Darci asked a question that is probably being asked by others so I thought it might be a good idea to answer in a post.
"Hi Terry, I'm surprised you keep comparing them to DC and Marvel. Wouldn't a more natural comparison be to Panini and Egmont?"
Well, comparing them in the loosest way. You see, comics were going in the UK back in the 1800s and what emerged in the UK were a lot of small publishers but two became "The Big Two" (that term was used back in the 1940s before it was ever used to refer to DC or Marvel.
Amalgamated Press/Fleetway/IPC/Fleetway (I am excluding Egmont since it had no interest in producing comics in the UK after it purchased Fleetway -though it did reprint a lot of Silver Age material from the UK in Scandinavia) and D. C. Thomson.
Both companies at their height were producing 6-7 titles each. Now, these were weekly comics. So, 52 issues were year and to that you added Summer/Holiday Specials and, naturally, the hardback annuals. Strips were sold and reprinted around the globe -some are still popular in India today. At their height, both companies had a larger out-put of books than DC and Marvel combined.
So, if you are looking at the UK market, especially in the past, and if you have an international audience, you have to explain things in a way people will understand. Otherwise, saying "D. C. Thomson was one of the UKs biggest publishers" means nothing. Did it mean they published 2 or 3? 50-60 comics and so on. When I referred to Fillipines comics I added links because, again, writing that such-and-such a comic was THE biggest seller there means nothing.
There used to be this habit people had of stating "Comic artist John Cooper was the "Gil Kane" of British comics" or "Mike Western was the "Jack Kirby" of British comics" and that was wrong. Some would argue that Cooper was better than Kane -look at all the detail in his strips compared to Kane who, up until the 1960s never put any real backgrounds into comics because "Kids are buying the comic for the fight not the background!"
But both men, Cooper and Western just produced a lot of comic strip work -Western at one point up to 12 pages a week- covering various genres. So comparing Western with Kirby or Cooper with Kane was really about how much they were loved by fans and their importance in UK comics. but to try to put that across people do the name comparison.
D. C. Thomson was the very staid, conservative publisher and it showed through what they published so in that way they compared to DC. Fleetway was the cool company. Gil Page travelled to Europe (as did his Thomson counter-part though DCT were mainly there to sell material as Dundee Editions) and met Spanish and Italian artists -such as the great Massimo Belardinelli- and also met the South American artists or their agents. Fleetway published the anti-heroes such as The Spider or The Steel Claw and this was at a time when anti-heroes were appearing on TV and in movies especially Spaghetti Westerns where Clint Eastwood was King of the anti-heroes (and John Cooper was a BIG Eastwood fan -hence the character One-Eyed Jack was based on him).
So, the easiest way to describe both companies are in a way comic fans ought to understand: D. C. Thomson (come on "D.C."!) was the UK DC comics and Fleetway the hip cool "UK Marvel".
I do not compare comics to Panini since they do not produce original material just reprints. So they are publishing what could be bought in a comic shop (in some cases there would need to be back issues in a comic shop and not many do that now). I'm referring to companies or people who produce new material if in a contemporary context. If looking at comics when we had an industry then I'm referring to that period.
Egmont in the UK "do not do comics" -they simply do not and that comes from one of the top people I've talked to. If they are not publishing comics just merchandise related magazines then they cannot be referred to in any context regarding comics.
It is that simple. I have spoken to people not from the UK and they hear company names and it means nothing. But say "They were the UK equivalent of Marvel and DC" and it's "Oh. Right."
If I write, and I think I have a few times, that publishers or any new company cannot rival Marvel or DC that is just a plain statement of fact.
Richard Branson formed Virgin Comics and I warned at the time that once he had made a quick profit or saw he could not make a profit then he would pull out quickly without warning. That has been his business modus operandi for decades. His pal Nicolas Cage wrote a comic and there was an attempt to publish in India. Vanished. There was no money in it for Virgin.
The problem was that it seemed a good idea and "comics make money, don't they?" -there's the greed factor. Yes, business folk need to make money but they jump into comics without knowing the medium. So they think there are millions to be made straight away. I'm not going into "whys" or "what" here.
But Marvel is Disney so they have the TV shows, the movies and the BIG publicity machine -DC doesn't have Disney but same thing. Unless you have an international, successful, movie studio or TV shows and a huge publicity machine then you are not going to compete with Marvel or DC. And that needs to be made clear.
So, references to DC and Marvel are in context as they help those unfamiliar with UK comics (if you are under 40 years of age you'll probably have no memory of UK weekly comics unless you are a collector).
