Loving the Alien: a guide to running 2000AD [c.2000]

THRLL-POWER OVERLOAD - an unfiltered history of iconic British comic 2000AD - is published this week in a new to celebrate the anthology's 40th anniversary. Written by me and Karl Stock, this lushly illustrated hardback tome reveals how the Galaxy's greatest comic was born, prospered and survived 40 years - often against the odds.

When I was stepping down as editor of 2000AD - in the summer of 2000- I wrote a bluffer's guide to running the weekly. Andy Diggle was succeeding me, but he was getting a new assistant and I thought a little background might be helpful. [That person proved to be Matt Smith, who's run the comic since 2002 - an epic stint.]

Just for fun, here is a lightly edited version of that guide. Advances in comics creation and publishing mean much of the content is out of date, even quaint by 2017 standards, and some of what's included is verging on the arcane that will fascinate only the most obsessive  [people like me, frankly]. But it might be of interest to some, so let the editorial burbling commence...

1.    Who does what for the Galaxy’s greatest comic

2000 AD is currently put together by a dedicated editorial team of 1.8 people. That breaks down to one full-time editor (David Bishop – DB hereafter), a part-time assistant editor (Andy Diggle – AD hereafter) and a part-time designer (Steve Cook – SC here after).

• DB has resigned as editor of 2000 AD and finishes on June 29, 2000.

He will be replaced by AD as editor, effective June 30, 2000.

• AD is currently editor of the Judge Dredd Megazine (40% of his time, editor of Sonic the Comic (20%) and assistant editor of 2000 AD (40%).

(From July, Sonic the Comic  will pass to another editor at Egmont Fleetway. The Megazine will be edited by DB on a freelance, out-of-house basis from July, leaving Andy to work solely on 2000 AD.)

• SC designs 2000 AD on a part-time contract with Egmont Fleetway, two days a week. His official title is Art Editor of 2000 AD.

(N.B. Egmont Fleetway is currently advertising for an Editorial Assistant to work on 2000 AD full-time. It is hoped to have this person in place before DB’s departure from Egmont Fleetway.)

Other people at Egmont Fleetway whose work contributes to 2000 AD:-

• Managing Editor Steve MacManus – a former editor of 2000 AD, he offers editorial support if needed for holiday or sickness cover. He has little day to day input on the title.

• Product Manager Jess Manu and Marketing Assistant Jane Ballard – responsible for all promotions, cover-mounts and subscriptions.

• Marketing Manager Jon Rissik – effectively the publisher of 2000 AD, responsible for managing the title including budget control, circulation management, all marketing and promotions activities.

• Production Manager Sarah Colley – responsible for all production processes between editorial and distribution i.e. repro, printing, paper buying, contract negotiation of all elements of production process.

• Accounts Department – responsible for payroll, bought ledger (i.e. payments to contributors, contractors), royalties, budget monitoring.

• Syndication Manager Martin Morgan – responsible for all aspects of international publishing syndication of 2000 AD content; for control and storage of the 2000 AD archive of back issues, films and CDs; and for sending international courier packages.

• Executive Editor Gil Page – responsible for negotiating all licensing and merchandising deals e.g. action figures, video games etc.

2.    The Commissioning Process

All 2000 AD stories, artwork and cover images are created by self-employed freelancers who work from their own premises. They are commissioned by the editorial team – usually the editor, although there is flexibility about who deals with whom on a daily basis.

Covers: these are commissioned at any time up to a week before they are needed to go to repro. Ideally key cover art should be available four months in advance of publication, so it can be supplied to Diamond Comic Distributors for promotional purposes in the crucial Previews catalogue. Some covers are fully painted but most are either fully rendered on computer by the artist, or else drawn in black and white by an artist and then given to a colourist to fully render on computer.

Artists are required to submit a sketch first for our approval before being verbally given the go-ahead. Sometimes we pre-design covers to show artists the sort of thing we want, but we still require a sketch from them to confirm mutual comprehension of the concept.

