Reminiscing Over Those Dandy Annuals
CHRISTMAS IS upon us, a time the shops used to be traditionally stocked with comic book annuals in the UK. Sadly, few major publishers still produce them, there are some out there, including The Dandy even though its weekly edition no longer exists.
Join us as we peruse the contents of a few of those Dandy annuals produced in recent years... Because they're still worth reading, and sharing with young folk, and up and down the UK there are comic marts, conventions, car boot sales and school fairs you may be lucky to come across such treasure troves at reasonable prices...
The Dandy Annual 2011
“Making the nation laugh since 1937!” reads the cover's strapline, reminding us it helped our granddads get through a world war, but it has been a few years since a Dandy Annual made me raise more than a few smiles I must admit.
It was obvious that for the decade previous the weekly Dandy comic had been trying to hook itself to a trend rather than setting them like it did for so many decades. At the tail end of 2010 it went through another relaunch, the reaction to that had been mainly positive at the time, but this annual would have been in production way before that.
There’s an awful lot of geometrically angled cartooned art (done on computer rather than drawn perhaps?) that I’m not keen on and far too much purple and pink digital colouring for my weary bloodshot eyes, but by golly the stories are better than the previous few years’ annuals. Some nice corny jokes present with fun routines and scenarios; nothing special, but more than a few smiles and maybe this grumpy old bear even laughed once.
Marvo the Wonder Chicken makes good silent slapstick comedy, Puss ‘n Boots rock (quite literally this time round!) and should have had far more pages than a number of lesser strips featuring newer blander characters, and I rather like C. McGhie’s take on Korky the Cat.
The Dandy Annual 2012
Celebrating 75 years in publication this Dandy Annual lives up to the writing standard of 2011’s collection of corny gags and silly scenarios; in fact I’m wondering if one particular script writer was responsible for the first quarter of the book at least for it comes across in a very coherent style, or maybe it’s down to a good editor – Either way, it’s mostly good stuff.
I’m still not a fan of abstract geometrically challenged cartooning ; well not if it’s low on the storytelling ability quota but you can’t go wrong with Laura Howell’s absolutely brilliant visual take on the classic Bully Beef and Chips – I didn’t realise it was the Brummie-based cartoonist at first, just found myself chuckling away then saw a small signature on the side of the first of a couple of cracking strips that feature a much welcomed return to over-the-top cartoon mayhem where within a couple of panels we see more punches thrown than a year’s worth of some American superhero comics – And drawn by a girl! Drawn well, very, very well – Put that in your pipe and smoke it, macho-men! Oh, yeah and whoever wrote it did a good job too, in single pages.
Desperate Dan, The Dandy’s very own cow-pie eating Superman, takes the breadth of the book to serialise his holiday across the United States with Nigel Parkinson doing a more than fair proximity of Ken Harrison’s art style. Not sure about Nigel Auchterlounie’s Puss and Boots but his Corporal Clott’s a surprise hoot!
The Dandy Annual 2013
Hold on it says “75th Birthday” on the cover – Weren’t they celebrating that with the 2012 annual? Hrm. Is it me going senile, someone trying to pull the wool other my eyes again or people not paying attention?
It’s a time to celebrate and commemorate regardless: the latter part of 2012 saw us mourn the passing of the regular edition of The Dandy as a regularly published comic, even though most of us hadn’t read it for years, including those of us who had actually bought it for our kids (and not many of us had apparently, causing its sales to drop, that or we never saw it because of distribution wars between supermarkets, newsagents and the like). So The Dandy began to exist only as an online edition, but no doubt with printed specials and annuals still due for some years to come, not least because there’s a printing press that needs to be kept running for a wee while longer.
The real reason to celebrate last year’s Dandy Annual was that it was actually a treat to read, after failing to raise much of a smile from me during the previous handful of years; 2012’s was stonking good fun with some lively cartooning present, so with the promise of old characters who’d not been in print for decades due to appear within this year’s hardcover pages it meant the title should see 2013 out in style.
Desperate Dan litters the pages – quite literally as he causes mayhem everywhere he goes throughout the book, Bananaman slips into regular superheroic parody while attempts at social satire can be found lurking between some of the veiled dialogue on strips like Winker Watson and The Badd Lads, both credited to Wilbur, Laura Howell updates Keyhole Kate and delights again with Bully Beef and Chips, while yet another truly bad boy returns courtesy of Lew Stringer with The Smasher but it’s his beautifully coloured Julius Sneezer the snotty-nosed Caesar that had me chuckling out loud over a character I could have taken or left back when I was a lad.
