Recession kills UK comic The DFC

[Charles RB]

I always meant to get round to get around to picking it up, so now I'm partially responsible for the thing in danger of shutting down:

The DFC is a less-than-a-year-old British comics weekly for kids, recently launched in a market where new comics products have an uphill battle. Backed by Random House UK, the magazine had gotten a warm reception and contributions from heavy hitters like Phillip Pullman, but now, The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log reports the subscription-only publication will be canceled at the end of the month unless a buyer is found — not very likely, all involve glumly agree. Joe Gordon writes:

Obviously this is a big blow - we were all really excited at the launch of a major new British comic (such a rare event these days) and as regular readers will know its proved to be popular with adults and with kids (as Molly showed in her reviews with her dad Richard). And of course it offered a major new vehicle for British comics talent - that’s going to hurt, losing both that outlet where their work could be seen and enjoyed as well as the obvious loss of potential earnings (and the worry is that if a buyer isn’t found and the DFC does cease after issue 43 it will put off others from trying to launch a new British regular comic even when the economy picks up).

Contributor Sarah McIntyre has more at her LJ.

The DFC wasn't based on a licensed property, was a new comic in a market without many, was all-ages, and was creator-owned. It was something that, basically, the UK industry needed to succeed and could've been this generation's 2000 AD in terms of its influence.

And there it goes, and the page where you buy issues from is no longer there.

Fucking depressing.

[king mob]

I never even realised it was out, though I can't remember the last time I looked at the kids comics section in places like WH Smiths.

[Karen El]

I got a subscription to it but dropped it eventually. The truth is that it wasn't a very good comic. Or perhaps it wasn't a well edited comic.

Sure, there were a couple of well written strips, but they were so slow. When you are trying to build a market, the last thing you need to be doing is writing for the trade in 5 page chunks.

[Weetomuncher]

The only widely available original non humour comics that aren't aimed solely at youngsters are 2000AD, Judge Dredd Megazine and Commando which are small format black & white war comics.

The rest of the UK comics market is humour comics, almost all aimed at primary school children, a few licensed titles like Transformers which are also aimed at a young audience and a few, mainly Marvel, US reprints which are way behind the original titles as the Marvel books are still covering the Civil War story which ended in 2007.

Up until the early 1990s, any decent newsagent had a selection of UK comics, ranging from childrens humour to heavier adult titles like Crisis and Revolver.