Scripts: these are commissioned from freelance writers by the editorial team. Some stories are driven by ideas from the team, sometimes ideas are suggested as springboards for stories, but most are the creation of the writer. Generally writers are required to submit a plot synopsis first for approval before they are commissioned to script it.

Most scripts are now submitted via email. The bulk of 2000 AD is written by a handful of scribes. Longer serials are generally written with a specific artist in mind, as this helps build teamwork between the creators. Most 2000 AD writers work for more than one employer. They also tend to be writing more than one series for 2000 AD at any given time. Once a synopsis has been agreed, the story is verbally commissioned and terms agreed.

All stories for 2000 AD are commissioned on the basis that we acquire all rights in the material, in exchange for paying the creators a royalty and acknowledging them as the creators wherever possible. Contracts are only issued when a new series is being created for 2000 AD, to establish precedent. Thereafter all subsequent commissions for that series are made on the same terms as the initial contract. We currently issue a publishing contract and a separate audio/visual rights contract, which are prepared by the editor based on templates from our lawyers.

Artwork: this is commissioned from freelance artists by the editorial team. We send the artist a full script for each episode they are to draw, having agreed terms and a timetable for delivery. In some cases artists are issued with a written timetable, particularly if a job is time sensitive or the artist wants time keeping guidance.

Some artists are required to submit thumbnails or breakdowns of their work at an early stage. This is used to watch for any potential problems with story-telling, style and the art size – particularly with new artists being nurtured.

Some artists only pencil their pages, some deliver fully inked black and white art, some fully paint their jobs, others computer render their work. They are generally commissioned to do whatever they do best. The only exception is where artists are only asked to do part of a job (e.g. just the B&W art) because it enhances productivity if the colouring is done by someone else while the artist works on the next episode.

Like writers, artists who create new series are issued with publishing and audio/visual rights contracts. Unlike most writers, artists can require more attention to get their best work from them in a timely fashion. 2000 AD draws from a stable of about 40 artists, although only a dozen are in perpetual work for us.

We are moving towards having artists scan their mono art and supply that digitally to us – either on disc, via email or on “blind” pages on their own websites. This has already been done successfully as a pilot scheme with artist Simon Fraser, who lives in Vienna. It cuts down on courier and postage costs and speeds the editorial process.

Colouring: About half the strips in 2000 AD are coloured by specialists, rather than by the original artist. All specialist colouring is now done on computer and supplied on disc, which has dramatically cut the cost and time required for the production processes. Colouring is commissioned verbally with the colourist sent a copy of the script along with the physical art to work on.

Colourists get between £50 and £60 per page for their work. This may seem high in comparison to writers’ rates (between £35 and £80 a page, the average is £50), but colourists receive no royalties or secondary income from their work.

Lettering: All the strips in 2000 AD are lettering by self-employed freelancers on computer. We use four letterers on five strips – Tom Frame (Judge Dredd), Ellie De Ville (Sinister Dexter and others), Annie Parkhouse (Nikolai Dante and others), Steve Potter (whatever’s left). All the letterers have developed unique fonts, based on their own hand lettering style. Letterers are paid £20 per page.

Lettering could be done in-house, but it is quite time consuming. Our freelance letterers have invested heavily - and at their own expense - to go fully digital, so the work should remain with them. Lettering costs 2000 AD about £28,000 in fees per year.

3.    The Editorial Budget

Page Rates: These are set by a combination of historical precedent, budgetary constraints and quality. 2000 AD’s base rates have hardly shifted in the past 10 years. Base rate for new writers is £35 per page; for artists it is £120 for mono art and £180 for colour art. Lately we have been having more pencil and ink art splits, where base rates are £70 and £40 per page respectively. Base rate for colouring is £50.

Rates vary depending upon length of service – stay in work long enough for 2000 AD, your rate will creep up. Quality of output is another major factor, as is its importance to the comic – that’s why John Wagner gets more for Dredd than for writing other strips. Generally, colour art is set at mono page rate plus 50%.