Long winded as usual but I got there!
"Hi Terry, I'm surprised you keep comparing them to DC and Marvel. Wouldn't a more natural comparison be to Panini and Egmont?"
Well, comparing them in the loosest way. You see, comics were going in the UK back in the 1800s and what emerged in the UK were a lot of small publishers but two became "The Big Two" (that term was used back in the 1940s before it was ever used to refer to DC or Marvel.
Amalgamated Press/Fleetway/IPC/Fleetway (I am excluding Egmont since it had no interest in producing comics in the UK after it purchased Fleetway -though it did reprint a lot of Silver Age material from the UK in Scandinavia) and D. C. Thomson.
Both companies at their height were producing 6-7 titles each. Now, these were weekly comics. So, 52 issues were year and to that you added Summer/Holiday Specials and, naturally, the hardback annuals. Strips were sold and reprinted around the globe -some are still popular in India today. At their height, both companies had a larger out-put of books than DC and Marvel combined.
So, if you are looking at the UK market, especially in the past, and if you have an international audience, you have to explain things in a way people will understand. Otherwise, saying "D. C. Thomson was one of the UKs biggest publishers" means nothing. Did it mean they published 2 or 3? 50-60 comics and so on. When I referred to Fillipines comics I added links because, again, writing that such-and-such a comic was THE biggest seller there means nothing.
There used to be this habit people had of stating "Comic artist John Cooper was the "Gil Kane" of British comics" or "Mike Western was the "Jack Kirby" of British comics" and that was wrong. Some would argue that Cooper was better than Kane -look at all the detail in his strips compared to Kane who, up until the 1960s never put any real backgrounds into comics because "Kids are buying the comic for the fight not the background!"
But both men, Cooper and Western just produced a lot of comic strip work -Western at one point up to 12 pages a week- covering various genres. So comparing Western with Kirby or Cooper with Kane was really about how much they were loved by fans and their importance in UK comics. but to try to put that across people do the name comparison.
D. C. Thomson was the very staid, conservative publisher and it showed through what they published so in that way they compared to DC. Fleetway was the cool company. Gil Page travelled to Europe (as did his Thomson counter-part though DCT were mainly there to sell material as Dundee Editions) and met Spanish and Italian artists -such as the great Massimo Belardinelli- and also met the South American artists or their agents. Fleetway published the anti-heroes such as The Spider or The Steel Claw and this was at a time when anti-heroes were appearing on TV and in movies especially Spaghetti Westerns where Clint Eastwood was King of the anti-heroes (and John Cooper was a BIG Eastwood fan -hence the character One-Eyed Jack was based on him).
So, the easiest way to describe both companies are in a way comic fans ought to understand: D. C. Thomson (come on "D.C."!) was the UK DC comics and Fleetway the hip cool "UK Marvel".
I do not compare comics to Panini since they do not produce original material just reprints. So they are publishing what could be bought in a comic shop (in some cases there would need to be back issues in a comic shop and not many do that now). I'm referring to companies or people who produce new material if in a contemporary context. If looking at comics when we had an industry then I'm referring to that period.
Egmont in the UK "do not do comics" -they simply do not and that comes from one of the top people I've talked to. If they are not publishing comics just merchandise related magazines then they cannot be referred to in any context regarding comics.
It is that simple. I have spoken to people not from the UK and they hear company names and it means nothing. But say "They were the UK equivalent of Marvel and DC" and it's "Oh. Right."
If I write, and I think I have a few times, that publishers or any new company cannot rival Marvel or DC that is just a plain statement of fact.
Richard Branson formed Virgin Comics and I warned at the time that once he had made a quick profit or saw he could not make a profit then he would pull out quickly without warning. That has been his business modus operandi for decades. His pal Nicolas Cage wrote a comic and there was an attempt to publish in India. Vanished. There was no money in it for Virgin.
The problem was that it seemed a good idea and "comics make money, don't they?" -there's the greed factor. Yes, business folk need to make money but they jump into comics without knowing the medium. So they think there are millions to be made straight away. I'm not going into "whys" or "what" here.
But Marvel is Disney so they have the TV shows, the movies and the BIG publicity machine -DC doesn't have Disney but same thing. Unless you have an international, successful, movie studio or TV shows and a huge publicity machine then you are not going to compete with Marvel or DC. And that needs to be made clear.
So, references to DC and Marvel are in context as they help those unfamiliar with UK comics (if you are under 40 years of age you'll probably have no memory of UK weekly comics unless you are a collector).
Long winded as usual but I got there!
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