Dez Skinn
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| Dez Skinn | |
 Dez Skinn |
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| Birth name | Derek Skinn |
| Born | February 4, 1951 |
| Nationality | British |
| Area(s) | Editor, writer |
| Notable works | Warrior |
Derek "Dez" Skinn (born 1951 in Goole, Yorkshire) is a British comic book and magazine editor and author of number of books on comics.
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[edit] Early career
Dez Skinn was born on February 4, 1951. Following a journalistic stint on Yorkshire's Doncaster Evening Post and a comics apprenticeship producing various fan magazines including Fantasy Advertiser, Oracle and Eureka, Dez Skinn moved to London in February 1970 to pursue a career in comics and found work as a sub-editor with IPC for whom he worked on such titles as Whizzer and Chips, Cor!! and Buster. During this period be became Father of Chapel of the IPC Juveniles division of the National Union of Journalists.[citation needed] The comics publishing arm of Williams/Warner Bros headhunted him to work for them as managing editor of their fledgling Youth Group.[citation needed] For them he edited MAD Magazine (UK Edition) winning two Eagle Awards for boosting the originated content which he achieved by bringing to print many of his old colleagues from IPC, while rejecting the more general one-off gag style covers in favour of more commercial film tie-ins on a regular basis. He also edited the European editions of Williams' Tarzan, Korak and Laurel & Hardy and revived Monster Mag a horror films feature/poster magazine.[citation needed]
[edit] The House Of Hammer
The House Of Hammer was a monthly magazine featuring articles on Hammer Films series of horror and science fiction films. Launched in October 1976, it also featured comic strip versions of its films, as well as new material, by creators such as Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, John Bolton, David Lloyd and Brian Lewis. The magazine won numerous Eagle Awards and was hugely successful and with issue 19 received US distribution after an initial one-off compilation issue.[citation needed]
The title changed its name to Halls Of Horror after Warren Publishing had copyrighted the House Of Horror name in the US through publishing a single issue "ashcan" (500 copies, reprinting old Famous Monsters of Filmland material, in an attempt to prevent competition).Halls Of Horror lasted till issue 23 before it was abruptly cancelled, a cover for the unpublished issue 24 is in existence.[citation needed]
The title returned in 1982 from Quality Communications and lasted for 30 issues, plus a Dracula special.[citation needed]
[edit] Starburst
In January 1978 Skinn launched the first issue of Starburst as an attempt to take advantage of the growth in the interest of science fiction and fantasy following on from the release of Star Wars. Skinn published it under the company name of Starburst Publishing Ltd. It lasted 3 issues before being bought by Marvel UK when he joined them as editorial director.
The magazine is still being published by Visual Imagination.
[edit] Marvel Comics
In 1978 Skinn was headhunted by Stan Lee to help the floundering Marvel UK publishing company.[citation needed] Lee was concerned that sales were dropping and gave Skinn freedom to revitalise the company as he saw fit.[citation needed] Skinn did this by moving the company out of Sevenoaks, Kent and back to London, bringing in his own editorial team (at the expense of losing line editor Neil Tennant, for whom he found a job with his old employers IPC Magazines, on Smash Hits.[citation needed] Tennent went on to form the Pet Shop Boys). Under the collective banner of "The Marvel Revolution" Skinn repositioned the flagging company, renaming it Marvel UK instead of the previously known British Marvel. He launched new titles such as Doctor Who Weekly, Frantic Magazine (subtitled "Number Two in a Field of One", a MAD-imitator which featured very early artwork by Alan Moore and Alan Davis) and Hulk Weekly. All featured new material produced in the UK by British creators. Hulk Weekly is best remembered for reviving Captain Britain, which had previously been US-originated material. This character featured in a fantasy serial starring the Black Knight (by Steve Parkhouse, Paul Neary and John Stokes, with whom he had previously worked on Fishboy for IPC's Buster). He also created and commissioned Steve Parkhouse and David Lloyd to produce a precursor to V for Vendetta in Night Raven, an enigmatic masked character, set in Chicago during Prohibition.
