Sunday 26 October 2008

Will There Be A Comics Credit Crunch?

So, in these days of global finanacial crisis I guess what millions of people around the world are really wondering is will it affect British comics?



Well, to a cetain degree it already has. As the Forbidden Planet blog has reported, this year's Bristol convention is going to be much smaller than in previous years. The credit crisis is explicitly blamed, although I am not entirely convinced this is the whole story.

It's personally annoying that Bristol has down-sized in the year we were hoping to debut there, and by all accounts exhibiting is now invitation-only, which of course favours established names and not new talent. Still needs must, and I am hopeful that assurances for normal service in 2010 prove accurate.

Besides, I am not exactly flush with cash at the moment myself, so a large bill for doing Bristol is probably not what I need. As it is, I will be funding Massacre's likely appeareance at the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing by the proceeds of eBay auctions and - if I can find enough crap I don't want anymore - the printing costs for Walking Wounded #3 will be financed in the same way.

Still regardless of my own slightly straightened-circumstances (I work for a bank, possibly not the best of sectors right now) I am committed to ensuring that Massacre for Boys continues. And thankfully comic-making is not paticularly expensive, so we're pretty robust in the face of the looming, inevitable recession.

At the top of the tree, I do hope that Rebellion will be alright. 2000AD I'm sure will continue but there do have to be fears for my own favoured title, Judge Dredd Megazine, which is now a fiver a month, including a bundled second comic of reprinted recent material. I actually think it's a good product, but it does seem an obvious cutback for cash-strapped fans, especially long-term customers who have read all the reprints when they first came round.

1 comment:

Michael Martin said...

Personally i have just decided to give up on the JDM, though only because of thier seemingly endless "anything American is amazing, anything Britian tries is to be ignored at best or ridiculed at worst" miserable attitude. As they say in the current issue's "Top Twenty" (and i thought that had been knocked on the head) we get the comic shops we deserve. Well they get the readers they deserve, and if there isn't enough of those it's tough ain't it. Under any other circumstances i'd be trying my hardest to find the money to prop up one of the survivors of "real" comics in Britain, ditching one is not a decision i take lightly.

In other news, the randomly generated word is bashe, which i swear was somebody's username on a forum i used to go to.