In his 1978 autobiography A Very Funny Business, Leo Baxendale devoted a chapter to what he called "The Great Reprint Rip-Off". He told how in the early 1970s IPC had begun reprinting many of the strips he'd created only a few years earlier, and he never received a penny in recompense. Strips such as The Tiddlers from Wham! were reprinted and renamed as The Horrors. Biff became Sam in Thunder. General Nitt and his Barmy Army became Sir Hector and his Hardnuts. And so on.
This had long been common policy in British comics of course, due to publishers claiming that they owned the material outright, even if there hadn't been a formal contract. It was an eye-opener for me as a reader at the time though, but it prepared me well when I began my own career in comics a few years later. At least I couldn't complain that I didn't know what to expect going in.
Baxendale had been so dismayed by the wholesale reprinting of his old strips that he quit mainstream comics forever in 1975. He'd go on to work in books, newspapers, and self-publish at a time when self-publishing wasn't as widespread as it is today.
Like I said, Leo's book had prepared me to expect similar treatment eventually. If publishers would treat such an important creator as Leo Baxendale like that they'd do it to anyone. Sure enough, by the mid-1990s, Egmont (who had acquired the rights to the IPC comics years before) decided that Buster comic needed to gradually go all-reprint in order to save costs. After a popular ten year run, my Tom Thug strip became the latest to fall to that policy, becoming a reprint strip from 1996 until Buster's final issue at the end of 1999.
A few years later, Egmont decided to save more cash by turning Sonic the Comic into an almost all-reprint comic. Lots of my stories, along with those of others, were regurgitated, sometimes losing the original threads of continuity I'd woven into the stories because they were reprinted out of order.
A few years ago, Egmont decided to do the same with my Team Toxic strips in Toxic magazine, re-using older strips and dropping me as the magazine's last surviving freelancer.
"The Great Reprint Rip-Off" never ends, and has been a part of British comics for decades, even long before Leo Baxendale worked in comics. Now the point is, it's not so much the creators who are being "ripped off", especially if, like myself, we know this is likely to happen.
It's the readers who are being ripped off.
Imagine a kid spending £4.99 for the latest bagged magazine only to find that the story within is one they'd read only a few years earlier. Perhaps they'd be too distracted by the easily-breakable "free" plastic toy to care, but I think some would feel very disappointed. I know I did at that age, unless it was a story I hadn't read before.
Interestingly, I was flicking through the latest issue of Toxic in a shop today. It wasn't sealed in a bag for a change so I could peruse the contents. I was very intrigued to see that reprints of Team Toxic were no longer in there. Instead, there were three licensed strips, possibly American or European in origin. Had there been complaints about the repeated stories? Or perhaps they've finally decided that the "gross humour" of Team Toxic is a bit old hat by 2021? Or that (more likely) stories about snot monsters are unsuitable for the Age of Covid? Perhaps this issue was an exception? I don't know. If the next issue is bagged I'm not paying £4.99 to find out.
If they have decided to drop the reprint then it's a good thing. For one, I'd be relieved that they're no longer profiting on publishing strips without paying me a reprint fee, but more importantly it'd mean they're not ripping off their readers.
As a postscript, I should add that Rebellion, who bought the IPC back catalogue from Egmont (but not including Toxic) do pay a reprint fee. Times are improving...
26 comments:
They aren't ripping off readers at all. If it's the policy of a publisher of a childrens comic to reprint strips after every 5-10 years. That seems reasonable. A kid that's 6 or 7 years old WON'T be reading the same comic 5 or even 10 years later...they will have moved on. That's NOT ripping of readers.
The publisher, because they own the strip and you have no rights to it...can do whatever they want with it...print out out of order, change the dialogue, cut up panels etc. Like you said...you knew what you were doing when you created the strip in the first place.
It's good business but unethical. No point being 'relieved' when you contributed to the bad system to begin with.
Some of my strips were reprinted well within that timeframe, so readers would have read them before if they'd been following Toxic or Sonic the Comic for just a few years. STC in particular had a loyal fanbase that had stuck with the comic for years. Same with The Transformers which although didn't reprint my stuff did reprint that of others which would have been familiar to its readers.