With news trade confusion over the difference between glossy US and equally glossy UK Marvel Comics, Skinn successfully revamped existing weekly reprint titles such as The Mighty World Of Marvel into a more traditional-looking UK title as Marvel Comic and similarly adapted Marvel UK's Spider-Man reprint title.[citation needed] With Star Wars Weekly he added photocovers and interior text features to widen the comic's appeal.[citation needed] He also boosted the UK monthly output and his line of digest sized Pocket Books also proved successful, inexpensively offering 64 pages each of early Marvel superhero, horror, and science fiction material.[citation needed]
His aim was to use Marvel UK weeklies to introduce new young British readers to the adventure comic concept, weening them off traditional humour titles.[citation needed] They could then graduate to the UK monthlies and/or the US imports, so there were titles available for all ages within the Marvel stable, all the way up to the film magazine Starburst.[citation needed]
Despite lasting only 15 months, Skinn's tenure at Marvel was hugely productive,[citation needed] and in this time he provided the likes of Alan Davis and a 17-year old Steve Dillon their first published work. He also gave work to John Wagner, Pat Mills, Steve Moore, Dave Gibbons, John Bolton, David Lloyd and Alan Moore which gave them greater exposure.[citation needed] Outside of launching Doctor Who Weekly, his best known decision was to return Captain Britain from limbo,[citation needed] first of all as a Black Knight supporting character in Hulk Weekly, then in his own strip in The Mighty World Of Marvel.
Skinn left Marvel in 1981 to launch and co-own a London west end design group, Studio System, working primarily in film and fashion for Columbia Pictures, British Airways, Liberty's, Browns of South Moulton Street and various high profile clients.[citation needed] Notable film work included assigning Martin Asbury his first storyboarding work, for Hugh Hudson's Greystoke.[citation needed] Comics-related work during this period included various strips for Columbia, ITC and 20th Century Fox, but his biggest project was the 500,000 print run Scalextric model racing catalogue, which was remodelled as a large format glossy comics magazine, starring Speedmaster, written by Skinn and drawn by Ian Kennedy, from a difficult brief asking for "All the Scalextric models to be included, in a Star Wars way but drawn like the old Eagle comic."[citation needed] Two years later he returned to comics full time, reviving Starburst Magazines Ltd, renamed Quality Communications to remind him not to consider quantity his top priority, so he could relaunch House of Hammer as Halls of Horror and start his most influential comic, the anthology title Warrior.[citation needed]
[edit] Warrior
Warrior was first published in March 1982 and ran 26 issues to January 1985. It was a title where all the strips were creator owned, something unique in the British comics industry at the time. The title was a mass of creativity, creators such as Alan Moore, David Lloyd, Alan Davis, Brian Bolland and Garry Leach created and worked on many memorable stories. These included Marvelman, V for Vendetta, The Spiral Path, Axel Pressbutton and Father Shandor, Demon Stalker.
When Warrior was cancelled, many of the unfinished stories were completed by various US comic publishing companies. However several of these stories had problems being completed due to the complicated issue of just who owned what; the most famous example of this is Marvelman.
[edit] Quality Communications
After Warrior ended, Quality Communications and Skinn carried on being involved in comics publishing for much of the remainder of the 1980s. First of all they helped repackage several series from Warrior for Eclipse Comics, including Marvelman, Axel Pressbutton, John Bolton's Halls of Horror and Brian Bolland's Black Book. Skinn's company also took over US reprints of 2000 AD and related material which were resized and coloured for the US market. These reprints continued till 1989.[citation needed]
In 1990, Skinn produced the first issue of Comics International, a monthly comics news and reviews magazine which has enjoyed great success to the present day; Issue 200 of Comics International appeared in November 2006 as a giant sized final issue from the company. A press release was issued by QCL in December 2006, stating that Skinn had sold Comics International to Cosmic Publications for an undisclosed sum.
