Messages

1

General / Re: Forthcoming Thrills - 2022

« on: 23 May, 2022, 05:46:04 AM »

My guess is that the Dan Dare Corp (and some of the other IP owners who seem to just be sitting on material) refuse to accept a lot of (what seem to be reasonable) offers because if they did accept they'd be setting a price below what they've valued their IP at.

They'd rather bring in zero income and claim it's worth X million pounds than make at least some money but have to admit that they previously over-estimated the value. I'm assuming there's a tax advantage or similar involved somewhere along the line.

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General / Re: Forthcoming Thrills - 2022

« on: 22 May, 2022, 08:05:06 AM »

Corporate-owned copyright also makes reprints less likely if the corporation isn't interested - Metalzoic isn't coming back despite the creators wishes because they don't own it, DC does.

Creator owned titles owned by creators who know how to pitch their reprints to new publishers probably get reprinted more often than equivalent work at publishers not interested in reprints.

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Announcements / Re: 2000 AD - The Ultimate Collection

« on: 30 April, 2022, 07:33:39 AM »

I don't remember the Finn floppies (books I and II) having any art issues. What's in this volume - is it the whole boiling lot of Finn? Which might just encourage me to have a go, moiré and all. I don't remember loving those last stories but Mills later work often reads much better in collected form.

I found my copy of the reprint of Finn book 2 from the Megazine and there's definitely some moire patterning going on there. It's not massively distracting, but that could be down to the repo which is rarely crystal clear.

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Announcements / Re: 2000 AD - The Ultimate Collection

« on: 26 April, 2022, 06:44:38 AM »

Got my subs copies at the weekend. There's quite a bit of moiré patterning in the Finn book. I'm sure when I was at uni our scanners had the capability to somehow scan without picking this up - it was a setting. Or does that simply mess with the quality of the scan? Is this just the best that's possible?

Did Finn have this problem when it (just the first book I think?) was reprinted as a floppy?

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General / Re: Forthcoming Thrills - 2022

« on: 22 April, 2022, 06:04:03 AM »

I wonder if there might be be a signature or two inside the Webstore Exclusive edition - I was pleasantly surprised to find my webstore edition of Blaze of Glory arrived with Al Ewing's signature inside.

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Announcements / Re: 2000 AD - The Ultimate Collection

« on: 16 April, 2022, 06:55:44 AM »

While the second extension has been way more hit and miss, the initial run (and much of the first extension) was packed full of great stuff that I already owned in other formats.

I've only been picking up individual installments though my newsagents rather than subscribing, but the last six months or so I reckon I've grabbed more than I've let slip by. If subscribing was the only possible option, I reckon I would have signed up around #90

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General / Re: Nemesis the Warlock - The Final Heresies - Vol 3 - in FRENCH?!?!?

« on: 20 January, 2022, 01:51:30 AM »

They'll be hoping they didn't send too many French editions out to Australia - return postage could be a bit pricey there

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General / Re: For those outside the UK getting their prog from the LCS...

« on: 05 January, 2022, 11:38:26 AM »

I'm definitely not that up to date - there's at least a couple months lag and it wouldn't surprise me if it was over six months now.

I'm not sure whether it's worth waiting to see if the delayed progs eventually show up or cut my losses, but trying to fill a gap that size is going to be a struggle (financially at least).

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General / For those outside the UK getting their prog from the LCS...

« on: 04 January, 2022, 01:29:38 PM »

... a question: I don't know if Diamond have started up again with filling orders or what, but my local comic shop (I'm in Australia) had the progs and Megazine from March 2021 for me on my most recent visit. Have people outside the UK received anything more recent than that?

I'd thought I was only a few months behind - on the Meg at least - but when the delays became obvious last year I put the last few years worth of 2000AD in storage for when things picked up (or I finally bit the bullet and subscribed directly). So I'm not sure if these are the most recent packs sent by Diamond or are just a month my LCS skipped and have finally back filled.

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General / Re: Writers Block

« on: 11 November, 2021, 03:59:20 AM »

This is a tough one. I definitely think the writing in current 2000ad is remarkably consistent (and has been for a number of years now) - if you're in tune with what it's serving up, then the prog has been having a very good run of late.

Personally though, a large part of what appeals to me about 2000ad has always been the wild, out-there stories you can't find anywhere else, and that - to me, and I'm sure people can cite recent stories that have delivered these kind of thrills for them - has been lacking a bit of late. I'm still getting 2000ad, but I find it's currently piling up rather than being a must-read each week.

