Broken Frontier

Coming this October from publishers Print Media, Strip Magazine is a new monthly comic in the familiar style of traditional British anthologies. Strip's John Freeman gives BF a rundown of what we can expect from the latest venture to attempt to eventually get comics back in a big way on those British newsagent shelves...  

BROKEN FRONTIER: How did you become involved with publishers Print Media and their aim to create a British version of their successful Bosnian Strip Magazin?

JOHN FREEMAN: I got in touch with publisher Ivo Milicevic after I heard he was re- publishing Dan Dare in his SF title, Plavi, which I believe has now launched. That was in February last year. Things just sort of snowballed from there - he was looking for British strips to reprint, and then things developed into plans for British comics publishing.

BF: Was there a conscious effort when approaching Strip to echo back to that UK anthology tradition? The initial line-up certainly contains representations from a diverse range of genres.

FREEMAN: Absolutely. Many of the comics I grew up reading - TV Century 21, Valiant, Lion, Thunder, just to name a few - had a much wider remit in terms of their content than what survives today. Which is definitely not to knock 2000AD, The Beano or Commando, all great survivors! Broadly speaking, there were two basic forms of weekly anthology comic for children and younger teenagers: a largely humour comic like Buster or The Beano that also featured a couple of adventure strips or a largely adventure comic that featured a couple of humour strips.

What seems to have happened, from talking to creators and British comic experts like Lew Stringer, is that reader feedback suggested that all- humour or all-adventure was preferred and the next step was to focus on specific genres - so you got all-war comics like Warlord and Battle Picture Weekly, then Starlord, 2000AD... The problem there of course is that when a genre falls out of favour, you're a bit stuck. Although Commando is still around today, you only have to look at later issues of Battle to see how it was struggling to keep its readers as interest in war comics declined, in my view.

With an anthology title that has a broader remit, you can, hopefully, ride on interest in a specific genre but not become a slave to it. European anthology titles do just that, I feel. Of course there's the danger that an anthology comic can be too diverse and ends up not capturing readers' imaginations - which is what I'd like to think we have avoided with our choice of material for Strip Magazine!

BF: Strip will also reprint the classic 1970s Jaws-inspired comic strip Hookjaw which originally appeared in the U.K.’s controversial weekly comic Action. What chiefly appealed about bringing this man-eating shark to a new generation of readers?

FREEMAN: Er - a man eating shark? :) But seriously - you only have to look at the enduring popularity of sharks on the nature channels to know they hold a grim fascination. Plus Ivo very much wanted to feature some classic British comic heroes - perhaps even revive them with new stories if possible. Egmont were much more supportive of the re-use of their material and our plans to re-master the strips - retaining the scripts but updating the lettering format which to me, is simply awful.

The opening panels of the re-mastered Hookjaw for STRIP Magazine. First published in the 1970s in Action, the new version remains true to Ken Armstrong's original script but uses a modern lettering style, the work of Jim Campbell. Original art by Ramon Sola, colour by Gary Caldwell. Hookjaw © Egmont

Choosing Hookjaw as the first strip would, we felt, interest British comic fans - it's a strip that's rarely been widely reprinted, although Spitfire Comics did do an album a few years back. When I read the strip, I actually felt the stories were pretty contemporary - greedy oil men get their comeuppance. One thing I'd like to do is explore the possibility of 'completing' the Hookjaw saga the way it was originally intended, before Action was censored in the wake of controversy about its content stirred up by Britain's right wing press in the 1970s; controversy that has echoes with fears about cinema polluting the minds of the working class with ideas like standing up for yourself back in the 1930s. The press focused on the 'gore' and violence of Action, but it was the radical storytelling Action creator Pat Mills tried to instil in the title that really scared them, I think.

BF: Can you tell us a little about your own feature Black Ops Extreme which, from the previews, seems to have something of a Darkie’s Mob/ Rat Pack kind of vibe to it?

FREEMAN: People who've read Black Ops' first episode have said it's very 1970s "in a good way"! Ivo wanted an action adventure team, and this one does exactly that - clandestine operations against terrorists - but I have a twist to the story that will be revealed over time.

Quite coincidentally, I've been reading a lot of Rat Pack stories as part of groundwork for Titan Books' collections of the strip, so that helped put me in the mood to write the strip. PJ Holden's done some superb work on this, art wise. The first story will run to seven or eight episodes, then we'll gauge reaction and decide on a second tale or not. That might get written by someone else, though.

