It seems that the only real conversations about my comic industry posts come from members of my Yahoo groups -and then rarely. I hold out the hope that one day they will post comments on CBO itself!
I was asked whether I thought that British comics could return and sell. The answer is "Yes". Since the 1980s I have laid it all out for the companies that existed then and now how it could be achieved. But the problem is that the companies don't care. They do not care about the money to be made from comics -in fact, several people at Egmont UK pointed out that there was no one there with experience in comics or comic editing and had not been for many years. The people I spoke to, including management, had not even heard of Gil Page -no big surprise.
D. C. Thomson gave up decades ago and look at the state of its current comic. There is absolutely no reason why Thomson -and I have said this many times- could not publish comics that sell (there's a novelty) and pull in readers -and revenue. If the bosses aren't interested then nothing will happen because job-worths in the company keep quiet to make sure the pay cheques keep coming until they rertire!
Despite what you might read on the internet (mostly cribbed from my old British Comics Industry Annualo Reports and blog posts) the Small Press is not strong and growing bigger. I keep my eye on what is going on and I gather the data. Even in the early 2000's I pointed out that the "Small Press" was not some big national movement: you are talking about local, small cliques where the only way that sales are made are through friends and friends of friends who are encouraged to buy and who want to stay in the little clique. There are events around London but these tend to be localised and in most cities this is the case -a group in one area of town will not know the group from the next area yet, back in the 1980s to early 1990s whether you were in Inver-ness, London, Clacton, Bristol, Staffordshire -everyone knew the other Small Presser.
Look at it this way, IF the Small Press was so "huge" as claimed...where is the national convention? An over priced table at a comic/media event does not indicate any strong movement but the opposite.
So what is my plan? Not telling. If some financial backer comes forward then I will go over things but the caveat to that would be that I was in charge. I have learnt my lessons and have no faith in anyone involved in the remnants of UK comics.
As noted in the past there are two possible places that serious business backers can come from and that is China or India.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/hoopercomicsuk?searchTerms=UK+Comics+Looking+For+Long+Term+Investment+%28Europe%29
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