2017 Annuals Revealed

Covers for next years D.C Thomson annuals have been released, with the exception of The Beano. Above is the cover of The Dandy annual, priced at £7.99 on Amazon.

There is of course another classic comics collection, this time with an Indiana Jones themed cover. Raiders of the Lost Archive will cost £12.99.

There's a similar Broons and Oor Wullie collection, this one entitled 'Cooking Up Laughs!'. £12.99

Next year will have both a Broons and an Oor Wullie annual. Both are priced at £6.99.

And their respective calendars will each cost £7.

The calendars are due to come out on the 28th July, but the annuals have a slightly later release date of 1st August. But that still gives you plenty of time to get them before Christmas, so there can be no excuses.

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/

Beano and Dandy Summer Specials 2014

It turns out that last years "Last Ever Dandy Summer Special" wasn't the last ever one after all, as both The Dandy ("back by popular demand", apparently) and The Beano have summer specials out now. Each are 68 pages for £4.99, the Beano's Summer Activity Special (as it is called) coming with free stickers. The front covers can be seen above, The Beano one by Nigel Parkinson (I believe) and The Dandy by Bone-O artist Mike D.

It's good to see summer specials making a bit of a comeback this year, with the 2000AD special and now these it looks promising, but I doubt they'll ever return to their former glory.

They can both be ordered online from D.C Thomson's website:

https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/the-beano-summer-special-2014.html
https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/the-dandy-summer-special-2014.html

And if you wish to buy them both together, you can get them for £6.99 in the "Summer Special Pack":

https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/our-brands/dandy/books-comics/the-beano-and-dandy-summer-special-pack-2014.html

The Beano and Dandy on Sunday

Both The Beano and The Dandy have now been given away in a Sunday newspaper, The Dandy in July 2011 and The Beano last month.

I'm going to compare the two promotional comics, staring with The Dandy. It was given away in July 2011 inside the Sunday Post and was 32 pages thick and printed on the same quality paper as the weekly - so was no different in style to the regular comic. With the possible exception of the Harry Hill strip (and the "filler" pages) this giveaway is entirely reprint from Dandy strips published after the 2010 revamp (more about that here). This isn't really too much of an issue as the comic is trying to gain the title new readers anyway, who won't have seen the content but for any fans of the comic it is a bit of a let down (but hey, it's free and not aimed at us, so we can't really complain).

One thing The Dandy freebie was missing was a discount or special offer to encourage new readers to hop aboard. Sure, it had the 15 issues for £15 subscription offer (which really was good value for money), but the offer was available to regular weekly readers as well, so nothing exclusive.

Moving on to The Beano, that was 32 pages so unlike The Dandy equivalent is thinner than the regular comic. However, it does feature all new content that focuses around the main story that was running in The Beano - Gnasher going missing after stealing a dinosaur bone. The content is one continuous story with all the characters working around this main storyline. It seems very well pieced together in this way; even the bounty hunter with his eye patch and grey goatee was drawn the same way by two different artists on two different strips (David Sutherland on The Bash Street Kids and Wayne Thompson on Roger the Dodger). 

Unlike The Dandy, The Beano did offer a special discount to encourage new readers, allowing them to buy the next issue for £1 - 50% off. They also offered a fantastic offer for subscriptions - 15 issues for just £10!

It's good that the story arc wouldn't confuse any new readers too, as the free comic explains it all, so the whole project was very well thought out. Whereas I'm sure the Dandy was a minor success the comic didn't last long afterwards  I can't speak much for the future of The Beano at present, but the results of this free issue are promising, with it been reported that sales increased by 25% and that there are 1,400 new subscribers, so very good news indeed!

Here's the report on the results of the free Beano by D.C Thomson:

http://www.dcthomson.co.uk/media/the-beano-sees-significant-sales-uplift 

2014 Dandy Annual

I've just finished reading the latest Dandy annual and I must say - it's a cracker! It's over 100 pages for just £7.99, so I highly recommend buying a copy. If you're saving it as a treat until Christmas, stop reading now.

