We head back now to the Christmas of 1955 and take a look at a book hundreds of thousands of children up and down the country would be flicking through excitedly - the 1956 Dandy Book. As did quite a few of the Dandy books from the 1950's and 1960's this one had a Korky the Cat comic strip on the cover, this one where the mice play a harmless joke on Korky!
As always, the book was advertised in various places including, of course, the weekly Dandy comic. This advert comes from a November 1955 issue.
So - what was inside? Well the first thing we are greeted with is a two-page spread by Eric Roberts. This was the "before" spread, and the "after" one was shown inside the back cover, but I've shown them both here together.
Dudley Watkins was of course drawing Desperate Dan at this time, and had four Dan strips inside the annual. Here's a nice three-pager, based around Dan's pocket watch.
Ken Reid also had a few pages in there drawing Little Angel Face. Angel Face was a long way off being one of his best characters, but it's still good to see some of his art. Here are two of the three strips that were inside.
And we'll end our look at this annual with a four-page text story called Pie-Face Pete's Secret Pal.
