Deborah Tate

Deborah Tate was an editor for Sonic the Comic and was one of the longest-serving members of the editorial staff. Tate was responsible for many of the comic's arcs, particularly known for the direction of Amy Rose's character (she believed that Amy should be a mature role model for girls, an attitude Nigel Kitching refused to write for). Nevertheless, STC was at its peak of popularity during her tenure and she reportedly stated that there was still life in the comic despite the series' slide into reprints - a slide imposed on her by Egmont's accounting department.

Deborah was first credited as an assistant editor in Issue 8 under Richard Burton and managing editor Steve MacManus. She continued this role until she became "co-editor" from Issue 35 to Issue 38. From then on, Tate was sole editor with Burton taking up a consultant role. Her last issue was over 100 issues later, with MacManus taking the role from Issue 167 during a transitionary period.

Almost all former humes that have talked about her have said good things. Nigel Kitching has admitted to having disagreed with her on some decisions but has balanced this with praise in other areas.

Early life and career^[1]

Tate grew up in North London with a Scottish mother and Geordie father. She was into football from a young age. At 16 she took an internship at Marvel as an office junior.

While at Marvel Tate attended a secretarial college where she, for instance, learned to type, and ended up becoming the PA of Robert Sutherland, who would later become the MD of Marvel UK. She became Syndication Manager for Licensed Properties at the age of 22/23, however didn't enjoy the role; she "had to wear a suit, carry a briefcase; it wasn't me." As a result, she took a sabattical and asked to start over from the bottom on the editorial and design side of the company.

Ghostbusters Monthly was her first time as a solo editor. After that she moved onto the Care Bears comics.

STC^[1]

STC's founding editor, Richard Burton, needed an assistant when he created the comic; Tate was personally recommended to him via colleagues. She was surprised that the STC offices used Apple computers rather than Windows and had to relearn some software. Tate described herself as less of a gaming fan than Burton and more into "popular culture" like film and football; while Burton was eager to including gaming content like the Q Zone, Tate pushed for the Graphic & Photo Zones and the posters, to increase engagement with readers. Readership was a roughly 50/50 gender split.

Most work at Marvel at the time had been reprints and so STC was a learning experience for her in terms of commissioning comics. Her preference for writers and artists was to have a smaller team, "almost like they were on staff." Nigel Kitching would take care of the "from the games" aspect, being more familiar with the games themselves, while Lew Stringer would often take on Tate's ideas, for instance parodies of films such as Braveheart.

Sega was paid for the rights to use their characters in STC, but Tate still pushed them not to stall the process. Sega reportedly gave the comic a lot of freedom. Tate rang Sega over Amy, asking whether Amy had to "stay like this and look like that", with a personality that's "a bit of an embarrassment". The response from Sega was that no, she doesn't have to stay like that. Tate asked the artists to draw her looking differently as a result. She also briefed the writers (Kitching and Stringer). Tate would often edit Amy's dialogue after the scripts came in to align better with how she thought the character should be.

During her time as editor, she "had a bee in my bonnet about the environment and eco stuff"; she felt she was a lone voice in the industry about it. She "badgered" management to switch to recycled paper until the head of finance said they'd consider it if she could prove it wouldn't cost more to do so. Tate contacted various printers herself and presented it to management as in fact being a cost saver.

Marketing managers from Egmont were later brought in which disrupted things. Edicts were apparently things like "can't call them comics any more, it's considered too downmarket". They also disallowed "green covers" and "brown faces on the cover" with the weak justification that they supposedly sell less well. Tate noted that a green background in a later issue was one of the biggest sellers.

Tate tried to hang on as long as possible to keep original content in the comic rather than reprints. Roberto Corona described Tate as sounding sorry when she had to phone him to tell that STC no longer had any work for him.^[2] She also passed his portfolio onto 2000AD to try to help him get more work^[2].

On Mark Millar

Former editor Richard Burton had worked with Millar on 2000AD. When Tate took over, there was a drawer-full of Millar's scripts leftover from Burton's time. "When we were a bit stuck I'd have a read of Mark's scripts". Millar was easygoing about edits being made. Tate didn't get on so well with Millar's scripts; she suggests they weren't the best fit for the target audience of 7-14 year-olds.

On Mick McMahon

Tate thought McMahon's simple style would appeal to the younger readers. "It split the audience, some would say."

After STC^[1]

At some point after leaving STC Tate left editing; she felt in the 2020 interview that marketing rules comics now, to the industry's detriment, and editors have very little creative freedom any more.