The Dandy is Britain's oldest comic and will celebrate 75 years of publication in December this year. Then it'll stop.
That's right, they've finally thrown in the towel and the comic will cease to exist as a published, printed, stapled-together paper thing this year. Although owners D C Thomson claim to have digital Dandy projects in the works. We'll see what that means.
As it is lots of newspaper column inches and nerdy blogs have been given over to discussing what this means. Is it a terrible destruction of a British icon or a long-overdue mercy-killing of a pre-war relic? And there are those (like Charlie Brooker in The Guardian) complaining that these writers have no business pontificating on something they don't read and isn't aimed at them. They're just pining for their lost childhood.
Well guess what. I read it. I am an adult man and I read The Dandy. And I enjoy it.
Admitting you like good art specifically aimed at children gets you looked at with either pity or suspicion in this country. We've yet to have our own movement like the Bronies. But our time is coming.
I grew in a time when there was a huge choice in children's comics. After the true golden age had past but I still had plenty to choose from. I generally preferred the Odhams/Fleetway/IPC stable (the company changed hands a lot) as they generally seemed more anarchic and weird but D C Thomson's output was always consistently great too.
The king of those comics (and soon to be the last man standing, more-or-less) was The Beano. The Dandy (which was less than a year older) always seemed the less fun one. The Topper and The Beezer also seemed slightly "cooler" than The Dandy for reasons I couldn't explain as a kid. However when a comic failed to meet its target circulation and was cancelled, the popular characters who still had legs found themselves in The Dandy. This had the effect of gradually strengthening the parent comic.
Since my teenage years I hadn't paid The Dandy much attention. Until the horrific relaunch as "Dandy Xtreme" a magazine (!) with a pull-out comic (!) in 2007. I was working in a shop that sold comics at the time and I was furious. The publishers were making it hip and cool and "not your father's Dandy" and Poochie. And the comic part was secondary. "That's it." I said. "It'll be dead within a year." I was wrong, as it turned out, but it did damage the Dandy brand.
It reminded me of my favourite read as a kid; Oink!
Oink!, which incidentally was the aforementioned Charlie Brooker's first writing gig, was great. It was anarchic, rude and hilarious. Outside of Viz (which was TOO far for my sensitive Catholic eyes) it was the most punk rock of the comics.It even had Frank Sidebottom, a funny bloke off the telly, doing strips starring himself. And it was peppered with fake adverts for all the stuff marketing people were telling me to buy in other comics. Ace.
And most of that last paragraph can be used to describe the "new" Dandy. Just replace Frank Sidebottom with Harry Hill (cover star for most of the relaunched comic's first year) and pretty much still stands. And it was funny. Properly funny. To my grown-up brain. It was a joy.
And in the (nearly) two years since it has been consistently entertaining, innovative and giving exposure to new talents. Everything I would have wanted in a comic as a child or an adult.
And this is what we get. Shame.
I'm willing to bet that the more popular characters like Desperate Dan (genuine British icon - he's got a statue in Dundee y'know), Bananaman and hopefully a couple of Jamie Smart's brilliant creations will live on in the pages of The Beano (which appears safe for now) but it's a sad time for British comics. I'll be watching the fortunes of Toxic and The Phoenix too. Because that's it once they've gone.
Excuse me.... I have something in my eye....
I've bought and enjoyed the dandy since it's Harry hill writers' relaunch. But the fact is not enough people have, and the numbers have got fewer and fewer consistently. A free Web comic funded by advertising, which I presume is where it's heading, would get an instant subscribe. It's a shame it won't be printed on paper any more. Just like it's a shame novels aren't written in weekly installments any more, and that poets don't rely on a single wealthy benefactors to eat any more.
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