The DFC

The first issue of the DFC arrived on our doorstep last week. I can't believe how good it is. 36 pages long with no adverts. The drawing is beautiful, the comic looks and feels special, the stories are funny, suprising and different from each other.

My wife, my nine year old son and me have read it cover to cover . My 6 year old has had half of it read to her and wanted the other half read to.

It is the first weekly comic launched in Britain for 25 years. All the other comics for the 6-12 age group have played safe, made themselves monthly and based themselves around a big TV or film tie-in. But monthly serials don't work because you forget the cliff-hanger by the time the next issue comes round. The only tie-in DFC has is with the family section of the Guardian on a Saturday.

If you haven't seen it yet it is because it not available in the shops: it costs £3 per issue, available only from the DFC website.

Forbidden Planet have given the DFC a gracious review, even though they must be disappointed that they can't sell the comic themselves. In a perfect world it would be available in newsagents, so that kids could stumble upon it by chance. This way they are dependent on their parents to buy it. But Rome wasn't built in a day, this model allows DFC to start up with a relatively small audience. Who knows where they will be in a years time?

Besides I like the print on demand model they operate where it doesn't get printed until someone orders it (it contrasts with the print-without-demand of all those free newspapers they give out at London stations).