The comics industry is starting the transformation over to the digital age and as much as people like the look and feel of paper, or maybe not, it won’t be too long before digital distribution of comics become the norm.

We currently publish a number of digital comics under our Blue Pilot Software company and are licensing the technology to other content providers. Our comics at present are squarely aimed at the children’s market. It actually surprises the number of adults reading and interacting with them as well.

What the digital model offers over the current model, is cheap digital distribution, a digital comic never has to leave the shop shelf to make way for newer issues, added digital content, i.e. we have colouring in of each panel as well as an interactive toy or game with each issue.

As more and more adults have access to digital devices such as Apples iPhone, and their children have access to these same devices it shouldn’t take long when we start seeing more and more content being delivered in this manner.

Philip Orr
Infurious Comics
Blue Pilot Software

As for formats of British comics; most are full colour glossies these days, with page counts usually from 32 to 52. (Panini’s Marvel reprints have 76 pages.) Most children’s comics come bagged with a free plastic toy, which means their bulky format makes shelf displays a mess. “Comics” such as Doctor Who Adventures only actually feature about 6 pages out of 36 that are comic strip. The rest are lightweight feature pages, pin ups, and “activity pages” (puzzles, cut out masks, etc).

I’m surprised to hear that comic sales are up as it goes against everything else I’ve heard within the industry, so I’m not sure the story is accurate unfortunately.

Click on my website/blog for more info on the UK comics industry past and present.

It’s only there until Tuesday, kiddies. If they sell enough they might consider changing the way they do the comic.

Not anal at all, Mike, I grew up reading DC Thomson’s Sparky, but as I got older I preferred the English comics. As a matter of fact I worked for IPC as a comics artist and writer because DC Thomson were a bunch of Scottish meanies.

Just so you get an idea how non-anal and non-parochial it all was (I think the glory days are gone), the two greatest DC Thomson cartoonists were both Englishmen, Dudley D. Watkins and Leo Baxendale. But on a good day at DC Thomson, and at Fleetway, you might bump into Hugo Pratt, and of course other Spanish, Argentinian and Belgian cartoonists were all sending their work in.

Just to muddy the waters even more, one of England’s favourite cartoonists was Donald McGill, a Scotsman who moved to England via Canada. His seaside postcards are a national English treasure.

It’s complicated.

I am curious what the Beano mags look like nowadays–page count, what kind of paper quality/color use, point price.

BTW, it wasn’t that Heidi thought Scotland was part of England or anything silly like that; rather, she didn’t realise that DC Thompson was based in Dundee.

Bold man to say that! Particularly when I point out I’m English and it still bugs me. Rod’s comment clearly quotes the line were the error is made. I’m sure it’d bug you if (and I’m using the following only as an example) all American’s were consisteny refered to as ‘’You Californians” or said to be from California on a regular basis.

Anyway I accept that this is derailing the topic some what before its even started BUT it would be nice if people just made the effort to reference the countries of the UK correctly.

But I will never say ENGLISH again!

Scottish comics readers: even more anal than regular comics readers?

The Beano and the Dandy are published in Dundee in Scotland, not “England”.

Secondly, there was a time when IPC (based in London) and DC Thomson (based in Scotland) would have merged or even dropped titles that fell below 250,000.