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EAGLE, BUNTY, VALIANT, Comet, Hornet, School Friend, Sparky, Sun. In the
Fifties and Sixties, British newsagents were overflowing with comics,
containing strips of every possible stripe: adventure, slapstick, romance,
mystery, western, war. At tuppence an instalment, there was no better source
of thrills, spills and belly laughs.
Today the picture is very different. In the 1950s the Eagle sold around
900,000 copies a week; now The Beano and The Dandy are hanging on valiantly
with a joint circulation of about 74,500. And those two are lonely
standard-bearers: most children's magazines now are not comics but glossy TV
tie-ins with one or two strips in among the features, puzzles, competitions
and ads.
Can the British comic be saved? One man thinks it can. On May 30 the legendary
children's publisher David Fickling is launching The DFC, a weekly 36-page
comic featuring a colourful rattlebag of brand-new strips, including one
written by his old pal Philip Pullman.
Padding around his homely Oxford office in red socks, with matching red spotty
bow-tie, 55-year-old Fickling explains, in great enthusiastic gusts, why
Britain needs The DFC:
“I have always loved comics and wanted to make them. But I'm not really
interested in reviving comics, I'm much more interested in restoring them to
where they should be. I have no doubt that the form is still loved by
children: Asterix and Tintin are hugely popular despite being 50 to 80 years
old. We have comics in Japan, in France, throughout Europe. We just don't
have them in this country.”
Why not? The old theory was that the arrival of television killed them off,
but it's more likely to be a case of economics, Fickling guesses: comics
were bought up by big companies, and then, proving less profitable than
other products, were gradually dropped. Competition was stifled and
illustrators struggled to make a living. “D.C. Thomson [publisher of The
Beano and The Dandy] is one of the largest companies in the world and only a
tiny bit of it is comic-making. Why aren't they making more? We don't have a
car industry, we don't have a comics industry: we should do!”
The dearth of British comics certainly isn't due to lack of talent. When
Fickling announced his plans for The DFC two-and-a-half years ago: “We
opened the doors and the most wonderful illustrators and storytellers came
out of the cupboard. Our job now is to make them available to the children
who desperately need and want them.”
Those who emerged include young comics artists (John Aggs) graphic novelists
(Simone Lia), experienced illustrators (Chris Riddell), Hollywood concept
artists (Adam Brockbank, who worked on the Harry Potter films), oral
storytellers (Ben Haggarty) and children's authors (Paul Stewart and, of
course, Philip Pullman).
The content has been shrouded in secrecy - Fickling is adamant that the first
subscribers shouldn't have their surprises spoilt - but a sneak preview
reveals an astonishing array of stories and styles.
John Blake, Pullman's riveting Pacific-set tale of supernatural mystery, is
brought to giant-squid-hugging life by John Aggs's manga-influenced artwork,
full of giddy perspectives and exploding panels. This dose of old-school
adventure is followed by inspired silliness for younger readers in the form
of James Turner's Super Animal Adventure Squad, in which an
eye-patch-wearing unicorn calls his motley team to investigate “a level 6
cake emergency”. Then there's The Boss, a collaboration between John Aggs
and his mother Patrice (who herself illustrated a Pullman story for Fickling
in 1991), described by a DFC editor as “Grange Hill meets CSI”.
Elsewhere in the first issue are otherworldly Japanese anime-influenced
visions in The Spider Moon, Philip Marlowe's canine alter-ego in Good Dog,
Bad Dog and - why not? - a carrot performing neurosurgery on a sausage.
It is, as Fickling says, “more like a television studio” than a book. “You
don't have to like everything. The different stories will allow children's
opinions to come out - they will say ‘I love this but I hate that'.” Comics
offer a particularly flexible, stimulating form of narrative, he believes:
“They allow you to read in a way that nothing else does - you can look back,
retrace the visual clues, follow different details. It's depictive art.”
In keeping with the flexibility of the form, The DFC is deliberately
open-ended, avoiding the gender bias of 1960s comics such as Fickling's
childhood favourite Boys' World, and tempting readers well beyond the core 8
to 12-year-old readership. Initially, the only way to buy it will be to
subscribe through www.thedfc.co.uk. Selling a magazine through shops
involves giving the retailer a healthy cut, which in turn hikes the cover
price up: it wasn't until the internet blossomed that Fickling saw that this
prohibitive process could be sidestepped; that a comic could be done. But
eventually he wants The DFC in shops, and the individual strips made into
books and films.
Fickling certainly doesn't lack ambition, but he tempers it with
self-deprecation, reiterating at every pause that The DFC is not solely his
creation - downstairs five employees are beavering away in “Comics HQ”,
every inch of wall space covered with new strips - and that he's “rubbish”
at many things, including business and storytelling.
Nevertheless, his career has been remarkable. As a graduate he drifted from
Dillons bookshop into Oxford University Press in 1978, adapting novels for
English-language learners. He hung around the children's book department
“because I was absolutely obsessed with stories” and was rewarded with an
editor's job. His authors included Anne Fine, Gillian Cross and Pullman - a
relative unknown when Fickling published The Ruby in the Smoke in 1985.
After ten years he moved to Transworld, where he paired Jacqueline Wilson with
the illustrator Nick Sharratt, then to Scholastic, taking Pullman with him
(“Well I wasn't about to let him go!”), publishing Northern Lights in 1995.
In 2000 he set up David Fickling Books as an imprint of Random House, adding
Mark Haddon and John Boyne to his list, and winning Editor of the Year at
the British Book Awards in 2004. He's proud of the books that his imprint
publishes but insists that “the important thing to say about an editor is
you're not actually doing the work”.
So why call it the David Fickling Comic? Fickling leans forward, eyebrows
cresting the rims of his big round glasses, horrified at the idea of
self-aggrandisement: “What I absolutely don't want is my name associated
with The DFC. My colleague hurriedly put the initials on a prototype and the
children liked it, so we have kept it. Honestly!”
The comic makes a feature of the elusive acronym: on the inside cover is a
charming panel by Nick Sharratt captioned “Dracula's Favourite Cardigan” -
there will be a new definition each week.
“I don't like branding,” Fickling stresses. “A product needs to acquire a
brand, meaning you trust its makers because they've always made it well. The
DFC will come to mean something if children like it - until then it means
nothing.”
Reinventing the great British comic? I'd call that Doughty, Fearless, and
really rather Clever.
The DFC is offering early subscribers a free trial of four issues. To order
visit www.thedfc.co.uk/thetimes or call 0844 848 8840 and quote WEB1.