To be honest, I can't see this changing any time soon either. Reliable writers are hard to come by, and the current crop seem to be doing everything right as far as delivering solid thrills. At the moment the prog has found its groove, and I seem to be situated just outside of it.

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General / Re: new Kevin O'Neill collections from Gosh! Comics

« on: 25 July, 2021, 07:50:36 AM »

Do we think the new Cosmic Comics (and possibly Mel Memoirs) will be out from Hibernia, considering they published the first edition?

12

Books & Comics / Re: Devlin Waugh in the prog

« on: 14 February, 2021, 10:07:04 AM »

I don't think they fell out, he just stopped writing and Rebellion stopped waiting for him and moved on. I assume if he wanted to resume, Rebellion would let him.

IIRC Smith said on FB that he'd finally started writing the next episode of his long delayed Indigo Prime series, Matt Smith left a message on his post saying "get in touch with me immediately" and that was how he found out they'd given the story to someone else to finish writing.

So no, it doesn't seem like Rebellion would let him resume, which is a real shame.

13

General / Re: Forthcoming Thrills - 2020

« on: 25 November, 2020, 12:57:35 PM »

No doubt I'm completely wrong about this, but Sanders' offer read to me as something that would clearly only go so far: giving the rights to Halo Jones back to Moore (and presumably Gibson) was possible because the strip was basically worthless without Moore* and not really something that was a core part of 2000AD, whereas giving the rights back to Dredd would never happen (and be near-impossible to properly divide up anyway).

The result would have been a two-tier system where new writers and artists would be getting a better deal while also benefiting from the success of the older crew that had established 2000AD but were stuck on the old deal. Which sort of happened anyway for a brief time with Crisis, but at least then everyone knew the situation going in and it wasn't a matter of retroactively benefiting some but not others.

*edit: it's also possible that Sanders' was basically calling Moore's bluff over the rights issue - at the time Moore was making a lot more money working for the US and had quit all his other UK work, and some have suggested the rights issue was just a smokescreen to hide the fact that Moore just didn't need to work for 2000AD rates any more. Moore has always seemed to have a genuine fondness for the strip so it's hard to know for sure, but if Sanders knew Moore would find some way to refuse his offer then it wouldn't have been a real offer at all.

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General / Re: That Twitter thread… You know the one

« on: 23 November, 2020, 11:59:17 AM »

Thing is, it’s more complicated than that. Pay’s gone nowhere in decades. The same’s true in my industry—when a leading Mac mag first commissioned me, I got an apology for the 20p/word rate. A few weeks back, I got an apology from a leading mag for a similar rate. But that’s down to fewer and fewer people paying for things. Magazine circulation keeps dipping. Because of that, there’s less money and so rates stagnate. It’s the nature of the beast.

I suspect my industry is also your industry (though I'm writing for publications in Australia). And it's definitely true that pay rates for writers have stagnated or gone backwards over the last 20 years. But while there are a number of venues I know that have gone from thriving to struggling and simply can't afford to pay writers the equivalent of what they used to, there are others where the writers rates haven't budged while the marketing department has gone from one person to a half dozen (full time jobs at that).

Not to get off track, but in my experience writer's pay has stagnated for a whole range of reasons, some of which are down to management realising they can find people online who are willing to write for cheap because writing is a dream job for lots of people, and some of which are down to writing itself becoming the kind of job that only people with other sources of income (family money usually) can seriously consider so management doesn't really need to offer a decent wage. Some of those things can't be helped, and some of them should be pushed back against whenever possible.

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General / Re: That Twitter thread… You know the one

« on: 23 November, 2020, 11:36:21 AM »

I suspect what's probably colouring Mills' view of comics and 2000AD in particular is that he's nearing the end of a fifty year career in UK comics and it seems like nothing much has changed.

You can argue that his efforts with regard to creator's rights and royalties have been erratic and self-serving, but I don't think you could say they weren't heartfelt and a cause he's been consistently committed to. So to see that things in that area are for all intents and purposes the same after half a century - and pay rates seem to have actually gone backwards, at least in the last few decades - could be a reasonable cause for some public bitterness.

Maybe he was living in a dream world to think that comic creators would ever be able to expect solid royalties and / or a stake in the characters they created, but compared to how creators in other creative fields are treated it seems like a reasonable goal to aim for.