New Gladstone Format

deckerd@agcs.com deckerd at agcs.com
Tue Apr 4 17:54:14 CEST 1995


Thank you, Don, for explaining what Gladstone is doing with
its new format. I got a brochure from Gladstone a couple of
days ago, apparently sent out to all customers and subscribers,
that didn't make the essential point clear enough for my muzzy
brain to comprehend. Somehow I had the idea it would be 28
interior pages plus four slick cover pages, which seemed 
unlikely because interior comic-book pages have always been
multiples of 16 (due to printing and binding procedures).

Now I get it. All newsprint, no cover stock. In one sense
it's a wonder nobody's tried this before as the ultimate
cost-cutting measure (though the ultimate in sleazy cost-
cutting had to be Marvel's one-page-turned-sideways-to-
make-two-pages gimmick back in the '70s). Maybe the reason
why nobody's tried it is because it's such a drastic
departure from the public perception of what comic books are
supposed to look like.

This really sounds bad, to be honest. Slick cover stock does
serve a purpose: protection. I foresee increased shipping
damage, ink-smeared covers from handling. Not to mention
buyer resistance: the book is going to _look_ cheaper and
shabbier.

I'm old enough to remember predictions by knowledgeable fans
and professionals back in the early '70s that the basic 32-
page newsprint comic book + four pages of slick cover stock
was a dinosaur headed for extinction. Production costs were
going up, sales were declining, distribution was drying up.
At one point, Marvel was down to 17 pages of story content,
the rest mostly paid advertising. The feeling was that the
format had hit bottom: you couldn't drop another signature
and go to 16 pages, you couldn't sell more advertising pages,
you couldn't raise the price by some significant amount...
oh no, the 32-page comic book was about to go the way of the
Big Little Book.

Without getting into the history of the last 20 years in comics,
that didn't happen. I think the underlying reason is basically
that the 32-page comic book is a convenient size, reflecting
some convergence of factors like how many pages an artist can
draw in a month and how much a reader will pay for some minimum
amount of entertainment in a handy package. Today's comic books
sell for amounts of money that we would have thought hideous
two decades ago, while circulations have declined to shockingly
small numbers, but the 32-pager has endured.

Now the drastic rise in the price of paper may be what finally
knocks it off. As I said, I really have a bad feeling about
Hamilton's little experiment with "coverless" comics. But
from what I've read elsewhere, isn't the sudden spike in paper
prices due to temporary and unusual papermaking industry conditions,
and the price is expected to decline as the industry corrects itself?
Or something like that?

--Dwight Decker



More information about the DCML mailing list