It's great to see a good number of classic characters in the lineup. There are a few that really stood out for me, the first being Winker Watson illustrated by Will Dawbarn. If the weekly comic was still around this would definitely a strip I'd like to see in it, in this format and two pages long!

Another character that really stood out was Big Bang Benny. I'm afraid that I can't identify the artist but whomever it is they've done a fantastic job on it. They didn't try to draw in the style of Ken Reid but in their own style that looks absolutely fantastic, hopefully we see more from him/her in the near future.

My favourite story in the whole annual was the eight-page Jack Silver adventure, illustrated by Will Dawbarn. Like his Winker Watson, this was coloured in the classic style.

And finally, I was pleased to see the return of Nigel Parkinson's Banana Bunch, even if it was only for one strip towards the back.

This book is a definite improvement on last year's already great Dandy annual. £7.99 is nothing for the fantastic content and if you weren't previously planning to, I recommend giving this year's annual a try.

Hopefully I'll be writing a review for The Beano annual soon, once I've bought and read it.

The Digital Dandy Dies

Well the week turns from bad to worse as alongside Mushka the Digital Dandy has also died. It ended with issue #13, last week's issue being the last.

#13 - the last issue.

It hasn't ended completely as the annuals will continue as they sell well, but this looks like the end for this great comic. For the digital version the Dandy team tried their hardest but it didn't work, and the random relaunch back to issue #1 couldn't have helped, but I applaud them for their efforts nonetheless.

It doesn't seem to be a very good time for comics at the moment as first the BeanoMax ended and now this, but hopefully the promised Dennis and Gnasher Megazine will make up for the loss, and we've still got the Beano's 75th birthday to look forwards to.

Although I've got a few posts just about ready to publish this blog might be quiet for the next few weeks as after the sudden death of Mushka I don't ever really seem to be in the mood to write.

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 New Dandy App And The Beano's iPrank

Today brings the exciting launch of a new Dandy app. When visiting the Dandy website it appears as though they've had another re-launch, as all the previous issues have been deleted and replaced by a free preview issue, and issue one. There's a screenshot below.

I've downloaded the app, and the first think you're asked to do is create an avatar that looks like you, and then give him suitable clothes. I can't seem to do this sort of thing, and this is what I ended up with:

Your avatar (the person you've created) will then appear in Desperate Dan's strip 'The Pie's The Limit', and there's a reward for finding him. Unfortunatley the app crashed before I could start reading the strip, but I know other people have got further so I'm sure it's all good fun if it works.

Sadly any past issues of the digital Dandy you may have bought have been deleted, which is really annoying and I hope D.C Thomson give them back to the people who've paid for them.

Moving on to the second app - The Beano iPrank. This one is a collection of digital pranks, and I'll very briefly run through them now.

The first one is called Beano Bigmouth. Basically, there are two screens of moving mouths - one of Dennis' mouth and one of Gnasher's. This is demonstrated on a Beano cover.

The second one is called Super Soundboard, and can play some various sounds such as a dog barking, to fool people into thinking those sounds are real!

The third one is Fart Finder, which detects who committed the stinky crime, although I couldn't get it to find anybody, but that might be because I didn't give it enough time (that, or because nobody actually farted).

The Menace-o-meter is very simple - it scans your fingerprint and tells you whether or not you're a menace.

And finally, there's Eye Fright. This one is a basic eye test, but after a few real questions (as shown below), the last one is impossible, and if you try to guess an answer, a laughing Gnasher pops up.

The Beano app runs far better than the Dandy app, which I found very tricky and hard to use, although the best comic app out there remains The Phoenix app! Both the Beano iPrank and The Dandy are free to download for Android and IOS devices, and I recommend you give them a try if you can.

We've also been promised a Pulp Detective app since the comic folded after just one issue, but so far it hasn't seen the light of day, and I'm beginning to doubt that it ever will.