In the case of Leo's strips being reprinted five years after their original publication, yes, no doubt most readers would see them as "new" strips. Although for some of us, not so much. A kid who read Pow! in 1968 might feel a bit let down that The Cloak was reprinted in an annual in 1973 for example.
When the comics went reprint I bailed and so did most of the other readers.
Then the comics were cancelled.
That's not good business.
Perhaps going reprint slightly delayed the inevitable? It's hard to say, but we do know that it cost them readers on some comics.
Do you still get a monthly salary from the publishing company even now your woreking remotely? Then stop whining. Comics are no more important than any other job.
I can't be certain having not seen the interiors, but looking at the back issues of Toxic on Newsstand, this is the first one to not be in a plastic bag, and the first one to mention comics on the cover, for over a year. So I think these changes only happened this month.
Thanks James. It's the first one I've looked at in ages.
Anon, you're way off track. I've always been a self employed freelancer, never on staff. I've never had a salary, just a page rate for published pages (except reprints). I've been "working remotely" since 1983. :D
Comics usually only went reprint when circulation was falling, which meant fewer sales. In order to save money the comics then started to include reprints, which prolonged a comic's life and benefitted the contributors who were supplying new work. Without the reprints the comics would have been cancelled or merged much sooner, meaning less work for contributors in general. It made good economic business sense at a time when sales had been steadily falling for years. Leo Baxendale knew the score going in so really had no right to complain afterwards.
Except the point is he didn't really know they'd reprint so much of his work. It was unprecidented on that scale until IPC came along. Thomsons never did it to that extent with his Bash Street and Minnie strips.
I find it curious that some fans are so quick to dismiss the side of the creators of the strips and stick up for big business.
I totally understand why publishers reprint old comics etc to save money, and to an extent I get the point that they paid artists to do a strip so it's theirs "property" etc but it's better business to keep your talent happy after all they profited from their work, quite handsomely in some cases at the start (especially Leos work) and built up massive sales. Best option would be if publishers tried a different direction when sales were slowing rather than mass reprint as they did with those monthly titles like Big Comic etc. maybe that's why so many UK comics are no more.
I doubt that reprints save publishers that much money compared to other savings they could make in other departments. It's not like they pay us a fortune. "Going reprint" just seems to be their default first option.
The other problem is that reprints immediately stop a comic from evolving and can make a comic look dated. As a 9 year old kid buying Eagle for the first time in 1968 I thought Dan Dare looked very old fashioned. It was. By then it was a reprint from the 1950s! I didn't buy another issue. As I got older I appreciated those stories more of course, but when I was the target age group... nah, it looked too dated. There's a big difference in comic styles every 10 years and although comic fans might love old stuff, most young kids want contemporary styles.
When I freelanced for Marvel UK in the 1980s they began reprinting some of my Combat Colin strips in 'The Marvel Bumper Comic', a reprint monthly... and they paid me £6 a page reprint fee. They didn't have to do that. I hadn't asked them to, and I didn't own the rights yet at that point. Even so, although it wasn't much it was a nice gesture. Like you said, Paul, it was a way to respect creators and keep them happy, and why *wouldn't* a publisher want to do that?
Marvel UK instituted reprints on their titles after around three years, The Real Ghostbusters being the lead example. Given that Marvel started out as a reprint publisher, that’s perhaps not surprising, and to be honest it was rare for a licensed title to have as Ling a shelf life as it did. John Sanders new book, “King’s Reach”, makes it very clear he was adverse to paying reprint fees at IPC, in contrast, for example, to book publishers or many magazine publishers, the latter as a general rule of thumb once only buying “first rights” to an article from a freelancer, although the arrival of the internet and the publisher’s desire to exploit commissioned material digitally as well as in print has changed that.
Sanders claims that the mechanism to pay reprint fees and royalties wasn’t in place and to have done so would have made the publication of Summer Specials etc, which used a lot of it, unprofitable. I find that rather difficult to believe, as my impression is that the print runs on Summer Specials would be higher, given their appeal in a wider range of sales points, but I don’t have any IPC sales data to support that, so am quite prepared to accept I may be wrong. A flat reprint fee, like the one Lew mentions, could be paid very easily.
