MODERN DAYS: A new kind of comics magazine.
Maybe this is how we ought to be doing it...

By the time you read this, it'll be the year 2000. As I write this, in the closing weeks of 1999, the news is painfully millennial. Boris Yeltsin, half-mad old alcoholic that he is, has been making rumblings about nukes, because the American government has openly disagreed with some of the actions of the Russian government [ed: Thankfully, the bastard resigned after this was written]. This has lead to the amusing spectacle of both the American government and the Russian government trying to defuse the sudden tension without loosing face, standing around trying to pretend like it didn't happen without openly saying "look, he was probably half-cut and had no idea what he was saying...". Tensions are rising between Britain and France over cows. And, best of all, scientists can now create life from scratch. They can now take the right chemicals, mix 'em up, and have a living creature come out as a result. Faintly scary.

Still, wouldn't it be nice to do that for the comics industry? Mix together the right chemicals, and make comics trendy and popular all of a sudden? Breathe life back into a half-dead beast of an industry?

Bear with me as I expound my personal lunatic notions for doing this.

Comics need better press. They also need better distribution. They need to be something I can pop into my local newsagent and buy easily and visibly. Plenty of people I know have mooted the idea of the anthology format being a nice tool to break back in to the corner store. 128 pages or reprints (possibly in black and white) of credible, adult stories. Image a series that each month reprinted a chapter of Jamie Delano's Hellblazer, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, and say Grant Morrison's Invisibles. Get the right press coverage for it, and away we go.

Or perhaps not. Even if such a book were out there, it'd be down in that bottom corner of the rack with the Wolverine re-prints, and 2000AD. I've got nothing against either of those publications, exactly, but I don't often see adults rooting around in there for some reading for the train. And that's what we need. Something an adult will buy.

I have a plan. My dream publication that will put comics back on the face of the earth as trendy things. This is a magazine that can be stuck on the shelves somewhere between Esquire and GQ. This is a couple of hundred glossy pages, supported by advertising for trendy things like Playstations and Palm Pilots. The geek toys of the trendy and rich, the slightly nerdy end of trendy. Where we'd like comics to be, I guess. The same sort of ads that magazine like "Stuff" and "Boys Toys" carry.

Wrap the entire thing up in an attractive cover, in one of a variety of styles. We could go for the attractive "cover girl" but that's kind of hard to tie into comics, unless we want to get famous models to dress up like comic characters. (This month: Caprice dresses up like Supergirl...Nah.) Covers in the style of computer Magazines like Wired or even .net would be quite good. Or, just because I like the idea, wrap the thing up in a really arresting piece of photography each month. One of J.K Potters frightening black-and-whites, or something like the disturbing photos found in Bizarre magazine. Something that kicks you in the teeth when you look at it. Something eye-catching and a little weird. That notion seems to fit the idea of a comic to me.

Inside, we don't just print comics. We print articles about the industry, we interview creators, yes, we re-print comics, hell, we commission new ones, credible adult writing about the real world in comic form. Adapt works by famous writers into comics, and run them. Can't you just see Bill Burroughs "Junky" as illustrated by Dave McKean, running in a series of monthly installments? In the midst of all this, review graphic novels, CDs, Videos, actual books with real words in. And we run the articles that aren't directly connected to comics, but that are written by comics industry professionals - Marie Javins travelogues are always fascinating reading. I'm sure Grant Morrison has some entertaining tales about drug use. Make it obvious that people in comics are glamorous and sexy and lead highly exciting lives. Demonstrate that these are clever, adult human beings.

And for God's sake, hire someone who actually knows something about laying a glossy magazine out, and get a proper Art Editor. Take a look at most comics publications and tell me that they're not ugly and poorly laid out. This thing has to look like it's brothers and sisters on the rack - which means not just using comics illustrations when we need a picture, but actually thinking about what will look good alongside this text. And if all we can put alongside most stories is comics panels, then we're running the wrong sort of stories.

A price tag like that of GQ on it, and get it into every newsagent, WH Smith, Borders, and supermarket magazine rack we can. Call it something semi-intellectual sounding like "Panels". Hype it. Get adverts on the Tube, give a free CD of musical work by comics creators away with issue one, all the usual stuff to make these things sell. But brand it like a GQ or Cosmo, not like Wizard. It'll sell. If shit like "Later" and "Front" can be made to sell, then this can. Anyone care to bankroll it?

Alasdair Watson, December 20th 1999.

Alasdair Watson is technical editor of PopImage.

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