In 2003 Skinn also published a trial issue of Toy Max, a slick glossy upmarket magazine for the new breed of adult toy collectors, feeling this would achieve greater distribution success than the niche market of Comics International.[citation needed] Despite comprehensive content, including an exhaustive 16-page Star Wars toys price guide, this did not find a wider readership, due to a resistance by the UK federated newstrade to distribute an experimental non-corporate title.[citation needed]
In 2005 Skinn returned to the lecture circuit, as a guest at City College Brighton and Hove, where he encouraged the Foundation Art & Design students to produce an anthology comic around the theme of "Brighton: Tales of the City".[citation needed] His company, Quality Communications, then produced 20,000 copies of the end product, Ace Comics, for free distribution around Brighton's cafes, bars, restaurants and such.[citation needed] The comic was financed by advertisements from local companies and FE/HE educational establishments.[citation needed] The success of the innovative comic and its diverse work by 90% female students was such that it gained the college editorial in local and national radio & TV and newspaper coverage including the Times Educational Supplement.[citation needed]
Also in 2005, he attempted to raise the professionalism and outward appearance of UK comics conventions by staging a major outreach event at the Brighton Metropole Hilton, coining the phrase "Promoting Literacy and the Visual Arts".[citation needed] While the weekend event was considered a critical success by online reviews, with its emphasis on professionally built exhibitor booths and a luxurious setting, its financial failure through lack of trade support resulted in an attence not exceeding 2,000 and the experiment not being repeated.[citation needed] Skinn commented, in Comics International #192, "It feels like I hired Brighton's biggest hotel... for the best blow-out party in town since Fatboy Slim's do on the beach."
Outside of his chosen field of comics, as Managing Director of Hagar Business Developments, in 1987 he launched group chatlines on a national basis, a telephone forerunner to internet chatrooms.[citation needed] Referring to such as a "social safety valve" he led their defence to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, as chairman of the ITCA (the Independent Telephone Chatlines Association), successfully proving they were not "against the public interest".[citation needed] Following extensive TV, print and radio coverage, including a live BBC interview with Jeremy Paxman, Skinn spearheaded a campaign through Oftel (the Office of Telecommunications) against the M-rate expensive banding of such, but failed to get British Telecom to reband the service at a lower rate.[citation needed] His campaign to legitimise group chatlines, where up to ten people from around the UK could talk together, avoided the trap BT's earlier local Talkabout group lines fell into, through 100% monitoring of all groups.[citation needed] This enabled disruptive callers to be instantly intercepted and where required cut off from the group for any use of sexism, racism, profanity, obscenity, or such personal details as last names, addresses or phone numbers.[citation needed] His Speakeasy lines and Grapevine gay lines were nationally advertised on TV and in such broadsheets as The Guardian and the Independent resulting in Hagar, the country's largest operator of the service, netting over one million pounds profit in its first trading year.[citation needed]
Much to Skinn's bemusement, all companies with fully monitored group chatlines were finally banned while the totally uncensored one-to-one lines (which Skinn refused to be involved with) continue to this day.[citation needed]
[edit] Miscellaneous
Skinn's career in comics actually began in 1965 with his fanzine The Derinn Comicollector which led to his producing other titles including Eureka! (1969) and a comics news fanzine Oracle (1968) he also edited the British comic fan magazine Fantasy Advertiser from 1970 to 1975.[citation needed]
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Comics
Comics he has written include:
- Big Ben (with Will Simpson, in Warrior '#19-26, 1984)
[edit] Books
- Comix: The Underground Revolution (paperback, 288 pages, Collins & Brown, April 2004, ISBN 184340186X)
- Comic Art Now: The Very Best in Contemporary Comic Art and Illustration (hardcover, 192 pages, HarperCollins, May 2008, ISBN 1905814259)
[edit] References
- Dez Skinn at the Comic Book DB
