From The Times
May 10, 2008
Interview with David Fickling, saviour of the great British comic

For those of a certain age, comics are but a fond childhood memory, irrelevant to today's generation - until now. Tom Gatti meets the man behind the movement.

EAGLE, BUNTY, VALIANT, Comet, Hornet, School Friend, Sparky, Sun. In the Fifties and Sixties, British newsagents were overflowing with comics, containing strips of every possible stripe: adventure, slapstick, romance, mystery, western, war. At tuppence an instalment, there was no better source of thrills, spills and belly laughs.

Today the picture is very different. In the 1950s the Eagle sold around 900,000 copies a week; now The Beano and The Dandy are hanging on valiantly with a joint circulation of about 74,500. And those two are lonely standard-bearers: most children's magazines now are not comics but glossy TV tie-ins with one or two strips in among the features, puzzles, competitions and ads. Can the British comic be saved? One man thinks it can. On May 30 the legendary children's publisher David Fickling is launching The DFC, a weekly 36-page comic featuring a colourful rattlebag of brand-new strips, including one written by his old pal Philip Pullman.

Padding around his homely Oxford office in red socks, with matching red spotty bow-tie, 55-year-old Fickling explains, in great enthusiastic gusts, why Britain needs The DFC:
“I have always loved comics and wanted to make them. But I'm not really interested in reviving comics, I'm much more interested in restoring them to where they should be. I have no doubt that the form is still loved by children: Asterix and Tintin are hugely popular despite being 50 to 80 years old. We have comics in Japan, in France, throughout Europe. We just don't have them in this country.”

Read the full piece at The Times online.