Desperate Dan's First Cover Appearance

Long before Desperate Dan took over the cover of The Dandy from Korky the Cat in 1984 he made a number of front cover appearances. His earliest cover appearance, as far as I am aware, occurred as early as 1945, on the cover of #308 - the Christmas issue for that year. Although not saying anything he does appear in the Christmas feast in the final panel. Of course, his first actual cover appearance would be on the first Dandy Monster annual, but as far as I'm aware his presence on this issue is his first cover appearance on a weekly comic. 

He made a very similar appearance on the Christmas cover the following year.

Anyway, Dan's first cover appearance for The Dandy was #308, but he didn't crossover to The Beano for another five years, appearing on the New Year's issue for 1950.

Dan didn't have a change of artist for this crossover, for both Dan and Biffo are drawn by the great Dudley Watkins. Naturally, this wouldn't be Dan's last appearance on the cover of either The Dandy or The Beano, for he would appear on the cover of both many times over the following years.

Images on this post are taken from past Phil-Comics auctions:

http://phil-comics.com/

The Dandy Book 1956

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.

Summer 2013 Compal Comics Catalogue

A brand new Compal Comics catalogue has gone online, and there are a lot of goodies in this one! The very first auction is for the very first issue of Comic Cuts, which is apparently very rare with only eight known copies in existence, although I'm sure Compal have sold lots of them! It has an estimate of £200 - £250 and is in VG condition.

At auction #5 is the highest graded copy of Radio Fun issue one known to exist, in very fine condition! With George The Jolly Gee-Gee having fun on the bright front cover, this Beano challenger is expected to sell for anywhere in-between £250 - £300.

And at lot number 7 is some very early original Desperate Dan artwork by Dudley D. Watkins, which appeared in issue four of The Dandy.

Next up is a selection of early Dandy comics, from issue #41 - #47 (1938) in auctions #8 - #14. Each comic is in FN (fine) condition, and each has an estimate of somewhere between £70 - 150.

Between lots 15 and 22 are six front cover printers proofs for The Dandy, and have a signature of approval from Dandy editor Albert Barnes. Here are my two favourites.

At lot number 27 is the very first Beano comic in very rough shape. This exact same comic sold for £786 back in the spring 2012 catalogue (which I covered here). Let's see if it does any better this time.

Two early Beano books are available, the 1942 book in good condition and the 1944 Magic Beano in fair condition.

There are also a few bound volumes of early and war time Beano comics, all of which are extremely scarce and are expected to fetch very high prices, and a selection of bound volumes from the 50's.

At lot #61 is the 1951 Oor Wullie book, which is very collectable, and, in very good condition, is expected to go under the hammer for £200 - £250.

This was followed by some original Oor Wullie artwork by Dudley Watkins.

And there are also some bound volumes of Topper comics, with some comics reaching near mint condition!

This is just a small selection of the comics from the British comics section, and there are lots more in the American section as well, so be sure to check it out - there are 325 lots in total! Even if you're not going to buy, it's still very interesting to look through.

www.compalcomics.com

'The Legend Of...' Books

In 1997 and 1998, to tie in with the 60th anniversary of The Dandy and The Beano, D C Thomson produced two 'Legend Of' books, one for each comic. The Dandy's book came first of course, and there were two characters that they could have gone with (in my opinion) - the original cover star Korky the Cat or Desperate Dan. Rightly so, they chose the latter, and The Legend Of Desperate Dan was born.

A few months after the Dandy was created, the Beano hit the shelves, and a few months after Desperate Dan's book, Lord Snooty's was released! Unlike for the Dandy there was no other character they could have chosen from The Beano, all the other original characters had phased out over time. One option could have been Dennis the Menace, but he hadn't been in the Beano since the beginning (if you didn't already know this, he joined in issue #452, dated 17th March 1951).

Lord Snooty and his pals visit the Beano office.

Both books follow the same format. After a short history on the characters and the comics they appeared in, the books dive straight into the comic strips, showing strips from the first few issues and then randomly up until the present. Almost all of the strips are by Dudley Watkins, who is known to be one of D C Thomson's favourite artists, but there are a few strips by some of the later illustrators too.

