The DFC (Random House UK, 2008- ). weekly, subscription.
Spending the summer in London, my first
stop, needless to say, was at a local comic shop to
discover the latest in British comics. What I discovered,
of course, was “American” comics, the vast majority of
which are written by Brits, but very few titles I don’t see
every week at my local at home, with the exception
of 2000AD, which frankly seems to have changed
little if at all since I first started reading it a quarter
century ago, and of course Beano which has somehow managed to
become less funny after 70 years than it was in its
infancy, something few could have predicted way back when.
But both Beano and 2000AD are anthology weeklies, old and tired as
they are, and they reminded me how little we have done with
the format in the States since the old story papers of the
nineteenth century (The New York
Ledger,
The New York
Weekly).
Despairing that there was nothing new to be found under the
British sun, I visited the Cartoon Museum in Bloomsbury to
soak up some of the history of English comics past.
Instead, I was introduced to The DFC, a new anthology weekly recently launched with
the noble ambitions to revitilize not only British comics,
but comics as a whole by providing a serial anthology
directed at intelligent younger readers. Nine issues in,
there is every reason to be optimistic about the future of
this important venture, if they can find their audience. Given the
somewhat unlikely cover price of the weekly (£3, or roughly
$6) and the even more unlikely strategy of offering the
book via subscription only, this is a mighty big “if.”
The
DFC in every way
merits both the hype and its hefty cover price, although at
almost twice what readers are used to paying for an issue
of Judge
Dredd, it is
going to be a hard sell to reach kids without sympathetic
parents. Judging by the turnout at the Cartoon Museum that
Sunday in early July for a workshop hosted by many
of The
DFC’s talented
young writers and artists, the book has already found a
core audience, thanks in large measure to a successful
run-up of previews in The Guardian and a good deal of well-managed hype,
much of it focused on the serialization of a new Phllip
Pullman story, John Blake. Pullman’s love of Victorian
penny dreadfuls is well known to his loyal readers, and he
has lent his considerable fame and influence to
The DFC
in part because it is the
best hope to revive some of those serial pleasures for a
new generation. And there are tremendous pleasures to be
had in The
DFC, which
already has my kids hovering anxiously by the mailbox
waiting for the latest issues. I haven’t yet broken it to
them that they will be deprived of as soon as we return to
the U.S. in a couple of weeks. Hopefully, Random House will
find the whole thing sufficiently profitable to bring it to
the States in the not-too-distant future.
Pullman’s “John Blake” is lushly illustrated by John Aggs,
and it tells the story of a mysterious “ghost ship” which
travels through time and space to remarkable effect. Aggs
also brings his talents to “The Boss,” this time as a
writer, with his mother, Patrice Aggs, illustrating. “The
Boss” is a school adventure story in which the kids team up
on an otherwise tedious field trip to yet another castle to
foil a mysterious plot. “Monkey Nuts” is a splendidly
anarchic romp created by the Etherington Brothers, who seem
to be daring each other on each side of the desk to greater
heights of cacophonous silliness. A more subdued,
Miyazaki-esque approach to both the storytelling and the
artwork is found in Kate Brown’s beautiful story “The
Spider Moon,” which tells of a girl growing up in a world
whose future is very much uncertain with far too many
burdens being placed upon her talents. Neill Cameron’s
“Mo-Bot High” takes a more mainstream manga approach to
both the art and story, offering what is to my eyes a
fairly unsurprising tale of a girl who discovers the
dangers (and her own hidden talents) at virtual robot
fighting. More recently, after “John Blake” took a hiatus,
the remarkably energetic John Aggs launched a new serial,
“Robot Girl.”
Alongside these adventure serials, The DFC also offers some terrific humor serials,
including the wonderfully silly “Super Animal Adventure
Squad” and the gentle and delightful “Vern & Lettuce”
by Sarah McIntyre (one of our generous hosts at the
workshop at the Cartoon Museum). “Good Dog, Bad Dog” (by
Kirk Bergman and Duncan McBoo) is a longer comic serial
riffing off of the classic American detective genre with
the perfect crime-fighting formula that only a good dog and
a bad dog can provide. In my house, “Vern & Lettuce”
and “Good Dog, Bad Dog” are the first stories we read each
issue. Only Jim Medway’s “Crab Lane Crew” (and its
predecessor, “New at the Zoo”) have proved unanimous
disappointments among my very, very small sampling of
younger readers (and I can’t disagree with their judgment
on this score).
I have watched my sons return to these issues again and
again, in a way they have rarely done with other comics. I
have even, for the first time in my career as a Dad, been
forced to put some limits on their seemingly insatiable
appetite for the series. When I ask them what makes
The DFC
so dear, they fumble around
the obvious terms they think I will like to hear: good
story, good characterization. But when pressed they also
turn back to the unique pleasures of the book: the thrill
of not knowing what is going to happen next week and the
hopes that one more reread will make it all clear. These
are unique serial pleasures for which none of us need feel
ashamed.
Officially, the title is an empty signifier, and readers
are invited to provide new suggestions each as to what the
“DFC” means (my favorite thus far remains “Dracula’s
Favorite Cardigan”). But it is an open secret that the
title originally referred to “David Fickling’s Comic.”
Fickling, a children’s book editor at Random House, has
been touted by the Times as the “saviour of the Great British
comic.”