The major issue with humour comics - which Sanders again comments on in his book - is that it dates very quickly. Many of the humour strips we grew up reading back in the 1970s, apart from fantastical strips like Ken Reid’s “Faceache”, may feature terrific art, but are completely impenetrable to younger audiences and a hard sell.That’s why it was great to see Rebellion try to revamp the characters while not losing their original essence, and why the BEANO’s constant evolution is so important.
Growing up in Norway, almost all our comics were foreign reprints, and some of the magazines were heavy on repeats.
It wasn't until the "Pyton" revolution of the 1990s (starting as a Norwegian version of MAD magazine, mainly reprints of the American magazine with a few Norwegian contributors, then they bailed on MAD and started their own thing.)
But the big threshold for Norwegian cartoonists was that foreign licensed strips were ridiculously cheap and they simply couldn't compete on price. At least not if sales numbers were marginal.
Now, with better sales numbers for domestic products and government subsidies, it looks better, but our market is so small that printing new material and paying fair wages is really hard unless you manage to qualify for subsidies or you get a book contract.
A lot of "action" magazines died a slow death heavy on reprints (to save money) and no openings for domestic product, so I really do see the danger in it.
A lot of the market now is expensive nostalgia reprints, aimed at older collectors, less for the new, young readers.
Reprint-heavy magazines is NOT a good thing. Yes, it's savings, but they're trying to save money to maximize profits with lower sales numbers instead of trying to push the numbers UP.
With some magazines, we saw less new material, heavy on reprints, but they also dropped paper and print quality, did nothing to compete in those areas, with the result that great series being printed in those comics looked like crap.
So, to me, all reprint comics are a big red flag that a title is slowly dying.
I'd say whether Leo knew so many of his strips would get reprinted is really neither here nor there. His main objection was presumably if I.P.C. were reprinting a half dozen of his strips weekly over a handful of comics then it was a half dozen fewer new pages of work for him, so it's understandable he'd be annoyed. Thing is, he was wrong. Comics have budgets and once sales start slipping these budgets have to be adjusted. Reprinting older strips freed up money so publishers could continue to solicit new work and it wasn't just Leo's work being reprinted anyway. When it came to cancelling a comic almost every freelancer working on it lost income, but keep it going by introducing reprints and at least there was some work for some of them.
And what did Leo's decision to leave comics achieve? A three book deal with Duckworths that wasn't renewed, which it would have if Willy the Kid had been a roaraway success, and virtual obscurity for the rest of his life. Even his style became more associated with other artists who copied it, probably at the direction of publishers, and when he died, former readers of the Beano and Dandy claimed to remember his strips from when they were growing up in the seventies and eighties. Except they weren't by him but his imitators.
Leo arguably had a more legitimate cause for anger over his style being copied by others, but even there he shot himself in the foot. He'd based his early style on Giles and Chas Addams so he'd done the same thing himself. As for sticking up for big business, well it was their desire to turn a profit that gave many artists the chance to earn a living in the first place. And the Beano has reprinted some strips from time to time without the comic looking dated. It depends on how far back they go in the archives. And Leo's reprinted work didn't look dated at the time it was recycled.
The work he'd already been paid for was gone and he'd have been better forgetting about it. Reprinting his old pages didn't automatically mean he was getting fewer new pages to draw, but his mistake was to think it did.
They also reprinted the Second RoboCol story in the one Transformers Annual.. an annual which was pretty much 100% reprint.
When STC first started reprints, so 1 out of 4/5 (mostly 4) stories being a reprint, with the excuse that it was so newer readers could catch up and read stories they had missed out or were referenced in newer stories, that was slightly annoying but okay. When all but 1 story was reprint, that was very bad. when it went to 100% (apart from the cover) reprint, there was no-point in continuing to get the comic I had brought since issue 1. While I'm more a fan of the sonic stories, I think despite the game, the comic was more a sega anthology comic.. so when they went almost (and then) totally sonic stories, it wasn't as good cause you start running into the huge marvel problem.. where characters are now in 29 or more different places at once, with various 'plot' lines making it hard to figure out where a story goes.
of course, in any story based (or even non-story based at times) comic, newer readers would probably get very confused as to how much different characters are written as.. when Dandy Turned apple-man into a hero.. imagine if at the same time, they mixed new stories with reprints where he was still a villain.. must really confuse some readers..