As a rule of thumb, pages rates are set at the following levels for budgetary reasons: script costs should average £50 per page across an issue; art costs (including colouring) should average £200 per page; and lettering is uniformly £20 per page. Cover art usually costs £350. Where a strip is being published in black and white, we expect to pay up to £150 to get the best quality mono art.

Editorial Budget: From July 2000, the weekly will have 27 pages of strip, of which five pages will be mono art. This means the average editorial cost of each prog will be as follows:-

27 pages script @ £50 = £1350

22 pages colour art @ £200 = £4400

05 pages mono art @ £150 = £750

27 pages lettering @ £20 = £540

01 page cover art @ £350 = £350

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Total average cost = £7400

Each year 2000 AD publishes 49 standard 32-page progs, plus an end-of-year 100-page special issue which features 67 pages of strip. So the editorial budget for 2001 using the current format and page rates would be about £382,000. (It’s worth noting the 1996 editorial budget was over £500k – this has been slashed through editorial prudence.)

4.    The Backwards Extrapolation Art of Scheduling

2000 AD is an anthology title that usually runs five different strips in each issue. Judge Dredd appears in every prog over six pages. The final strip in each prog is also six pages long, while the three middle stories are five page episodes. Stories can run to any length, from one-off completes like Tharg’s Future Shocks to 26-part mega-epics. Over a year 2000 AD publishes nearly 1400 pages of new strip by dozens of different creators all working at different speeds in different locations.

As you can imagine, scheduling stories in 2000 AD can be a tad tricky.

A few simple rules have been developed to make easier the process of keeping this almost infinite assortment of plates spinning successfully. Never start running a multi-part serial until you have at least 70% of the artwork in hand. Choose your artists very carefully and monitor their time-keeping rigorously. Most crucially, use the art of backwards extrapolation when doing forward planning.

When trying to estimate when a new serial will be available for publication, we always calculate when the final episode should be completed and work backwards from that date. No artist works fast enough to produce an episode a week these days, so we have to stockpile artwork in advance to make sure we don’t run out halfway through a serial.

Here’s an example. In mid July John Burns will be available to begin painting Book IV of Nikolai Dante’s Tsar Wars saga. Book IV will be 12 episodes of six pages each. John Burns will produce one episode every four weeks on average. That means it will take him about 48 weeks to paint Book IV, not allowing time off for holidays or illness. So John Burns should finish painting Book IV by mid June 2001. Allow a week for lettering and the final part of Book IV should be ready to go to repro by the end of June, 2001.

2000 AD goes to repro about five weeks before it appears in shops. So at the end of June 2001, we will be sending Prog 1254 off to repro. That means Part 12 of Nikolai Dante: Tsar Wars Book IV could appear in Prog 1254, which goes on sale August 8^th 2001. By backwards extrapolation, that means the serial could begin with Part 1 being published in Prog 1243, due to repro April 16^th, going on sale May 23^rd, 2001.

In fact, we have scheduled this serial to begin seven weeks later in Prog 1250 (due to repro June 4^th, on sale July 11^th). That issue will be the Summer relaunch with a line-up of  new Thrills beginning inside. This also allows an extra seven weeks safety margin. It’s worth noting that in this example, John Burns will have completed 11 out of 12 episodes before his first episode goes to repro.

Obviously, this stockpiling of work in progress requires financial investment and careful planning. 2000 AD has about £150,000 tied up in stock (scripts and artwork for future publication) at any given time. If you want great stories and art by top creators next year, you have to get them working on that material now!

5.    Getting the Prog Ready for Repro

Being a weekly, 2000 AD sends a new issue off to repro every seven days, usually each Monday – this is called our “press day”. It happens five weeks before the comic is due to go on sale. For example, Prog 1205 goes on sale August 9^th, 2000.  It is due to repro on Monday, July 3^rd.

