Or so some think.
The Yahoo group Britcomics shows that the British comics industry did not start with the Dandy on the 4th December, 1937 nor with the Beano on the 30th July, 1938. This is a misconception fed on a regular basis to the media and public more often than not by persons who see themselves as comic celebrities or experts ( "X" =The Unknown and "Spurt" is a drip under pressure).
The origins of British comics I have dealt with before on numerous occasions over the last 40 years and on the internet for more than two decades. Origins lie in the old Penny Dreadfuls and those who wrote them (mostly anonymously through embarrassment -ditto creators in comics later on) and who illustrated them -many ignored by today's xspurts.
Then there are the Boy's Papers that introduced us to many characters including masked, costume and super powered or tech-using heroes and anti heroes including the first man in a bat suit in the 1890s. These are largely forgotten if the xspurts even know of them. These publications and their characters were part of the British Platinum Age of comics history.
The "British Golden Age of comics" did not start with the Beano or Dandy either. Well before 1937 or 1938 there were British weekly comics from companies such as Target. Rarely mentioned because it seems comics history is "rebooted" to fit in with certain factions and their likes.
Names such as Roland Davies, Tom Browne, William Giles Baxter, Marie Duval, Ernest Wilson, William Hogarth, Chase Moore, Mary Byfield, John Byfield, James Gilray. Edgar Banger (pron. as in "Ranger") et al should be ones that a true comics fan would recognise or at least know of.
Currently, the biggest publisher of comics -in the form of comic albums no less so no excuse for people to keep asking me "What do you mean by comic album format?"- in colour in the UK is Cinebook the 9th Art. Yes, they are translations of Franco-Belgian comic albums but they sell more than D. C. Thomson and they are a UK company.
The Small Press is not an industry and neither are the few Independent comics out there.
Which leads us to the title of this post.
Someone posted to Britcomics that "Once Brexit is out if the way everyone agrees that the British comics industry will be revived". I asked who exactly "everyone" was and was told in depth about UK comic forum posts in which the oh so familiar 'comics nice guys' had noted Cinebook would shut down and with no European influence British comics could once again be established as a force to be reckoned with.
I would suggest those people change their medication.
There is one main reason why the British comics industry declined and that is the people involved. Editors just cashing their pay-cheques until retirement or their badly edited books were cancelled. There was internal back-stabbing and worse going on -from personal experience and what I was told by management I know fraud and theft was included. John Cooper told me that he was told, on some original artwork being returned, that "a lot had gone walk about from the warehouse".
In the early 1980s Thomson management stated "Comics as we know them will be gone in ten years" -that person being a true idiot with no grasp of comics or the medium. Thomson editors (including the one who described me to someone as "a c===!") have just sat back and demonstrated no real will to move comics into (now, since they missed out the late 20th century all together) the 21st century. Thomson has an inventory of characters that developed properly could be very profitable. Instead they sit on their arses waiting until no one cares and they can fade away.
So Thomson (Dundee Editions) will not be the saviours to bring back a great and strong British comics industry. As for Brexit getting rid of European influences, again, these statements come from people who have no idea. Just how has Europe negatively influenced British comics?
Thomson and IPC/Fleetway/Amalgamated Press attended all the book fairs in Europe to sell their strips (not that the artists/writers knew or got extra money) -Vulcan to Kobra in Germany, Robot Archie in the Netherlands and so on -again highlighted on CBO so many times over 2 decades. UK comic strips and characters went world wide and even today are big in parts of India. UK publishers recruited creators such as Belardinelli, Vanyo and...well it is a very long list. Artists were recruited from Brasil and at the height ofd the Falklands/Malvinas War Fleetway recruited Argentine artists for football strips "because they were cheaper than British artists".
The UK has, in fact, exported more of its characters and strip series to Europe than vice versa and things were bad which enabled Egmont to buy the failed Fleetway.
So get facts straight: the decline in British comics came long before the UK joined the EU.
In fact the 'comics nice guys' have back-stabbed, lied and prevented at least three attempts by people to establish new mainstream comics in the UK. These people have targeted creators who do not fit into their scheme of things. Again, this I have posted on many times in the past. The so called UK "comic community" is toxic enough to kill any new plans or wreck any new projects -even if it is a case of "Cutting your nose off to spite your face". They even destroy their very own projects!
I have always maintained that, with the right backer, UK comics are possible but that would mean using only creators with a professional outlook who can do the work and black-listing those who have actively spread the kind of negativity that has resulted in the current situation.
It really is a case of "can you do the work and not back-stab your publisher or colleagues?"
There is one "well known" creator in the UK who put it in black and white on CBO (I still have that message) that he could not read European comics in English "because of the format" and he had similar problems with US comics. Which means that anything smaller format than an old British weekly comic or slightly larger....gave him difficulties. A comic strip on a printed page is a comic strip on a printed page no matter the format size (this fell raves on about the small formatted pocket war library comics) ...this is the mentality involved.
This is the sort of person predicting a new British comics empire post Brexit.
Arschloch.
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