Who's Who in the CBU 2008

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

Money and Faith

By Regie Rigby

Back to my old tardy ways again this week. Sorry, massive internet outage and the start of the new school term both conspired to hold me up. My apologies.

There are three things a polite Englishman never talks about. We don’t talk about religion. We don’t talk about money. We don’t talk about politics.

Well. I’ve buggered the politics rule already, so my status as a social pariah is assured. That being the case, I might as well deal with the other two now…

Money first.

When, exactly, did comics become so damn expensive? The current issue of Amazing Spider-Man bears the legend “Still only 399cents!”. Well, for a start, wasn’t it only 299 cents not all that long ago? And even if it wasn’t, four bucks for a comic?!. Seriously. Four bucks.

Now, I know I’m in danger of sounding like Monty Python’s four Yorkshiremen, I have to point out that when I started reading American comics they were 75 cents in your Yankee money, and a mere 50 pence in proper British money. But bugger it. There might be only one of me, but I am a Yorkshireman, so I reckon I’m perfectly justified in pointing out that in my day, comics were cheap. That was sort of the point.

Comics used to be cheap enough that anyone could buy them. Hell, they were so cheap that you could even afford to throw them away when you were done with them. We’re not just talking about American comics here either. Back in the eighties when I started buying 2000AD it cost 28 pence. Now? Now it’ll take you for nearly two quid - £1.75 a week!

I have to concede that nearly twenty years have passed since those old prices, and inflation means that stuff inevitably costs more. But a 500% increase? (Check my maths if you like, but it has to be something in that order…) I’m fairly sure that other essentials (and comics are essential) haven’t increased in price by anything like as much.

What has happened to comics?

I keep telling people that comics are the most democratic medium of communication we have because anyone with access to paper and a pen can make and distribute them. But the sort of prices being charged for them now make that position untenable. I mean I know kids today have a lot more money than I did, and I know that they’re prepared to spend much bigger chunks of it on entertainment than I was – Playstation games can be as much as thirty of forty quid a pop after all. (With the current exchange rate that would make them as much as eighty dollars a go, are they that expensive in the US?)

Even at such high prices though, Playstation, Wii and X Box games are still hour for hour significantly cheaper than comics. Let’s say that your £1.75 copy of 2000AD takes you an hour to read – and if I’m honest, it’s been a while since I’ve spent that long on it – that means an hour of comicy goodness is costing you £1.75, yes?

So, let’s say I go out and spend £39.99 on a new game for my console. I only have to play it for twenty three hours for each of those hours to be better value. Twenty three hours wouldn’t even take me past the first level. OK, so I know I have to factor in the cost of the console, but I’m doing kid economics here, which means the console was paid for by someone else.

Oh, and we should also remember that if you read a comic and then go back and read it again, it’ll be exactly the same. I mean, you might notice some details you missed the first time around, but essentially the experience in changed only in that the second time you read it you know how it ends. You can play the same level on a game many times and it will be different each time. Hell, you can even do the same level from the point of view of a different character. That makes the game even better value.

Games are harder to damage too, now I think about it. I was an untidy kid – indeed, I’m an untidy adult – and there was (is) very little prospect of me keeping a comic for any great length of time without at least creasing it. Game discs are, in my experience significantly more robust, and even come in protective packaging. That means that if I get bored of a game I can flog it and get some of my money back on e-bay. This is far, far less true of comics.

When I talk to kids at school about comics (and I do that a lot) one of the reasons they often cite for not reading them is cost. “Too much for what they are” according to a kid I spoke to recently. I think there’s a reason the average age of a comic reader has gone up into the twenties. It’s the simple fact that you need a job paying a decent salary before you can afford them. As an industry Anglophone comics are pricing new readers out of the market which, when you think about it, is monumentally stupid.

Now I’m fairly sure the “Still only 399cents” tag was intended as a joke.

It isn’t funny.

OK, so that’s money. What was I going to say about religion?

Oh yes. Offence, and how we should react to it.

As regular readers will know, I’m an atheist. I have no religious affiliations therefore, and I’m quite hard to offend. I’m sure a devout Christian would have been offended by Garth Ennis’ Preacher, or his recent Wormwood, I just thought they were funny as hell (no pun intended) and raised some interesting philosophical issues.

But, and this is important, if they’d lacked the philosophy, and been simple exercises in shock value gratuitous offence, like that dreadful Jeffery Dharmer vs. Jesus Christ rag that came out a few years ago, they might well have offended me too.

You see, in spite of my lack of religious affiliation, I don’t think that religion is fair game. You don’t pick a religion like you pick a football team – it’s not a question of loyalty, but one of belief. For many people their faith is an intrinsic part of who they are. It shapes their attitudes, even their actions. Their faith will even have shaped their culture and their heritage.

Basically, you can’t attack a religion without attacking the believers in a way that it’s really hard for them to shrug off. I don’t believe that writers and artists should avoid using religion, I don’t even believe that they should censor themselves and try to avoid causing offence. People of faith don’t have a right not to be offended after all.

But they do have a right to be offended if they read something they find offensive, and I think that comics creators, and all other artists ought to bear that in mind. Basically, if you’re going to have a pop at religion, you need to have something to say, in the way that people like Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis always do. If you don’t, well, then it isn’t just the religious you’re going to offend. You’ll offend me too.

But, as I said, people of faith don’t have a right to insist that nobody should do anything that doesn’t offend them, and some reactions clearly blaspheme the religion the offended claim to defend. As an artistic community we need to treat religion carefully, but we need to ensure that we continue to address it. We need to continue to think.

The boards are open. What do you think?