Behind the Scenes

t's cold, it's wet and it's Wednesday... Hmmm... we must therefore be in England in deepest darkest January somewhere by the Thames. And I--with my usual impeccable timing--am half an hour early for my interview with Titan Magazines Editor and all-round good egg, Darryl Curtis. Never mind, I get shooed off to the Marketing Department to have a natter with Patricia Kahn and the other bods who make up the lovely bunch of people who give us UK folks The Official Buffy the Vampire Slayer Magazine every month, and now to the fans in the US too! Which is the reason why we're doing this interview in the first place, we need to know why the US official Buffy magazine sadly disappeared and what goodies Titan has to offer US fans.

Darryl Curtis at work in her Buffy abode!

Titan's offices are a big kid's playground, and totally unlike any other office you would come across anywhere else in the world. Where you would normally have notice boards, flowcharts and other assorted company blurb posted up on the walls, Titan has Buffy posters. Desk surfaces are covered in The Simpsons , Babylon 5 , Star Trek and Buffy action figures - that's if you can actually see the desk buried under magazines, page proofs, box files stuffed full of bundles of brightly coloured paper, more action figures, the odd cuddly toy and assorted other sci-fi related nik naks. If I had to work in an office, I'd choose to work in an office like theirs - this is a sci-fi nut's heaven-on-earth! After much cooing from me, Darryl and I brave the elements and trundle ourselves off to a couple of comfy purple armchairs in a nearby Starbucks . There's always coffee in times like these! So, armed with cappuccinos and lattes, two (allegedly) grown-up women who really should know better, spent just over half an hour talking about Buffy and Angel, much to the bewilderment of the other customers! On with the interview. . .

WHERE DID WE GO FROM HERE?

The first thing we need to know is more about Titan Publishing; who Titan is, some history - Editor Darryl Curtis explains, "Titan is basically three companies: Forbidden Planet, Titan Books and Titan Magazines. People will know Forbidden Planet entertainment shops - it's a separate entity from the magazines department, but part of the same group. The books department has been going for about 20 years. They do Buffy and Angel graphic novels, and a lot of things like movie tie-in books as well." She tells me that the magazines department is the youngest part of the company, it's been going seven years, starting out with Star Trek magazine, which is the longest selling title. Titan has since acquired quite a few other titles. " Star Wars, X-Files, Simpsons. We've done Babylon 5 - that one finished recently, Xena finished last year. We've got about a dozen ongoing titles at the moment. Buffy was launched two and a half years ago - the UK edition. Until recently all we did was license magazines." She then goes on to tell me a bit about Titan itself as a company. "We are an independent company, so the magazines and books department is Titan's own company; no one else has any shares or any stake in it - as it were," she pauses and a wicked grin spreads over her face, "Good little pun there wasn't it?" This woman is obviously trying to kill me, as I double up laughing, "Stake!" I have the sudden over-whelming urge to repeatedly hit my head on the table and groan at the high quality-punnage coming forth from the editor. Darryl is grinning hugely, mightily pleased by her humour, and the effect it has had on her CoA interviewer. "So, it basically means that what we do is completely our own," she continues, "and we're never going to be 'sold out', or anything like that. It's a nice, safe, family-owned company, but we're growing rapidly and we're doing a lot of cool stuff, so it's going very well - we're acquiring a lot more titles as we go along."

"[Titan is] an independent company; no one else has any shares or any stake in it - as it were. Good little pun there wasn't it?"

Darryl obviously loves her job, so I ask her fill me in on her beginnings at Titan. Darryl came on board at the very start of Titan seven years ago, working as Assistant Editor on Star Trek Monthly - which was Titan mags very first title. At that point the magazine department was just her, two designers, a guy in production and the Boss and that was all it was. She was the in-house editorial person, assistant editor and helped out with any other duties as well. She was involved with every aspect of the company from the very start. Since then, the magazine department has grown from a mere five people to eight editors, three people in the marketing department and three people in the advertising department. They have now got a substantial team built up the last seven years. In that time she tells me, "I've done Sabrina the Teenage Witch - that's a good one! The Mask comic - I enjoyed that! And Xena magazine. Also, I actually launched Buffy two and a half years ago - I was the launch editor. I desperately wanted to do that, more than anything else! I demanded that I have Buffy magazine, whatever happened, even though I was doing Star Trek Monthly at the time," she enthuses. "Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to do both Buffy and Star Trek, so Martin Eden took over the editorship of the magazine, which he did for two years. He didn't want to give it up either! But recently because we got the US title, and we needed somebody to do a lot more work on the magazine, we decided that I'd take it back and I'd launch the magazine and we'd keep both! So, here I am now! And I'm very excited about it!"

The Vampire Spike, James Marsters -- always a media favourite.