I’ve got to say the strips taken as a whole aren’t as outrageously funny as in last year’s annual, but they score a good batting average. Mind you, a little more careful editing would have been appreciated – Lew’s last Smasher strip is reprinted twice in the book, there’s a Badd Lads strip with the word balloons cropped on the right hand side of the page, and the misuse of “except” when it should be “accept” is frankly unacceptable. Where? You go look for yourself. But also enjoy the other stuff along the way.
The most surreal comeback is the Black Bob strip serialised throughout the annual. Those of us of a certain age will remember the dour adventures of the black and white super sheepdog who made Lassie look lazy and Brighty (whose forename is Mark, I believe) has got the visual look of original artist Jack Prout down darn well, but it’s the totally bonkers caption narrated story of an attempt to secretly build a nuclear power plant in the Scottish Highlands that had me entranced and enjoying every absurd moment... That he can then go from drawing straight adventure to capturing David Law’s sketchy cartooning style when drawing Beryl the Peril needs to be applauded, and the strip with Dad walking in with a slipper has to be the best in the book.
The Dandy Annual 2014
An eye-grabbing Desperate Dan cow-pie eating front cover is delineated with class by Ken H Harrison and its gag cartoon result featured on the back, whereas its start and end papers have The Dandy’s cast illustrated in the same scenario of being chased. Inside there is a wide variety of cartooning on offer, and either I’m becoming more accepting of the newer art styles featured in recent years or those artists’ own work is evolving to a greater degree, thus visually the compendium offered this year works. The stories less so. Some are good, but not all and the jokes are well trodden. Also, some of the strips digital colouring is too dark.
Now I’m not too sure about Nigel Auchterlounie’s Korky the Cat being visually more akin to that even more ancient feline, Felix the Cat, but I do like his cartooning approach on Nick Kelly, Special Agent (the forerunner to Danger Mouse) in the book. Even more abstract is Wilbur Dawbarn’s art on Winker Watson, wherein a sly twist in the way the Grey Towers school privately educated kids’ stories are portrayed – they’re the comic book equivalent of the Tory party’s sprogs and much as we may be dubious about all that there’s a small part of us that admires the audacity of such folk, OK magazine and reality TV has seeped into our consciousness that far, more so with our youths who this annual is intended for.
Harrison is ever dependable upon the Desperate Dan strips within, and Lew Stringer’s adds a slice of old school IPC style to his work on The Smasher and some perfectly choreographed Keyhole Kate scenarios. Born of The Beezer, as I recall, The Bananna Bunch is a busily illustrated strip by NigelParkinson with some good jokes across its two pages while semi-adventure characters of yore like the robot Brassneck and alien sci-fi of Jack Silver are given heavy cartoon overhauls for the modern age, with Dawburn illustrating the latter the story comes across as something that might once have appeared in Escape, a decent romp either way.
Not as funny as last year’s outing, but enough to make one proud to be British and another reason to hope Scotland doesn’t ever go it alone thus making The Dandy and The Beano annuals imports into England!
...And also, the Last Ever Issue of The Dandy weekly comic!
2012 saw the final printed copy of a comic that had been entertaining British kids since today’s youngsters’ great grandparents were small. Sales had fallen in recent years prompting its physical demise. You can’t theorise why, and some of the reasons are valid, more importantly you have to accept it happened. The good thing is it went out on a high.
Not that everyone knows that. With all the news coverage of it being the final issue copies mysteriously went missing at newsagents up and down the country. Either bought up quickly by those hoping to make a quick profit on eBay or not leaving certain distributors’ warehouses with the same intentions the conspiracy theorists had it.
But many did reach the shops and supermarkets and were bought, read and enjoyed. It took me several months to get my copy. A good friend had popped into a local newsagent and asked in an offhand manner if they had any copies, and the proprietor had replied in the affirmative. In fact he had quite a few, but not on display, even better he was selling them at cost price!
It transpires this gentleman, suspecting people would be trying to make a profit on them had held onto a batch of copies he had and was ensuring those who (primarily kids naturally) really wanted to get copies and read at prices they could afford wouldn’t be denied. Well, my friend bought a copy and kindly sold it onto me at the same price and gave it to me that weekend.
The Dandy did end on a high. Nigel Parkinson, Lew Stringer, Ken Harrison and other cartoonists delivered spiffing strips of all kinds featuring characters not seen in decades in some cases; the very first issue is reprinted in the final one’s centre pages and some of it stands up today beyond being something of popular cultural history, while it brings a smile to the face to see reprints of a few other strips from my youth, some I’d long forgotten by artists possibly forever unknown.
For more information on The Dandy click here.
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