Alan Grant on pulp & 2000AD...

[Tu-plang]

By kids in my post I mean 13-16ish.  Maybe better to refer to as "teenagers" or "young adults".

[The Amstor Computer]

>>>Kid's aren't abandoned to the "fuckwits in marketing".
People underestimate kids too much, their just like you but shorter.  They read Preacher in the Megazine without asking their parents what a "fuckin' black cunt" was.  Age and intelligence aren't always related<<<

Where did I underestimate them?
I said: "Give kids some credit & offer them something imaginative - don't just abandon them to the fuckwits in marketing."

I'm talking about kids from 6-12, the audience 2000AD started out with. Instead of pounding them with shite churned out by companies who are only interested in them as consumers, give them something that challenges them & treats them as something more than meat for the machine.

Anyway... to get back to the original point.

I read the comments about Marvel, and it seems that the people most interested in better quality stock & are generally satisfied with current prices are the ones who've been reading comics for years, if not decades; the people who buy half-a-dozen or a dozen titles a month; the collectors.
Fine. Great. They're happy with better stock & are willing to pay higher prices for it.

How did they get into comics in the first place? Did they wander into a comics store & see a glossy $3 monthly & get hooked? I doubt it. In my experience, most comics fans started on cheap pulp; they picked up a comic for pennies. It was something cheap & garish that leapt off the shelf. Sometimes they loved it & carried on buying it, sometimes it was read once & thrown in the bin.
It was ultimately disposable, and like Alan Grant says, it was something that became part of the culture.

Some of the audience will grow up & decide they're not interested in comics anymore. Some will fall in love with the medium & will mature onto different titles that offer better quality, or more adult reading.
At the bottom, you still need to attract new readers, and the only way I can see you doing that is by offering a cheap, disposable, interesting comic.

[Oddboy]

ATTRACT THE YOUNGER READERSHIP!!!

I totally agree with that!  Who cares if they get to teenagerhood & feel too embarrassed to buy it any more... most of us did that!  They, like us, will come back eventually because 2K is GOOD.  Advertise it more.   Make loads of toys for little kids (under 11s) to play with & advertise 'em on Telly.  The Computer game off shoots would help that too...

Yee ha for 2000AD.

[paulvonscott]

I thought Tu-Plang was arguing with you not against you Blackblood, but then again.

Anyway, I think 2000AD probably best worked for secondary school kids, aged 11 upwards.  If you had that and a title aged at the 6-12 year olds (a bit of overlap) you could try and hang onto as many people as possible.

Basically if comics could be as cheap to make as newspapers (and we all remember newspaper comics right) then you could probably sell a few.

Anyway I'm back off to read my Hotspur Annual.

Cheers

Paul

(He's caled King, and he gets exclusive reports on KING Cobra all the time, has nobody twigged yet?)