Where we have painted colour artwork to appear in the prog, we send this to repro ahead of the rest of the issue for advance scanning. Our repro house supplies these hi-res scans to us on CD, from which we create low resolution images for use by the letterers. At present, it is rare for more than six pages in any prog to be painted art.

Ideally, all the colour artwork is ready a week before it is due to repro. The editorial team sub-edits the scripts and artwork for the episodes which will appear in that prog, to create the best version of the script for telling the story in harmony with the finished artwork.

Low resolution (72dpi) versions of the art for each page are positioned into a Quark Xpress document, along with the standard series logo, story title, part number and credit card EPS. A hard copy of this document is printed out for reference, while the low res art and Quark file are loaded onto a zip disc. This disc and the subbed script are given to the relevant freelance letterer, who has a week to letter the story and return it to the editorial team.

Three of the four letterers working for 2000 AD (Tom Frame, Steve Potter and Ellie De Ville) letter their strips in Quark, using unique fonts they have developed for the job. The other letterer, Annie Parkhouse, does her work in Illustrator and supplies EPSs of each page of lettering. Again, this is done in her own, unique font.

The lettering process has recently been stream-lined to go all-digital, but there are further improvements to be made. For example, most scripts are now supplied via email, so the subbed scripts could be supplied to the letterers on disc. Equally, the judicious use of ISDN for trafficking lettering files would also speed delivery. (Why not use email, you ask? Emailing 5MB files can be time consuming…)

By press day, we should have in hand all the colour strip artwork, already lettered and pretty much ready to go – from Prog 1200 that will constitute 27 pages of each 32 page prog. The other five pages are editorial content – the front cover; Nerve Centre (our contents page); a house ad page for the Megazine, subscriptions or relevant merchandise offers; Input (our letters page); and the Next Prog page.

These five pages are written by the editorial team and designed by Art Editor Steve Cook. Steve also designs all the DTP elements on the strip pages, usually just on the first and last pages of each episode. Steve Cook works two days a week designing 2000 AD, on a part-time contract. With the stream-lining of the lettering process, the amount of time required to design a standard issue of 2000 AD is decreasing. But it does require more design work by the permanent editorial team.

6.    The Production Process

Once a week a new issue of 2000 AD is sent to repro. At present, our repro house is Elements in Leeds (formerly Pre Press Services). They take all our digital files and run these through a rip, bringing all the elements of each page together as a single digital file. Elements outputs a set of digital proofs for each page and sends these to 2000 AD for checking and approval. Where alteration or correction is required, these changes are communicated to Elements.

Once the editorial team is happy with the final version, the proofs are sent back to Elements. The repro house then creates PDFs (portable document formats) of the issue and supplies these on disc to the printers (at present this is Goodhead in Bicester).

2000 AD used to be printed conventionally using four colour films. But the shift to digital lettering made it possible to shift to film-less printing. Previously the printers created photographic plates from the four colour films, now they make laser-etched plates from the digital instruction on the disc supplied by the repro house.

The printers create running sheet proofs from the PDFs for final checking by the editorial team, to ensure no elements have been lost during the repro process. Once these are approved, the issue is printed, bound, trimmed and bundled for collection by TNT.

Elements are allowed a week to do the repro work on 2000 AD – it takes nine days in the schedule because the job travels overnight between London and Leeds.

It’s worth noting that the change to all digital repro has brought substantial savings. At the start of this year the cost of repro was cut from £40 per page to £32 per page, in recognition of the increasingly digital nature of the material supplied. The official repro budget for 2000 AD this year is £51,916 in total, which equals £1018 per prog.

Now that 2000 AD’s lettering is all-digital, Elements has agreed to a split differential for repro. Pages with painted art requiring scanning now cost £30 per page, while the all digital pages cost £22 per page. This brings the average repro cost of an issue down to £752, saving more than £250 per week (about £13,000 per year).

