User:BoomboxTestarossa/Merger

In British comics, a merger refers to the industry practice of combing two comic titles - typically an established strong seller and a less successful publication - into a 'new' comic, generally titled [Continuing title] and [ending title]. The compound title and a portion of the cancelled comic's features would then be retained for a short period before the established comic either reverted to its' original name or absorbed another publication. Pressassociated The practice is most with the post-war output of Amalgamated /Fleetway Publications/IPC Magazines and DC Thomson, who at one point made up 85% of the market, but was also used by the likes of Odhams Press and Marvel UK.

Compared to American comics, where a small but growing portion of comics were attracting long term adult readers, British audiences were almost exclusively young and transitory, and often did not have full control of their small pocket money. Instead of monthly publications, the British industry was dominated by weekly anthology series, typically featuring minimal colour and printed on cheap paper. Readers would generally only buy one or two titles at the most, and thus publishers would aim to snare as large an audience as possible by issuing a variety of titles.

The two largest comics publishing houses, Dundee's DC Thomson and London's Fleetway Publications, frequently tried to lure readers from their competitor with an exciting new title, typically resulting in the other company responding in kind. One established tactic for grabbing new readers was a cover-mounted free gift, typically a card-covered booklet or a novelty item. As such, new titles would often launch strongly before their sales settled down, and often declined as readers attracted by curiosity gravitated back to other comics.

Market research conducted by publishers revealed that outright cancelling a title often led to any new readers brought in being disseminated among a mixture of titles from various companies, and some being list entirety as parents used the cessation to cut an expense. However, if a title was incorporated into another it would typically retain 90% of the combined readership - for example, a merger between two titles selling 100,000 and 50,000 copies a week would lead to a title selling 135,000 copies a week.

The link would be emphasised to readers (and newsagents, who were often responsible for reserving comics along with a family's newspapers and magazines) by the discontinued title's logo being added to the masthead.

These mergers were announced in both titles involved, and were always framed as a positive move for the audience, typically announced with some variation of 'Great news for all readers'.

The most successful features from both titles would be retained, giving the older title a circulation boosting refresh, while production costs were effectively halved by cutting the expense of producing the failing title. The popularity of features was gauged by reader mail - the comics enthused boys and girls to write in listing their three favourite stories, a stipulation that was also generally required for entries into numerous prizedraws and other competitions.

Hatch, Match and Dispatch

Whizzer and Chips

Notable mergers