Darryl thoroughly enjoys working with Titan, so I ask her about the other people in the team, who they are, and what they do. Apart from her as Editor, there is Marcus Scudamore the Designer for whom she has ample praise, the Publisher who oversees all - it's his magazine, but he really doesn't need to get that much involved because he's very happy with the publication as is. They report to a Director, but again he leaves them to carry on the work by themselves. Darryl commissions and edits all the text and checks all the proofs. Marcus does a fantastic job of all the design - he does all the page-layout with some-time help from a junior called Martin. And there's also Deputy Editor Martin Eden who helps Darryl with the 'proofing and subbing'. All in all, it's a dedicated and highly involved cast of people who work hard to produce a great publication. And that's just in the UK! In the States there is yet another team. "I've got a set reporter who's dedicated to getting on set and sorting behind-the-scenes stuff," she explains. "I've got a dedicated US Editor, Matt Springer, who was the editor of the former US Buffy magazine, who is my editorial eyes and ears over there. He'll seek out news, work out what's going on, let me know, and come up with ideas as well. So it's got that 'U.S. feel'." It's worth noting that CoA did a feature on Matt last year, and a right true mate he is indeed! Darryl goes on to describe how, "It's a very small, dedicated team really, which is very good. We've got quite a lot of writers as well, I've got a couple in America; a couple in LA, one in New York. I've got three or four over here, specifically people like Rob Francis who has become my 'news guy', my news editor over in the UK, but also gets very good access to the writers. He does a lot of writer interviews. So, I use the best of both of whatever I can get from both countries. It sounds really abusive doesn't it," she laughs at her semi-merciless work ethic. "So it's a small team, but it's kind of working pretty well!"

'BRINGING IT' . . . TO THE US ~

We agree! As Titan's Buffy magazine is now available in the US, several other publications mentioned earlier are also becoming available worldwide. "Until recently, we didn't really have an awful lot of titles in the US at all," Darryl explains, "but we've actually been branching out to the US a lot more. Farscape's available worldwide, so that's one of them. Farscape - which I didn't mention - is our first non-licensed title, we acquired when it was sold. We were one of the people bidding for it, and got it, which was cool, and that allows us to cover everything. We can cover whatever we want in Dreamwatch, it's a sort of general sci-fi spot." Titan obtained the full license for X-Files, which is now available worldwide. And now Buffy! These guys are busy! So much so that they have recently had to hire a Circulation Manager in America because it is such a difficult market to crack. Newsstand publishing in America is very different to that in the UK, where a company deals direct with a wholesaler. In the US, a whole host of wholesalers service different shops. Bearing that in mind, the original Buffy magazine was subscription only, but now all fans can get it. "I think every magazine publisher in America finds it very hard to get good new stuff up. Buffy US, previous to us, was kind of half newsstand sales and half subscription from the fan club, so we're going in with a completely different idea, which is just to try and get as many newsstand sales as we can."

Series creator Joss Whedon, from Melody-man to Magazine-magnet.

Titan magazines have about four different distributors on board working to get the magazine out on the shelves. Therefore the new Buffy magazine should have a very good circulation. Fear not if you love subscriptions. "You can subscribe," Darryl informs me, "but it's not available as part of the fan club, which it was before. And also, we'll be doing a yearbook, or rather a special every year, which is part of the contract. And that will be available through the US Buffy fan club -Fanescape.com - as part of the fan club package." Going back to the beginnings of the magazine, Titan was fortunate to get the rights to produce it. "We told Fox we wanted to do the Buffy magazine and they said, 'All right!' " That makes it sound all too easy! Darryl goes on to recall, "I think we started looking at it about three and a half years ago. So the show would have been well into its second season, maybe its third season. The show was big! When we are buying a license for a magazine, we look at what shows are doing well, what shows have 'staying power', what shows have a big fan-base, a lot of other licensees on board doing a lot of other merchandise, websites that are interested. We just look at what's going on, we kind of keep an eye on things. I mean Buffy was just big and getting bigger, so we really wanted to do it, we bid for it. We pay a license fee up front, we pay royalties on all the sales, the shops get something out of it, etc. But actually, the sales have gone up since we launched, so it's obviously still going!" That's the UK end of it sorted, now we have the beginnings of Titan's involvement in a US edition "When the previous company - without saying anything negative about them whatsoever - stopped publishing the magazine, it wasn't planned," she admits. "When we found out we were straight in there, 'We really want to do this magazine, we've done the UK one for over two years, we know what we're doing, we have the access, we have the writers, we know the show fantastically well.' So, we went in there, there were other publishers US publishers going for it. We managed to beat them! And I think all it is, the reason we managed to get it was because Fox knows us, they trust us. We've got a reputation!"

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