It may be possible to eliminate using a repro house for most of the process, but this would requiring employing someone to create the PDFs – a time consuming and mind-numbing process. This could shave nearly £30,000 off the repro budget – but money would instead have to be spent on staff and equipment.

7.    Display Advertising in 2000 AD

This  appears so infrequently in 2000 AD as to be invisible. According to the published budget, the comic is supposed to generate £20,900 in ad revenue this year – only £400 per prog. In the first six months of the year, the comic has only had 2.25 pages of paid display advertising. It has had loose inserted flyers for book clubs too, but efforts to sell ad space in the weekly have been risible.

At present 2000 AD survives on its sales revenue alone. Selling one page of advertising into each prog would generate £50,000 revenue a year – a substantial contribution to the financial health of the weekly. This is an area where a little concerted effort, skill and enthusiasm can make a major difference to 2000 AD.

8.    Distribution and Circulation of 2000 AD

Here the editorial team has to plead ignorance. Andy and I have a little working knowledge but this has been gleaned from training courses and an induction day with our current distributors, Seymour. To learn more about this part of publishing 2000 AD, you need true experts. I have enclosed the handout notes from a highly recommended course run by the PPA in London – well worth attending. I would also suggest attending a PPA course called How the Newstrade Works. Both these courses are a half day each and convey essential information.

9.    2000 AD Subscriptions

2000 AD should have a much higher level of subscriptions. The last readership survey in 1998 indicated that 92% of respondents buy every prog. But only 7.5% subscribe to the Galaxy’s greatest comic. At present we have about 1800 subscribers from an average weekly sale of 24,000 (including subs and export).

Subscriptions have been one of the few areas where Fleetway has invested time and money, growing subs from 1500 last Christmas to the current levels. Former marketing manager Douglas Pocock was responsible for this focus on subs, because he believed 2000 AD should become a subscription only title (or be sold off).

Logically, the comic should have a higher subscription base – 23 out of 25 readers buy every issue every week, it’s cheaper to subscribe than to buy at a newsagent (£1.25 versus £1.40), and subscribers get their progs up to five days in advance of the comic appearing in shops.

However, British consumers expect to be able to buy any title they want from their local newsagent. They are resistant to subscribing because they prefer to retain their freedom of choice about whether or not to purchase a particular issue. Overcoming this mindset in a major obstacle to any attempt to take 2000 AD all-subscription.

Recent subs promotions have included:- a copy of BATMAN/JUDGE DREDD: Die Laughing Collected Edition; a STAR WARS or INVISIBLES graphic novel; a pewter Dredd keyring; mousemats; posters; t-shirts; and a variety of price incentives. No data is currently available about which of these promotions have been most successful.

10. 2000 AD Licensing

In the early 1990s Copyright Promotions Limited (CPL hereafter) acted as Egmont Fleetway’s Licensing agency. After the failure of the Stallone Dredd film, interest in licensing 2000 AD-related concepts died away and CPL ceased being our agents. Since 1996 Egmont Fleetway has adopted a passive attitude to licensing character universes from 2000 AD.

The company has fielded inquiries through Gil Page and negotiated deals where possible, but it has not actively gone out hawking these character universes to potential licensees such as computer games developers and the like. The sole exception was Fleetway Film and Television (FFTV hereafter), a company set up to find development deals for 2000 AD film and TV projects (live action or animated).

FFTV was not a great success, only setting up deals for Strontium Dog and Outlaw TV movies with Evolve Entertainment, to be sold on to America’s Showtime cable channel. FFTV’s best success was starting to address the black hole regarding the lack of paperwork proving Egmont Fleetway’s ownership of the audio/visual rights in its own characters. Otherwise FFTV just soaked up a lot of time and money for little return.

