Judge Dredd's pretty prolific.
amazing work! suspect the 90s would look very different if split into two halves...
Love a good bar chart / line graph in the morning.
Seeing patterns like this does have a way of making a person worry we're heading into bad times or the Prog...
...even as the weekly read is still something I enjoy a whole lot.
Mind you, circa 1991-1995 I was happy with my weekly Prog, too, so what do I know.
Quote from: davidbishop on 31 January, 2022, 08:52:53 AM
amazing work! suspect the 90s would look very different if split into two halves...
In my head there was a period of a year or two in the 90s when Sinister Dexter had very nearly as much page space as Dredd - possibly even a smidge more. Far too lazy to try to prove the point!
Quote from: Colin YNWA on 31 January, 2022, 09:31:03 AM
Quote from: davidbishop on 31 January, 2022, 08:52:53 AM
amazing work! suspect the 90s would look very different if split into two halves...
In my head there was a period of a year or two in the 90s when Sinister Dexter had very nearly as much page space as Dredd - possibly even a smidge more. Far too lazy to try to prove the point!
Both Rogue and SinDex had hefty residencies (although so did Meltdown Man with its 50-prog run). Rogue was in every prog (bar one, I think) in 1983 and SinDex hit almost every prog (bar three) of 1998 - quite often in double episodes.
I feel like doing a five-year breakdown and excising Droid Life...
Okay, so this is mostly five-year spreads as percentage of the prog's content (on an episode basis). Given that we usually see 5 stories per prog, that means JD is often hovering around 20%, which means he's in every single issue (barring the odd exception). So, everything else is measured around Dredd. These are top tens, so lots of significant thrills simply aren't listed. Also, I excised Droid Life from the lists.
(https://i.imgur.com/NtzrOqi.png) (https://i.imgur.com/zEn5r4N.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/3RDXtAe.png) (https://i.imgur.com/ag2BhPa.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/wBL6Gby.png) (https://i.imgur.com/WSaI1iB.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/eQNJI2I.png) (https://i.imgur.com/bQIdaLF.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/EHa4bTY.png) (https://i.imgur.com/IK0SpsN.png)
Wow interesting to see how hard on the heels rogue was on Dredd between 81-85.
Now thats what I call bar charts!
Interesting to see Slaine was most active during those "Dark Days" when the editorial were actively working against it according to Mills - clearly, they didn't do a very good job of that!
Not to knock Pat too much as having three of his thrills in the 2006 -2010 and 2011-2015 was very welcome in my book.
Not many thrills break that 10% line do they.
Dan Dare (77-80)
Rogue Trooper (81-85)
Strontium dog (86-90)
Sinister Dexter (96-00)
It's also interesting to note that the modern graphs do indeed look a lot like 91-95 in terms of shape with nearly all the thrills hovering somewhere between 2.5% and 5% with maybe one pushing past that mark. I'd argue we're in a very different position though. In 91-95 the leaders just behind Dredd (Fr1day, Rebooted Robo-Hunter, Strontium Dogs, and Finn) are not hugely well regarded moments in the progs history.
You make a good point, sintec - variety doesn't speak to quality. As others have noted, you don't get to do long-span thrills without varying the artists - probably the only artist capable of generating five pages a week year-in, year-out was our long lost Belardinelli.
I suppose modern Tharg values artistic consistency over narrative cohesion.
Quote from: Leigh S on 31 January, 2022, 04:55:47 PMwhen the editorial were actively working against it according to Mills
This being the same Mills who quite recently fumed at Rebellion for not reprinting some of his stories, despite him having more of his stories reprinted than most other 2000 AD writers.
Indeed...
these are % of the overall output per prog, but what about as % of progs over that period the stories appear in? Presumably, having a lot of other stories that we dont see here might skew it one way or the other?