I recently happened to find a copy of the old Belgian magazine (A suivre) (which means "To be continued") laying around in a chalet we rented for a week end in the Ardennes.
Most of the material in it I knew: Schuiten & Peeters, Manara & Pratt, Tardi... all first rate creators.
I started to think about anthology titles from different countries, things like Eerie, Creepy, Mad, Tomorrow Stories (U.S.A.) Star Magazine, Hyperion, Comic Art, Linus, Horror, Frigidaire (Italy) Shoenen Jump (Japan), 2000 AD, Warrior (U.K.), not to mention that an awful lot of American comic book titles later known for showcasing one superhero, originally started as anthologies: Action Comics, Detective Comics, Amazing Adult Fantasy, Tales of Suspence...
The immediate feeling was one of longing: I missed the times when quality content could be showcased like hits on a radio station in an editorial format that allowed, from time to time, the introduction of new creators, stories, styles or characters alongside the more popular ones.
To me this is a formula that facilitates the grooming new talent.
Most of the material in it I knew: Schuiten & Peeters, Manara & Pratt, Tardi... all first rate creators.
I started to think about anthology titles from different countries, things like Eerie, Creepy, Mad, Tomorrow Stories (U.S.A.) Star Magazine, Hyperion, Comic Art, Linus, Horror, Frigidaire (Italy) Shoenen Jump (Japan), 2000 AD, Warrior (U.K.), not to mention that an awful lot of American comic book titles later known for showcasing one superhero, originally started as anthologies: Action Comics, Detective Comics, Amazing Adult Fantasy, Tales of Suspence...
The immediate feeling was one of longing: I missed the times when quality content could be showcased like hits on a radio station in an editorial format that allowed, from time to time, the introduction of new creators, stories, styles or characters alongside the more popular ones.
To me this is a formula that facilitates the grooming new talent.
Sprinkle a bit of editorial content in it (a letters column, an op ed piece, some reviews) and you can really 'build' an inforemd readership and even create a platform for the medium.
Yet anthology titles have mostly disappeared, together with newsstand distribution.
Why the lack of success?
Well, I suppose that we can partially ascribe it to the decline of printed media in general, but the majority of anthologies was discontinued long before that
One happy exception would be Walt Disney's italian weekly Topolino, still continuing an illustrious run, although it belongs to a category of its own and the circulation numbers of today, while still enviable, are but a portion of what they were thirty yearg ago.
However, I do not want to surrender to a pessimistic narrative, according to which things only get worse.
Yes, there are many things about the past I miss, but I'm afraid that my perspective is somewhat distorted, exactly because I keep using the wrong parameters to judge the current state of affairs.
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