The (new) Dandy

Well, the good news is the Dandy is back to being a comic.

The bad news is that the stars now seem to be Harry Hill, Jeremy Clarkson, Simon Cowell and Noel Edmonds.

How very peculiar.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=155169&l=4d62328190&id=121479097908918

MLP* wrote:Well, the good news is the Dandy is back to being a comic.

The bad news is that the stars now seem to be Harry Hill, Jeremy Clarkson, Simon Cowell and Noel Edmonds.

How very peculiar.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=155169&l=4d62328190&id=121479097908918

Well, I guess it's in the tradition of those strips starring people like Cannon & Ball in Look-In, or going further back, people like Norman Wisdom having strips in humour comics...

Or Radio Fun, TV Comic, TV21 etc, etc.

Stigandnasty wrote:Or Radio Fun, TV Comic, TV21 etc, etc.

It's a longstanding tradition-just not one I've ever really associated with Dandy.

tony ingram wrote:

Stigandnasty wrote:Or Radio Fun, TV Comic, TV21 etc, etc.

It's a longstanding tradition-just not one I've ever really associated with Dandy.

Exactly. The Dandy seems to have lost its identity. Whist The Beano is always recognisably The Beano, this is the third time they've tried to re-invent The Dandy. The first was to give it a Manga / Cartoon Network inspired makeover. Then they tried turning it into a Toxic style magazine. Now it is going for spoofs of celebrities.
I think it's good that DCT are persevering in keeping the thing going rather than just dropping the axe due to poor sales but all these revamps do give the impression that they're not sure what the Dandy should really be in the modern age.

Trouble is, the Dandy was always the Beano's more conservative older sibling, less anarchic and, to the kids, consequently less appealing even though it was often the better of the two in many ways. I doubt the original Dandy would sell these days, and Beano's comparative success has a lot to do with a very specific group of long running characters, none of whom Dandy has. Desperate Dan and Bananaman just don't have the broad appeal of the Beano's ASBO kid characters.

tony ingram wrote:Trouble is, the Dandy was always the Beano's more conservative older sibling, less anarchic and, to the kids, consequently less appealing even though it was often the better of the two in many ways. I doubt the original Dandy would sell these days, and Beano's comparative success has a lot to do with a very specific group of long running characters, none of whom Dandy has. Desperate Dan and Bananaman just don't have the broad appeal of the Beano's ASBO kid characters.

Yeah. The Beano always did a pretty good job of moving with the times. The Dandy didn't which is why it's having to have radical overhauls now to try and reinvent it.

I agree that The Beano always had the most iconic characters but with Topper, Beezer and the other DCT comics having folded over the years there should be plenty of pretty well known characters that they could move into The Dandy. (A bit like how every IPC funny character wound up in Buster by the end.)

Still, there were a ton of copies of the new Dandy in the supermarket this morning (I was tempted to buy one but decided it wasn't really aimed at me ) so clearly DCT are giving the title a big push. Hopefully it will be third time lucky !

You mentioning Topper reminded me of an old favourite-I'd love to see Nick Kelly revived in the new Dandy...

tony ingram wrote:You mentioning Topper reminded me of an old favourite-I'd love to see Nick Kelly revived in the new Dandy...

I think Beryl The Peril should definitely be included.

Beryl would make sense-she was in Dandy forr awhile after her original home folded, anyway.

More details on the new line up here :

http://downthetubescomics.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-dandy-who-did-what-then.html

Fair to say that Korky has had some plastic surgery while he's been away.

Oh, dear...

Eh? In my view The Dandy has always been reinventing and updating itself with new characters (what, after all, did the 90's Korky owe to the original? Who remembers Sneaker? Bad Max?) whereas the Beano has kept the same core characters for going on 60 years.

I also think that the new version is very much a return to form and wish it well. Of course it doesn't look like the Dandy of our childhoods (even mine!) but then we aren't the ones that are supposed to be buying it.

We aren't?

I really am quite excited about the new Dandy.
Its like a real comic should be. No free gifts either which is brave when every comic title seems to be bagged with up to 3 toys.
This I read last night and had a chortle quite a few times!
It reminds me of one of my all time favorite comics Oink!
I just hope it succeeds as its 100 times better than the Dandy Extreme version.

To be compared to Oink! is praise indeed! One of the most innovative comics of its era!

5 Weeks in to this new run of the Dandy and i'm really enjoying it. Not everything works but i've had some laugh out loud moments which even as a kid I never did with the Beano or Dandy to be honist. I like the surreal moments like Whats In Cherel Coles hair etc. The only thing I dont like is the wierd take on Desperate Dan when compared to the old Dan its as though a childs drawn it..maybe they have?

the Caretaker wrote:5 Weeks in to this new run of the Dandy and i'm really enjoying it. Not everything works but i've had some laugh out loud moments which even as a kid I never did with the Beano or Dandy to be honist. I like the surreal moments like Whats In Cherel Coles hair etc. The only thing I dont like is the wierd take on Desperate Dan when compared to the old Dan its as though a childs drawn it..maybe they have?

