Comics used to be about boyish laughs and adventures. But the boys who grew up with comics have now migrated to ‘graphic novels’ and sometimes to newspaper strips.
An image from Koma Comic
Usharp is aimed partly at the youngsters (not just boys) of today and partly at adults who are still young at heart. Ideally it should also be an imprint that comics artists will appreciate.
The business fight is how to get paid when so much of entertainment is moving to an online streaming model rather as opposed to distributing bound tomes. Musicians who have always made more money than illustrators have responded to streaming with live gigs but it is not so clear how comics can respond.
In their Comic about St George, the authors suggested that the persecution during which the saint was martyred (the last and worst persecution of Christians by the Romans from 303 AD) followed upon Emperor Diocletian’s edict of 301 AD that attempted to control prices. For there had earlier been a spike in inflation due to monetary reforms which increased circulation and decreased the weight of silver coinage.
Comic page 1 {Click to enlarge}
What does Diocletian teach us about Brexit? I suggest that one key similarity issue for Europe is that the Single Currency has created a need for fairly draconian management in order to work. For the UK and looking back over the past decade, the Euro has benefited us by making trade in Europe simpler at the same time as we have avoided the costs of its implementation. On the other hand this pooling of fiscal sovereignty that the Euro seems to require in order to function is worrying and unattractive to many the UK – and indeed elsewhere in Europe. At the same time, there is a suspicion that the cost of our “free ride” on the trading advantages of the Single Currency has been a diminution of influence in Brussels: at some point, moreover, there is a risk that the Eurozone turns against Britain on this free riding issue, particularly in the area of financial services.
Enough is enough! {click to see page}
What could be ‘St George’s take’ on Brexit? The saint is credited (according to legend) to have appeared on the side of the Christians in the Holy Land at the siege of Acre during the Third Crusade. The crusades could be seen as a “Euro-enterprise” with French, German, English and Venetian troops nominally allied together but sometimes quarrelling or competing. One of the arguments for the Brexit case is that the EU is doomed to disappoint and therefore the UK should get out while she can: but maybe St George would see some virtue in fighting for a worthy but unpromising cause…
Taking the name of ‘Christian’ did not render either the Roman or later the Byzantine empires invincible: indeed after 410AD some blamed the fall of Rome on Christians being too soft. Similarly then if we spin the ideals of peace and cooperation embedded in the EU project as catholic virtues, they remain morally OK even if the EU project ultimately flops. So maybe St George would not frame the Brexit issue purely on the basis of the pros and cons for the UK.