Saul, Leo was not in any danger of losing any work due to reprints. IPC were giving him plenty to do. You're assuming it was all about that but it was more to do with the principle of them exploiting his old work. Like you said, others had their work reprinted too, but that was up to them to complain. Leo could only make a stand regarding his own work, and he did, by quitting.
However well (or not) he did after he quit isn't the point if he resigned on principle. I never saw him complain so I think he did ok. I admire him for taking that stand.
I daresay I.P.C. were giving him plenty to do so you're right there, but maybe he had an eye on the future too. He must have known that comic sales were in decline generally and he was smart enough to see that if publishers could keep costs down with reprints then it might eventually affect how much work would be available. Also, regardless of whatever work he was getting at the time, there must have been part of him thinking he'd get more if his old work wasn't reprinted. I admit that's speculation to a degree, but it's logical speculation.
On the point of principle, it's very possible you're right, but I saw it more as sour grapes. He resented publishers making money from his old work even though he'd sold it lock, stock and barrel, which annoyed him. The best philosophy in life is to let things go once you've sold them on. No point crying over spilled milk. I'd be more convinced of his principles if he hadn't recycled old Bash Street scripts for the Tiddlers. That's the very definition of unethical.
Which sounds like I'm not a fan, I admit, but actually I'm a great fan of his work. Even the best of us have feet of clay so long live King Leo.
What a great thread on both the arguments for and against reprint royalties.
Working in commercial art myself, I understand the argument for including some reprint material to keep a title going rather than cancelling it outright. Times are changing across all media: once any illustrator, photographer, musician or writer could glean a reasonable passive income from reprints/reprisals of their work – these days, not so much. My gripe with the system is when a strip makes a comic a hit, the contribution of the creators isn’t recognised, or if their work is endlessly reprinted they still get nothing (a new edition of The Trigan Empire seems to crop up every few years, for example).
Thus, when the classic characters of The Beano such as The Bash Street Kids, Dennis the Menace / Dennis and Gnasher et al, become the reason the kids keep buying the comic, the creators (usually) receive nothing above the standard deal. They deserve to share in the publisher’s rewards.
Publishers never expected Superman, The Fantastic Four or Desperate Dan to do extraordinary business, but they did – and the creators deserve a share of the riches.
And none of those strips (imho) have been as good since the original creators left them.
As a couple of asides, I once met Leo Baxendale at a talk he did in Stockport. He revealed that he did reach a settlement with DC Thompson, it was on a non-disclosure basis but he described it as “amicable”.
And Pat Mills is taking a very vocal stance on Rebellion’s reprint rates on his blog and Twitter feed at the moment.
Yes, Leo reached an out of court settlement with Thomsons. He also was able to keep some of his art for exhibitions etc. I once asked him if he had considered suing IPC for similar reasons. He replied that the case with Thomsons had exhausted him so much (it took years) that he'd never attempt it again. I never told IPC that while Leo was alive of course, as I knew for a fact they were worried that he might sue them. Let 'em sweat! If they'd had proper contracts to begin with they wouldn't have been so apprehensive about it.
You clearly have little understanding of how the comics industry works, “Anonymous”. Freelancers rarely get a monthly retainer for their services, although in the past some were provided other benefits if they stayed loyal to on company in return for their loyalty.
The National Union of Journalists long battled IPC’s claim that freelancers signed away rights to their work by signing the back of cheques. It was an attempt by the company to try and assert ownership of commissioned materials, and was ruled illegal.
The Copyright and Authors Rights website has this to say on the matter, in an article that has been quoted on various sites since 2003, and perhaps earlier, in reference to IPC’s attempts to retrospectively lay claim to owning materials that the company had not agreed proper contracts too, as was evident when they started trying to get creators to sign new contracts as the Internet began to grow in importance and they wanted to reuse materials digitally, at no extra cost:
“In the UK, the issue came ‘alive’ when, in December 1994 and January 1995, computer magazine publisher sent letters to all its freelance contributors, demanding that they hand over all rights in their future work, for no additional money.
