• Narrow screen resolution
  • Wide screen resolution
  • Increase font size
  • Decrease font size
  • Default font size
  • default color
  • red color
  •  
Home arrow The Pioneers

The Pioneers
Page 15 of 35

Comic Cuts
A popular Comic Cuts strip from 1923, starring the 'Colony Nigs' (political correctness was never the title's strong point). Art/script: Anon.
Marketing was the final part of the comic's success story. For the publishers were able to open up new avenues. From the start, Ally Sloper's Half Holiday was sold through newsagents, like other magazines, then it was found to be popular reading for train journeys, and was promoted especially hard through railway kiosks." Passengers would pick up a copy at the beginning of their journey, read it between stops, and throw it away at the end. The comic thus became known as 'railway literature', and played up to this by offering a 'free gift' of an accident insurance policy. This was so that anybody found dead in a railway accident with a copy of the comic on their person would have their life insurance policy paid off by the publishers. It was undoubtedly a macabre, if wacky, gimmick, but it should be remembered that Victorian railways were far from safe, and as our illustration bears testimony, 'three claims' had already been paid by 1892.
In this way, the comic became, in its own words 'the biggest selling penny paper in the world'. As we have seen, this was mainly among working-class readers, though also with significant middle-class patronage (William Morris was a fan). Sloper himself was a national institution, and by the 1890s, merchandising based on the character was in full swing, with a range of mugs, posters and dolls for sale. More pertinently, the comic's format, quality and marketing created a template for the future.
<< Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Next > End >>
 
[ Back ]