I've been pleasantly surproised so far-I bought the relaunch issue out of curiosity, but I've carried on because I enjoy iy. But yeah, Dan doesn't look right...

The only thing I dont like is the wierd take on Desperate Dan when compared to the old Dan its as though a childs drawn it

Said "new" Dan is, of course, about 3 years old already, though.

Oddly he looks like his old self in the 2011 Annual!

I think the annuals have a rather different target audience-there's at least half an eye on the collector's market, there...

Well actually both versions appear in the annual, now that i think about it. But the modern version only in an 'article'. Which made me laugh more than the Dan strips did. Now that i think about it.

You are not making a great job of selling this annual, Mike.

Looks like the new Dandy is getting into covermounts.

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2011/02/another-dandy-bumper-issue-today.html

Whether this is a one off or a change in policy I'm not sure but when they relaunched the comic it seemed that they hoped it would be the strips which would sell it rather than all the covermounted gifts which every other kids title has these days.

Bowing to the inevitable, i think. Kids expect covermounts these days.

tony ingram wrote:Bowing to the inevitable, i think. Kids expect covermounts these days.

Yeah. Be interesting to see how much of a spike in sales they get with this issue. If it's significant I guess they will crank up the price by a quid and put a "gift" on every issue, in line with all the other titles.

Whatever happened to free gifts being free?

tony ingram wrote:Whatever happened to free gifts being free?

I think David Cameron abolished it as part of his "big society".

MLP* wrote:

tony ingram wrote:Whatever happened to free gifts being free?

I think David Cameron abolished it as part of his "big society".

Ooh, cheap shot!

Dandy goes up to £1.99

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2011/11/sneak-peek-dandy-no3562.html

Digital edition now available :

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2011/11/dandy-and-beano-begin-digital-editions.html

MLP* wrote:Dandy goes up to £1.99

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2011/11/sneak-peek-dandy-no3562.html

Digital edition now available :

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2011/11/dandy-and-beano-begin-digital-editions.html

Dandy's sales have been falling steadily for the last couple of years. Is raising the price really going to help?

tony ingram wrote:

MLP* wrote:Dandy goes up to £1.99

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2011/11/sneak-peek-dandy-no3562.html

Digital edition now available :

http://lewstringer.blogspot.com/2011/11/dandy-and-beano-begin-digital-editions.html

Dandy's sales have been falling steadily for the last couple of years. Is raising the price really going to help?

Raising the price and increasing the reprints will help stave off cancellation a bit longer.

I speculate that an announcement that they will be reducing frequency of publication will follow...

Making it an almost all-reprint monthly might be the way to go. but i suspect it would still only be delaying the inevitable at this stage.

tony ingram wrote:Making it an almost all-reprint monthly might be the way to go. but i suspect it would still only be delaying the inevitable at this stage.

Maybe the digital edition will give it a lift like it did for Commando ?

Maybe it will end up going digital only and ditching the paper version altogether !

Frankly, I still doubt it would save it. Dandy's problem is the formula it uses. Commando and Beano have got theirs right, Dandy went off the rails somewhere several decades ago. unless they find the right formula for the title, it will continue to fail regardless of what format it's presented in.

As a critic of the relaunched Dandy, it's good to see that others agreed with me. Going by comments on some sites at the time (especially those of Dandy freelancers), you'd have thought I was among only a handful of people who weren't impressed by the direction the comic took. (Which was to oblivion, as it turned out.)

Yes, The Dandy bowed to the inevitable since the last time I posted !
Ironically the final issue was rather good.

Picked up "The Last Ever Dandy Summer Special" in Smiths today. I gather there's also a Beano 75th birthday special out but they didn't have that.

Sold out in all likelihood. My WHS only had one copy left yesterday, but still quite a few Dandy Specials.

Kid Robson wrote:As a critic of the relaunched Dandy, it's good to see that others agreed with me. Going by comments on some sites at the time (especially those of Dandy freelancers), you'd have thought I was among only a handful of people who weren't impressed by the direction the comic took. (Which was to oblivion, as it tutned out.)

Oh, I think the writing was on the wall for the Dandy for a long time. It never recovered from its transformation into Dandy Xtreme, and DC Thomson didn't exactly go out of their way to promote it towards the end.

MLP* wrote:Yes, The Dandy bowed to the inevitable since the last time I posted !
Ironically the final issue was rather good.

Picked up "The Last Ever Dandy Summer Special" in Smiths today. I gather there's also a Beano 75th birthday special out but they didn't have that.

They're already going for ludicrous prices on ebay, I notice.

The writing may have been on the wall, but the relaunch turned it into bigger lettering in block capitals. It was just the wrong way to go.

As for those ludicrous prices on eBay, why don't the people buying them just order them direct from DCT?

Because that would be sensible, Kid. And sense and ebay don't mix, a lot of the time. You can sometimes find identical copies of the same book listed for 0.99 and £299.00 on the same day!