These books are a great read, both of them contain material from very rare and hard to find comics, and I wouldn't be surprised if many of the strips are only reprinted here and nowhere else, especially the early issues and propaganda strips from the second world war. Originally they would have cost you a combined total of £11.25 (£5.50 for Dan's book and £5.75 for Snooty's), but now you can find them very cheap, the lowest I've found is 1p for the Lord Snooty book, and a pound for Desperate Dan. Here are the links:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/The-Legend-of-Desperate-Dan-by-D-C-Thomson-Co-Ltd-Hardback-1997-/181122282109?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2a2bbab27d

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Legend-Lord-Snooty-Pals/dp/0851166911/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366270547&sr=8-1&keywords=legend+of+lord+snooty

If you do buy the books, I'm sure you'll find them both a fascinating and entertaining read.

The Last Dandy Reprinted

In case you missed it previously when it sold out like hot cakes, the final issue of The Dandy has been reprinted and is avaliable again for the same great price of £3.99! If you are yet to grab a copy, here are some of the goodies inside!

Reprints of great old strips such as Winker Watson, Corporal Clott, Sir Coward de Custard, Peter's Pocket Grandpa and many more appear in the same colours they originally did, hardly edited save for new speech bubbles!

The strips are either reprints from previous comics (like above) or brand new episodes, such as this brilliant take on Whacko! by Alexander Matthews, who drew Nuke Noodle and Robot On The Run.

Ken H. Harrison's Desperate Dan appears in there, and I'm certain that Albert, the waiter at the resturant, is based on Albert Barnes, the first editor of The Dandy! The character looks as though it is based on the photograph of Albert from the '75 Years Of The Dandy' book! Or is it just me...

Remember, that's out now from all good bookstores for just £3.99!

The Strongest Man (or Woman) in Comics!

Desperate Dan needs no introduction, as he is probably Britain's most famous strong man! Originally from the first Dandy in 1937, the he-man has survived almost 75 years in the comic and remains, according to the latest survey, the most popular character in the comic today! But he isn't the only super human to have appeared in comics, and here's a few more!

The Dandy's sister comic The Beano has had a few through it's time, and currently stars Bananaman! - a little boy who turns into a super-strong nit whenever he eats a banana! In a recent post I wrote about Danger - Len at Work, but the comics most succesful has to go to Pansy Potter! Pansy began in issue #21 (The first christmas issue!) and instead a being a muscly man, like most other characters, she was a young girl! I'm not too sure, but I think this may have been drawn by Jimmy Clark.

Going even further back than The Beano and The Dandy (although this character did in fact feature in The Beano), we arrive at Adventure comic! Illustrated by Dudley Watkins, Strang the Terrible was rather similar to Morgyn the Mighty, who appeared in Beano #1. Desbite being known as 'Terrible', Strang was the hero, always helping others out of unfortunate adventures!

Even the annuals had special super-strong characters made up for them. Young Ben is a text story from the 1968 Sparky annual, and I'm fairly certain that this is just a one off story.

Thomson weren't the only ones to use the idea, Fleetway would use the theme, but in several different ways! First up is Scared Stiff Sam. He certainly is strong, you can tell just by looking at him, but unlike the others Sam is afraid of anything and everything!

Another take was Frankie Stein! Half human, half monster, Frankie would cause more damage than a tornado, which involved everything from destroying his house to bringing home Big Ben tower to set his watch! Here he is destroying a brick wall for the 1977 annual, illustrated by Robert Nixon!

Gal Capone was a short lived strip from Whoopee, but she is, like Pansy Potter, another example of a female strongman! It was a very good strip too, except that maybe her arms are a little too big!

The Big One was an experiment comic that lasted for only 19 issues (more info on it here), and inside was a strip entitled Tough Tex. Because this comic is all reprint (except for Big One himself), Tough Tex originally appeared in The Comet, a comic from the 1950's. (Thanks to Clive Huckstepp for confirming this.)

And of course some still live on today, with Jamie Smart doing an excellent job on Desperate Dan and Wayne Thompson on Bananaman (and John Geering's reprints in the Beano)!