Little were we to know it'd soon become the industry norm! It worked for Lucky Bag Comic because that was its USP but when everyone started doing it, the shelves just became a mess of bulky plastic bags.
Anyway, back to 2002, and the 32 page Lucky Bag Comic featured all new content every issue by a variety of humour creators including Mark Bennington, Joe Matthews, Nigel Kitching and Ian Rimmer. Plus me! My contributions were The Horror Bags (a family of gormless monsters) and, for the eaerly issues, The Cheeky Monkeys! I didn't create the characters. I think they were the invention of the editors James Hill and Rob Sharp. They were fun to do.
Above is the Cheeky Monkeys strip from issue No.1. I think I wrote the script but I'm not sure. Someone else coloured and lettered it, but I definitely drew it. You might recognise the security guard. Yes, he bares a striking similarity to a grown up Tom Thug from Oink! and Buster. Could it be him? I couldn't possibly say, considering Toontastic don't own Tom Thug. :) Just a bit of fun to imagine that's one of the jobs Tom would do when he grew up. (Although any job of Tom Thug's would be short lived due to his incompetence.)
I didn't do Cheeky Monkeys for long. Another artist took over after a few issues. I carried on with The Horror Bags for about 25 issues or so as I recall. I think the comic itself lasted about three years.
You can read more about Lucky Bag Comic in this blog post of mine from a couple of years ago:
http://lewstringercomics.blogspot.com/2020/10/remembering-lucky-bag-comic.html
I know there were a few Lucky Bag comic ideas done around the time (might be the same company, but some featured more licenced stuff) but it never seamed like a totallay bad idea.. though not totally great.. Lucky Bag's often worked with the idea you say buy one, one week, and a new one the next week, or maybe more then one at a time sometimes.. problem is, with a comic .. it limits that rebuy.. okay, a weekly comic is fair enough though you are also telling the shops not to buy too much stock, which is KINDA like normal comics, but you haven't got any passing trade value in that fact of someone sees the cover, looks interested, checks a couple of pages decides if they want to buy it or not.. like the HUGE problem with sealed comics, you don't get that trade..
ReplyDeletethat said.. I don't know how much it's changed in the market now.. I know some video games have lost the need for decent box art and screenshots cause peoople mostly go via reviews (which just don't work for me at quite often) so passing trade work has pretty much gone away.
I think the letterer could have done a slightly better job (some text very much on the speachbubble edges). Not too bad a strip over all, though a little weak for me in places, but still pretty solid and seams like it would work for the target group
Sadly the supermarkets decided that bagged comics were a good idea so publishers had to comply, even though it has major disadvantages like you point out. I think things are changing gradually now, with the knowledge that plastic bags are bad for the environment. More mags are going back to using cover mounts instead now. The more popular well known brands, such as The Beano, don't need to carry gifts at all of course.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Beano used to have cover mounts and bagged issues in the school holidays, but nowadays they only do that with the Christmas issue that stays on sale for three weeks, and it comes in a cardboard sleeve instead of a plastic bag. Which I'm glad about not just for environmental reasons, but because they weren't FREE gifts, you was paying extra to get some cheap tat. I wonder if that alienated some readers - I notice that Beano's sales are actually increasing in the last few years since they stopped doing that regularly.
ReplyDeleteI hope you're recovering from your COVID, Lew.
Getting there thanks, James. Only a faint line now but it's left me with a cough, weakness, and loss of smell and taste.
ReplyDeleteDon’t remember these at all but thanks to link to orevious blog. Glad yer on the mend too
ReplyDelete