“This was not the first attempt by publishers in the UK to gain ‘all rights’.
“IPC had for years been demanding that contributors sign the back of their cheques before they could be cashed, claiming that the signature handed over ‘world rights’ in the work. Freelances who attempted to negotiate different terms were told by some editors that they had no choice: they could sell all rights or not work for IPC, the largest publisher in the UK.
“The NUJ believes that IPC's attempt to impose conditions through a signature on the back of its cheques is illegal under the UK law which defines ‘a cheque’. IPC's action, like many other publishers', also bears investigation under the European Union catch-phrase ‘abuse of a dominant position’.
My understanding, from comments posted elsewhere by former 2000AD editor Alan Mackenzie, is that the NUJ contested this claim and it was ruled illegal, and this is certainly the inference from this article in an issue of Freelance for November/ December 1997:
IPC's at it again
Contributors to at least one IPC publication last week received "contracts" assigning all rights in all future work to the company. Many or most of these came with a slip stating that contributors could not be paid until the contracts were signed and returned.
That last bit is cack, as the Freelance is sure the courts from Small Claims upward would agree. New Scientist, at least, has a well-established routine of sending individual commissioning letters for even the smallest contribution. Where freelances choose to sign these, they are legally binding -- though IPC continues to add insult to injury by sending out clearly illegal cheques which purport to be additional contracts. There are also reports of IPC refusing to pay expenses for work supplied on the traditional First British Serial basis.
Jacob Ecclestone, while still Freelance Organiser, commented: "Don't sign. If you have any questions, fax the letter to the NUJ." That advice still stands.
As I noted above, both Rebellion and The Phoenix pay reprint and royalties. The payment of such fees for the rest-use of material to continue the strength of brand is no different to publishing a licensed title such as Sonic the Hedgehog and paying the licensor a fee for the rights to publish, so why it’s an issue for some comic publishers to pay reprint fees as a matter of course, other than for reasons of greed and simpler book keeping, remains a mystery to me.
After Egmont aquired the comics in the 1990s the editor of Buster set up his own company with John Smith and packaged the comic from home for the company, much like Oink! had been done in the 1980s. The cheques had a rubber stamped message on the back that all rights belonged to their company. So although the countersigning of cheques was obsolete by then, the physical banking of the cheque allegedly meant that you were agreeing to that "contract". I do wonder how legal that actually was.
Bummed out for you Mr Stringer. In US this crap stopped years I ago I think.
NB I recently read that Desperate Dan was reprint bt 73 and 83. Reading it ad a child I recall the artwork was odd compared to other strips. I now understand it was old and thus stood out against the new strips.
Yes, Desperate Dan went to reprint in 1969 after Dudley Watkins died. They felt no one else could reach that unique quality that Watkins had. Must admit that is one reprint I did enjoy and felt it still worked. It was very popular. So popular in fact that Dan became the cover star in the 1980s, necessitating a new artist. Ken Harrison did a fantastic job of mimicking the style but making it modern.
These days, Desperate Dan isn't an easy strip to win over modern readers. Westerns aren't as popular as they were, and the style of art can look dated. They tried modernising it by having Jamie Smart write and draw it for a couple of years but that outraged the older, more vocal, critics online, and they reverted back to the old style.
You know it's interesting looking into StC's reprints: the book first flirted with this years before the main book with the 1995 Holiday Special, where you had a single new story (written by Lew) followed by reprints of Mark Millar's The Green Eater story from issue 15 and all but one of the Sonic-focused Poster Mag stories (There's something weirdly... I don't know what word to use but it's Something alright... about the fact that they had the perfect out to leave out The Kid Cruel Caper due to not having room for all the Poster Mag stories but they instead chose to skip over The Chaos Emerald Thief)
Also interesting (probably at least partially due to a difference in how comics are done between both sides of the pond) that while Archie's specials straight up had double the comic content of a normal issue, most of StC's specials barely had more comic content (24 pages vs the main comic having 21-22)... except for the specials with reprints (the aforementioned 1995 Special and 1999's Total Sonic special, which was pure reprints a year before the main comic suffered that fate.
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