No More Heroes (again)

According to contributors, the magazine Comic Heroes has folded with its current issue. Launched by Future in 2010, it originally ran until 2014, and was then revived in 2015. Future also published a companion mag for younger readers called Your Comic Heroes but that only lasted for three issues.

It's a shame that not enough fans would support the only High Street magazine dedicated to the comics industry. People have often complained that the £7.99 cover price for 132 pages was too high, but those same people willingly pay £3.00 or more for a 20 page comic story. Personally, I felt that £7.99 for an informative quarterly magazine that took a few hours to read was quite reasonable. 

I can appreciate though that if some fans only have an interest in certain areas of comics they don't want to pay for articles they're not going to read. The bane of publishing I guess.

Not that Comic Heroes was perfect of course. The latest issue has a heartfelt tribute to Leo Baxendale written by Leah Moore, but the images that editorial chose to illustrate it are Beano covers by Reg Carter and Dave Sutherland. Imagine a tribute to Jack Kirby being illustrated with art by Steve Ditko and Neal Adams. It just wouldn't happen, but humour comics don't get the same consideration. 

Comic Heroes tended to learn heavily towards American comics, as might be expected, hoping that people who go to see superhero movies would be attracted to articles on Wonder Woman and Spider-Man. However, it did balance this somewhat with informative features on independent comics, European creators, advice from pros, and other non-superhero articles. I would have liked to have seen more features on the history of British comics but maybe I'm partly to blame for that. I contributed two historical features for the early issues but haven't bothered since. Too late now, sadly. 

One big problem that I found with Comic Heroes was its availability in shops, or lack of it. I used to buy every issue from my corner shop, but then their suppliers decided my newsagent should try other magazines instead. (Why suppliers make such decisions for retailers seems crazy to me, but that's what my newsagent told me.) That meant a walk into town to buy it from WH Smith, until my local Smiths decided to stop stocking it. I bought the last few issues via mail order, but I imagine most readers would have just given up by then. 

I'll miss Comic Heroes. It deserved to continue. I know most of us get our comics news from the Internet but it was good to have such info in a handy format. The final issue, No.32, is still available from newsagents and comic shops (if you're lucky). 

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