Current deals (not including syndicated publishing):-

Action figures          - Re:Action Figures launches Wave II this Autumn

Graphic novels       - Hamlyn is negotiating a new deal for 4 colour books

                                    - Titan Book is negotiating for several b&w books

CCG                            - Round Table wants to expand the deal for its Judge

Dredd collectible card game – but has real problems

Video Games           - Acclaim published a film-related Dredd game in ‘95

                                    - Gremlin published a non-film Dredd game in ‘97

11. Royalties

Egmont Fleetway prepares royalty statements once a year, with the royalty period covering the 12 month period between the preceding July and June (e.g. July 1999 – June 2000). The statements are currently prepared by David Webb in the Egmont Fleetway accounts department, based on information supplied to him from 2000 AD editorial, Martin Morgan in syndication and external licensees.

Once royalty statements are prepared, these are passed to editorial for final checking before being sent out to the relevant creators, along with a covering letter inviting them to invoice for the appropriate amount. (An example of a typical set of royalties is enclosed with this guide.) We do not send out statements if the amount involved is less than £20. These are carried forward to the next royalty period, along with any royalties which go unclaimed by any creators (total is usually £500).

CPL was Egmont Fleetway’s licensing agents for much of the 1990s and still has involvement in certain contracts. The Judge Dredd Megazine generates a reprint fee for the relevant writer and artist (£7.50 and £15 per page respectively) for any 2000 AD story re-run in its pages.

Egmont Fleetway’s Martin Morgan syndicates 2000 AD material around the world, regularly sending courtesy copies of the comic to his contacts in various countries. He also responds to inquiries from potential new syndication clients. Martin supplies data from these deals to accounts for preparation of royalty statements, cross-checking allocation accuracy with the 2000 AD editorial team.

Express Newspapers’ Daily Star published a Judge Dredd adventure strip for 17 years and continues to syndicate this material around the world. However, detailed information is rarely supplied by Express Newspapers, making it  difficult to create a meaningful breakdown of which creators should get what from the total – usually about £300.

Royalties come in from licensees who publish graphic novels starring 2000 AD characters – Titan Books, Hamlyn (formerly Octopus) and Dark Horse Comics. Royalties also arise from any and all other merchandising, such as the Round Table Dredd card game, Gremlin Interactive’s Judge Dredd Playstation game and others. Re:Action Figures will be declaring royalties for the 2000 AD action figures soon.

Egmont Fleetway pays reprint fees for any material it reprints in its own titles. These are almost always £7.50 per page for writers and £15 per page for artists. If we reprint 48 pages or more of a single story in a single publication, this is contractually classified as a graphic novel and the creators get a royalty instead of a reprint fee.

If there is more than one artist (e.g. a penciller and an inker), the reprint fee goes to the penciller unless the artists have made a special arrangement and told us about it.

Egmont Fleetway also pays royalties on any merchandise which we create and sell ourselves. In the past year we have launched a new range of 2000 AD merchandise, beginning with the Prog 2000 t-shirt. This merchandise is being created for us via a company called Mediator Marketing, which is handling fulfillment for a cut of the profits.

Here we pay creators an ex gratia payment of 10% of our net revenue from sales of the merchandise. This is split equally – 5% to the relevant writer, 5% to the relevant artist. However, if the item is drawn by someone other than the original artist creator, the royalty split alters because consumers are principally buying the specific imagery on the item. Then we split the 5% art royalty 80/20 – the actual artist whose work is being sold gets 4%, the character’s creator gets 1%.

In the case of the Prog 2000 t-shirt, this gets even more complicated because it features five characters. The writer split is fairly straight forward, going to Pat Mills (1% as creator of Nemesis), Robbie Morrison (1% as creator of Nikolai Dante), Gerry Finley-Day (1% as creator of Rogue Trooper),  and John Wagner (2% as creator of Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog).

But when it comes to the art split, the headaches really begin. The actual t-shirt artist Brian Bolland will get 4% of our net revenue. The other 1% of the art royalty is split between Kevin O’Neill (0.2% as creator of Nemesis), Simon Fraser (0.2% as creator of Nikolai Dante), Dave Gibbons (0.2% as creator of Nemesis), and Carlos Ezquerra (0.4% as creator of Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog).