An opening panel of Black Ops Xtreme by John Freeman, art by PJ Holden, colour by Gary Caldwell, lettering by Jim Campbell. BOX © 2010 Print Media Productions 

BF: For those among our readership yet to catch up on the press surrounding Strip Magazine could you give us a brief rundown of the rest of the initial line-up of characters in the magazine?

FREEMAN: As well as BOX, the first issue includes Recovery, Inc. by Michael Penick and Dean Deckard, centring on female adventurer; Age of Heroes, a fantasy story from James Hudnall and John Ridgway; and Warpaint by Phil Hester and John McCrea. We also have the first Strip Spotlight Challenge winner and Hush, a six-page prequel to the Iron Moon adventure we've released as a graphic album, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page. There are also two humour strips - Autospy and Ape by Jon Rushby and Cosmic Patrol by Maricet - the latter the only nod to superheroes you're ever likely to see in Strip. 

BF: While bookshop interest in graphic novels has increased markedly in recent years, the newsagents’ shelves remain a tough nut to crack; particularly in terms of returning to those heady days of countless weekly comics on the racks. With CLiNT recently announcing a significant cut in frequency what do you see as the real challenge in establishing Strip Magazine as a solid presence in those stores?

FREEMAN: It's going to be a huge challenge. What we're planning is the launch an all-new comic, with no known brand (apart, perhaps, from Hookjaw). CLiNT was helped by its 'celebrity' connections, but it still has the same problems keeping on the stands as 2000AD, Commando and the rest of the 'comic survivors' out there. Neither Ivo nor myself are under any illusions about how difficult a market the British news stand is these days, and when you hear about major closures of niche titles at companies like Future, and that publishers saw an almost a 10 per cent drop in sales last year, we know it's going to be hard work.

Autospy and Ape, one of two one page humour strips destined for STRIP Magazine. Art by Jon Rushby, perhaps best known for his work on Egmont's TOXIC title. © Print Media Productions

But our distributors are confident they can achieve the kind of fairly modest sales levels Ivo needs to keep the book profitable - plus some of the material will be offered overseas, through Print Media's European connections, which is another revenue strand.

BF: Why will Strip Magazine be direct sale only to start with? You'd  previously indicated it would be news stand and a lot of people might be disappointed by this news...

FREEMAN: I can empathise with that - we really do want to "go large' with Strip Magazine and we are talking to a news stand distributor about doing a news stand launch in early 2012. But the bottom line was cost: there are pretty high costs involved to get your title into even a careful selection of newsagents like WH Smiths and we want to be absolutely sure our plans are right; that we've got a workable strategy in place.

Although I've been working in British comics for years, Print Media is new to the UK and distribution of magazines is very different in the Balkans - it harks back in places to the way comics used to be distributed here, that enabled much more flexibility and experimentation - holiday specials, for example - that are really hard to get onto the news stand here.

On the plus side, I think launching in comic shops will give us a test bed to try things with the title, see what works and what doesn't with  much less initial outlay, so when we do go news stand, all guns blazing, we'll have the "solid foundation" that Pat Mils talks about in his interview with you that 2000 AD had on its launch and still has today. That's my hope, anyway. And I'm ever an optimist, even when things seem to go wrong!

BROKEN FRONTIER: Strip Magazine's artistic backbone is a fascinating mix of British and American creators - ranging from more contemporary contributors to the field through to well-respected older pros, like John Ridgway. What were you looking for when assembling your front line personnel for that initial assault on the UK newsstands?

FREEMAN: When we did the first dummies for Strip there was a lot more European material - Ivo had picked out some material he felt was strong in terms of its action-adventure content that he thought would work well in the UK. His instincts are good - after all, a lot of Bosnian comic fans grew up reading British comics, translated - but when we showed it to a few people on the comics retail side the feedback was that it was still "too European."

So to Ivo's credit he took the plunge and decided to go with more originated material. It had to be a mix - string action adventure, some fantasy, not too much SF because that's already being done in 2000AD. We didn't exactly come up with a checklist but we did end up with an initial mix that seems right to us. John Ridgway's been enormously helpful - he's not only re-working Age of Heroes but he's also writing his own SF epic, Frontiers, drawn by Nick Spender, which will run in Strip later on.

Age of Heroes by James Hudnall, art by John Ridgway. John is re-mastering the story in colour, which was first published in the US in the 1990s. The double-page spread is an exclusive to Broken Frontier. Age of Heroes © James Hudnall and John Ridgway

BF: We’re promised a number of reprinted European comics in Strip’s pages. What goodies do you have in store for us there?

