LETTERS
BY OUR READERS

---

A Little Note From Fraction:

First: if you send us a line to info@savantmag.com, we will assume that you are willing for us to run your letter, unless you tell us otherwise. Um, I hate copyediting these things, and normally don't. So be mindful of that.

Send us more letters, dammit.

And, unless you tell us otherwise, we assume any letters are cool for publication, as well as posts to the forum.

--Fraction

---

From: Jared Wilkins
Subject: Comics for all

Hey all,

When i was ten i walked into my local newsagent and bought an Uncle Scrooge comic book. A few years later i was walking into the newsagent to buy the huge UK reprints of GI Joe and the Transformers and 2000AD.

Last weekend i walked down to the newsagent with my twelve year old godson.

I was there to buy a paper and i thought that i may as well buy him a comic book too. But i couldn't. Because there weren't any.

The comic shop David Ivanick descibed last week scared me, and i'm a 25 year old man, so it is no suprise that kids aren't going there.

With a horrific direct market and the decision of newsagents to no longer stock comic books it is no wonder the comic book world is in trouble. The next generation of readers have nowhere they can be introduced to the medium. This is a problem, but it's not the only one.

The current comic market is driven by people like me. Old bastards who can affored a thirty buck (hey i'm in Australia all right?) trade paperback and prefer to get their stories in this manner. We want intelligent, adult orientated stories. We've mostly grown up from the short Uncle Scrooge (Well I'm not that sure about Augie), Archie and Winnie the Pooh books that started us off. Because of this Marvel and DC have changed their focus. Sure there are occasional miracles like the Batman and Superman animated style books and Ultimate Spiderman but most of the product just isn't suitable.

Expand your sale base, expand your readership. This is the only way for the big two to survive.

That would be nice, but all i want is to be able to walk to the newsagentson a sunny sunday morning and buy a paper for me and a comic for my godson. Now is that really too much to ask?

Jared Wilkins
Canberra, December 2000

---

You know the drill: write us at info@savantmag.com or visit our Delphi forum at www.delphi.com/savantmag

See you next week.

---
DOWNLOAD CURRENT ISSUE:
- - -