N.B. Royalties from the Egmont Fleetway/DC Comics co-publishing deals for Judgement on Gotham and Die Laughing are issued separately from the main royalties to avoid confusion. Again, these statements are prepared and issued by Egmont Fleetway accounts department, based on information from our sales and from DC Comics. For convoluted historical reasons, DC Comics prepares and issues royalty statements for Vendetta on Gotham, The Ultimate Riddle and Dredd/Lobo.

12. 2000 AD’s Archives

The 2000 AD archive is a mess. Originally, as each prog was published, the films were collected into a large brown envelope, labeled and stored at the archive. But then the problems began…

The best material was loaned to publishers around the world for syndication and some of it never came back. Films were taken from the original prog envelopes for use in Fleetway’s own reprint titles and then stored in a fresh envelope, marked with the name of the reprint title (e.g. Best of 2000 AD).

Recently the entire film archive was shifted and became completely jumbled as a result. Martin Morgan has begun a two-month project to sort out this mammoth mess. Once completed, it would be best if all 2000 AD-related material was shifted to its own storage facility.

Consider this fact: there have been about 1200 issues of 2000 AD, each with at least 32 pages. That’s 38,400 pages in the archive. About half those pages are made up of four individual films. That’s about 86,000 pages of film. Then there’s all the reprint titles (nearly 200 issues in total), the Judge Dredd Megazine films (nearly 180 issues) and the archive probably comprises more than 100,000 pieces of film.

Ideally, 2000 AD’s back catalogue would be stored in a digital archive. However, transferring the archive to digital format is a massive task that would take a lot of time and money. It’s worth noting that 2000 AD is now archived onto disc – this began circa Prog 1144 last May. It’s also worth noting that 2000 AD is now published as an all-digital product – there are no films created for current progs.

13. Exploiting 2000 AD’s back catalogue

The Galaxy’s greatest comic has a stunning archive of material by top creators. However, perhaps only 2000 pages of this (about 5%) is currently in print. That means the vast majority of the comic’s history is out of print. At the time of writing [summer 2000], you can no longer buy the Ballad of Halo Jones, Judge Death Lives, early ABC Warriors or anything starring Rogue Trooper, Robo Hunter, Zenith and many other great characters in English. (Some  are available in other languages.)

Hamlyn Publishing and Titan Books for currently negotiating for graphic novel reprint rights for several stories (in colour and mono respectively), but both are currently out of contract. There is no on-going programme of republishing 2000 AD’s classic comics material.

Earlier this year 2000 AD editorial began investigating the possibilities of short run digital printing of our own line of graphic novels. These would utilise the new digital archive to reprint recent popular hit series like Glimmer Rats and Nemesis X: The Final Conflict.

These could be a nice little earner if the books were sold off the page and carefully managed. For example, a collected edition of the black and white series Nemesis X selling for £6.99 would only have to sell 420 copies from a print run of 1000 to break even. If that print run sold out, it would make £2820. Increase the print run to 2000 copies and the break even rises to 540 copies. But a sell out would generate more than £7000 revenue after royalties have been paid to the creators!

Printing in colour is currently more expensive and pushes up costs but could still be lucrative. For example, the colour series Glimmer Rats selling at £7.50 would need 680 copies from a print run of 1000 to break even. A sell out would make £1730. Take the print run up to 2000 and break even in 900 copies, with a sell out making nearly £6000.

Hamlyn is only interested in publishing graphic novels featuring either Judge Dredd or Sláine, while Titan wants to reprint books it has already published such as Halo Jones and DR & Quinch.

There is money to be made 2000 AD’s vast archive. It seems insane to spend all this money originating great new material which only goes on sale for seven days before disappearing forever. Would Madonna spend a year preparing her new album then only have it available to buy for a week? 2000 AD's back catalogue is a huge potential revenue stream – it should be exploited!