FREEMAN: Well, as I said, the European content has largely disappeared from the magazine but we still hope to do English language albums of European material, starting with the humour title, Herlock Sholmes by Ivo's mentor, Jules Radilovic.

BF: Print Media are also publishing hardcover comics albums. What are the plans for the former DFC epic Mirabilis? Can you give us some background on the already released Iron Moon? And what other titles can we expect to see in this format?

FREEMAN: We're looking at a number of series as potential hardback albums - and that includes Syd Jordan's Hal Starr, which has only appeared in English in Spaceship Away magazine. The first volume of Mirabilis should be available on Amazon by the time your readers see this, along with Iron Moon, which is a cracking steampunk tale from Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

That was published late last year but to put it mildly, we've had some issues getting physical copies into the UK so it's been resolicited by Diamond. Not, I should point out, because it's in any way controversial and been seized by Customs or anything but down to teething problems with delivery from Bosnia (now resolved) that have proven hugely frustrating for all involved. Mirabilis will continue - we've got the next book lined up ready to be printed, along with Frontier by Jason Cobley and Andrew Wildman, and the first Herlock Sholmes book. After that, we'll be looking at collections of strips from the comics as well as standalone albums through 2012.

In addition to STRIP Magazine, Print Media are publishing a range of graphic albums, including Dave Morris and Leo Hartas' Mirabilis. The first book is out now. Mirabilis © Dave Morris and Leo Hartas

BF: Moving away from Strip Magazine for a moment, your website/blog Down The Tubes has become a “must visit” for anyone interested in the British comics community. How would you describe DTT’s “mission statement” in promoting the British comics scene?

FREEMAN: I started DTT because there wasn't much coverage for British creators and their work on the web back in 1999 - aside from myself, Lew Stringer and Steve Holland, there still isn't, in terms of general coverage. I got my break into mainstream comics publishing thanks to publishing a fanzine and I wanted to try and promote the best of the British indie press. Thanks to help from Jeremy Briggs, Ian Wheeler and Matthew Badham the site's sort of mushroomed but at its core I try and focus on British comics and creators rather than try and emulate the big US sites, which would be impossible for me to do given the time I have available.

BF: Outside of Strip and Down The Tubes, are there any other comics- related projects you’re working on at the moment?

FREEMAN: I'm still working for the mobile comics company ROK Comics  - its focus has been on successfully delivering WAP-based comic subscriptions to India for the past year and a half, but we have some exciting projects in the works, including a new originated action adventure title drawn by Andrew Chiu, which will be one of ROK's first iPad titles, as well as a number of iPhone comic apps created for a number of British publishers and individual creators. Three of those apps for individual creators - Ligiea, Mobile Gospel and Madd Science - are already on sale.

I'm also having great fun writing a science fiction strip called Crucible, a creator-owned story by myself and Interzone and 2000AD artist Smuzz. It's set in an... unusual world and first impressions are that it's more of a fantasy tale - but it really, really isn't. That's set to run in Strip in mid-2012, but I'm also pitching it abroad.

LEFT: A promotional image for Phil Hester and John McCrea's action adventure story Warpaint. The first episode features in Tripwire #55 © Phil Hester and John McCrea. CENTRE: Beyond the first issues of STRIP a range of SF and adventure strips are already in progress including Savant by Jim Alexander, brought to life by Spanish artists Ferrer and Carlos Vila. Savant © Print Media Productions. RIGHT: In addition to STRIP Magazine, Print Media are publishing a range of graphic albums, including Jason Cobley and Andrew Wildman's 'weird western', Frontier, which first featured in The DFC title. Frontier © Jason Cobley and Andrew Wildman.

BF: And, finally, we know the opening line-up/projects for Strip. When can we see that eagerly awaited debut issue and can you give us any hints as to what we can expect in the longer term from the monthly?

FREEMAN: More of the same, but with different creative teams and settings, some of which I've mentioned earlier. Among other things there's a terrific comic strip called Savant from Jim Alexander, drawn by the Spanish artist Ferrer and Carlos Vila - and we have plenty of pitches and ideas flooding into my mailbox on a daily basis. I'd just advise anyone thinking of pitching to take a look at the Strip Magazine Challenge guidelines, because they really do some up what we are - and what we're not - looking for.

Strip magazine debuts this October from Print Media. For more on the world of British comics be sure to check John Freeman's Down The Tubes website.