A Life in Comics 3
A Life in Comics 3
I don’t appreciate the sheer size of London and take a flat near Gunnersbury station, which turns out to be about an hour on the District Line from IPC’s offices at Fleetway House. I resolve to move closer in at an early opportunity, a decision reinforced when I discover the landlord, who bears a worrying resemblance to serial killer John Christie, has been snooping around my rooms.
At Fleetway it turns out there’s no job as such. I’m put on a retainer as a sort of in-house freelance and given an office to share with a likeable fellow called Drew Smith (who eventually goes on to edit the Good Food Guide).
I produce little of any note, except for one girls’ comic story called Jeannie and her Uncle Meanie – a terrible title that John Purdy comes up with when I fail to think of anything better. It’s about a young orphan girl who goes to live with her comically miserly uncle Angus McScrimp in the Scottish Highlands.
We get a lot of stick for the stereotyping, but plead not guilty owing to the fact that writer, managing editor and artist (Mac) are Scottish, and surely we’re allowed to have a laugh at ourselves. I doubt in light of today’s censorious culture that argument would pass muster, but it suffices at the time.
The story appears in Sandie, a sister publication to Tammy, both comics edited by Gerry Finley-Day. In time Gerry steps back from the dual role and I am brought on staff to be Sandie’s editor. The salary at the time is £50 per week. It compares pretty well to the miserly £12 I was on at DC Thomson a little over a year before, though London is a far more expensive place to live.
To assist me I have two editorial and two art staff. At DC Thomson a comic would have as many as six editorial staff, allowing them to spend much more time nurturing writers, improving material and creating new story ideas. As a consequence, especially in the boys’ department (the girls side largely being manned – or womaned – by competent ex-DCT staffers), they tend to get better results.
Two art staff are necessary because these are the days before computers. Speech bubbles must be laboriously cut out and attached to the art with an adhesive called ‘cow gum’ (extraneous gum can be removed by rubbing with the same cow gum, and art staff amuse themselves by building up a large ball of the stuff – I have seen one as large as a grapefruit). Covers and text pages are again prepared by hand. Colour work must be sent out for four-colour separations to be made.
Although I have a decent understanding of what makes a good story, as editor I am still very far from the perfect article. I make mistakes – like closing down our most popular strip prematurely on the premise that no story should go on for that long.
This is a very typical girls’ saga called Slave of the Trapeze – a girl forced by cruel and ruthless circus owners to perform feats of daring on the trapeze, despite a near-paralysing fear of heights. It is written by Terry Magee and drawn, I think, by an excellent girls’ comic artist called Jackson (first name unremembered), who I believe also drew School of No Escape. Today I would let the story run and run, or drop it for a short while to let the creators catch their breath then bring it back. As long as the readers are enjoying it, why stop?
I make many more mistakes, of course, but that is probably the most glaring, and under my less-than-skilful guidance Sandie is steered unerringly to her grave. Indeed, when a subsequent editorial post on a second comic – Princess Tina – leads to its demise, I joke that around the Fleetway offices they start to call me The Undertaker.
For the former crime I do myself an injustice. Note the price printed on the issue of Sandie – 3½ pence. This is in the days when every week dozens of different comics appear on the newsstands, at least 10 of them girls’ titles. At that price the volume of sales required to keep a comic in profit is extremely high, and competition is fierce.
Memory fades – I may be over-estimating – but I recall that when I am told that Sandie is for the Anne Boleyn treatment it is selling in the region of 180,000 issues per week. Half that number would be a phenomenal circulation today – even a tenth would be respectable. And that, I fear, is why comics today are the price that that they are. It’s all down to circulation.
A caretaker editor is brought in to see Sandie to an eventual merger with Tammy, hoping to give Tammy a circulation boost, as is the general practice in the comic world. Sadly, the boost seldom lasts that long, many of the readers having bought both comics anyway, and the increased sales gradually drop away. Meanwhile I am moved over to edit another girls’ title, the aforementioned Princess Tina, soon to become just plain Tina.
Managing Editor John Purdy still has some misguided faith in my abilities. Tina is flagging, it’s rather too old-fashioned, the obituaries are being prepared, but I may be just the person to save it.
Oh, John, you sweet, trusting fool! If I am a passingly competent editor of Sandie I absolutely stink on Tina.
This is the time of a ‘pop’ boom, two or three fairly successful girls’ titles being launched with a pop music theme, and whether or not I am instructed to take the comic in that direction, that is where I take it. ‘Pop goes Tina!’
Like a balloon.
On Tina I have only one editorial assistant, who disagrees with what I’m doing with the comic and hates me. I don’t think much of her either but it has to be said that right is very much on her side. So I get little cooperation and end up struggling to write all of the new material myself, cribbing interviews and features on the likes of Michael Jackson, Donny Osmond and David Cassidy from wherever I can find them, creating quizzes and competitions and working all hours, and none of it is working.
In truth, Tina was always doomed (this is a recurring theme with my editorships) and it would have been a miracle if I could have saved it. When a comic’s readership falls below a critical mass there’s seldom any bringing it back. They occasionally try promotions involving cover-mounted free gifts, but these seldom make much difference long term and management is understandably reluctant to waste money on them.
The stress is getting to me. I come to the decision that this is not the life I want, that I’m not cut out for journalism – indeed, for anything that can be loosely defined as ‘work’.
A friend from DC Thomson, Alan Grant by name (much more on him later!), is currently the caretaker of a mansion and small estate in the north of Scotland, and planning to leave to return to Dundee.
I make an appointment to see his employer, a London banker, and impress him with my keenness and aptitude for the country life. The latter at least is genuine – having spent my first twelve years in small town USA I’m a country boy at heart.
By this time I have found a nice flat in Finchley, hardly next door to the Farringdon Street offices but much closer in. I hand in my notice to both landlord and IPC Magazines, hire an estate car, engage another ex-DC Thomson friend as driver, pack up all my belongings and my cat, Bobo (named after my favourite comic character at the time, Crumb’s Bobo Bolinski), and head north.
I don’t know what is to happen to Tina and I don’t care. A new life beckons. It’s 1973. I am 23. I am finished with comics forever.
Hah!