A Tribute to The Dandy

by Nicholas Lemieux

Sadly, it is a true fact that in this age of ever-evolving digital technology, children’s paper comics are almost a thing of the past, especially in Britain. In decades long past, comics like Topper, Nutty, Sparky and countless others used to regularly fill the stands of newsagents. Now, almost every single one of these comics have disappeared, the prime exceptions being the still-classic Beano and the fairly recent Phoenix, the latter of which does inspire some hope in the future for paper comics, serving as a throwback to the days long past. Now the stands are occupied with garish magazines geared towards an especially young audience, filled with extended adverts for the latest pop culture trend, tacky plastic free gifts messily taped to the front cover, and most devastating at all, not a single original comic strip in sight. There used to be a time when comics were made not just with kids in mind but grown-ups too, bringing everyone, friends and family together through laughter. As such, it’s been a real disappointment watching the deterioration of the traditional comics market. The specific reason as to why I am writing this article is because next month, on December 4th, marks the 81st anniversary of The Dandy, one of Britain’s longest-running children’s comic, and it also being 6 years since the comic ended.

Amidst topical conversation, The Dandy has been heavily overshadowed by its partner comic The Beano in terms of British pop culture and comic icons. Indeed, the character line-up in The Beano is much more iconic, with a memorable character roster of Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Roger the Dodger, and the Bash Street Kids. I myself collected The Beano every week for about 5 years and I still remember it fondly. However, I can also remember younger me becoming slightly bored with The Beano after a couple of years as I found myself wanting the comic to try something more creative and to expand with new characters and strips who weren’t the same naughty, mischievous children. Back then, The Dandy was still publishing every week and after a while I started to become more drawn by the much wider roster of The Dandy and its particular sense of humour, bizarre as it could sometimes be. I recall that at this point Harry Hill had become the comic’s mascot, starring in his own weekly two-page comic strip, which should perhaps give you something of an idea of the comic’s quirky sense of humour. Admittedly, his strips were a bit too cheesy for my liking (even if The Harry Hill Movie, featuring his dying hamster, Matt Lucas as his evil twin brother and a surprisingly risqué joke about nuns, remains a cinematic masterpiece), but the other strips featured inside definitely caught my attention and gave me plenty of laughs along the way.

Although not as famous as The Beano, The Dandy did have their own fairly well-known roster, including Korky the Cat, a cunning anthropomorphic cat, Bananaman, a silly yet affectionate parody of the superhero genre about a schoolboy who transforms into a muscled, caped figure when he eats a banana, and, probably the comic’s most famous character and mascot, Desperate Dan, a cowboy who was the strongest man in the world and had an overwhelming appetite for cow pies. During its last few years, when I started collecting it, The Dandy decided to go all-out and, through the creative minds of several brilliant young artists and writers, introduced a whole new range of comic strips with hilarious concepts and executions. There was George vs. Dragon, a parody of the Saint George vs. the dragon tale, involving a vain, arrogant knight coming up with hare-brained schemes to slay a harmless innocent dragon who just wanted to be left alone, with every strip involving the plan backfiring in some way; Pre-Skool Prime Minister, set in a world where everyone grew tired with grown-up politics and decided to elect a four-year-old child as Prime Minister, who would come up with new solutions to solve the world’s problems, most of which involved jam and chutney in some way (insert Brexit deal joke here).; Nuke Noodle, a wrestler who after somehow winning the Nobel Peace Prize for wrestling, invents a time machine to travel to the past just to beat up as many historical figures as he can (the final strip involved him trying to fight the first ever devloping living organism, which of course ends with him wiping out the human race); Mr. Meecher the Uncool Teacher, a young teacher who desperately yearns for the respect of his pupils (and also for them to call him by his first name, Trevor). Honestly, I just could just spend all day raving about these characters.

I think it’s important to note the extremely long tenure and publication of The Dandy, running for a whole 75 long years, from 1937 to 2012, and all the way to the very end it still maintained a high quality of strips. Of course, there were a couple of missteps along the way, such as the brief period in the mid 2000’s when it rebranded itself as Dandy Xtreme and almost became just as desperate as those other artificial magazines, but overall, at least from nine-year-old me’s perspective, the last couple or so years were a hoot to read. However, as mentioned before, over time Dandy gradually started to decline over a long, gruelling period, coinciding with the general lapse of children in interest in paper comics. In the 50’s, The Dandy was getting by with at least two million sales a week, but by 2012, sales had slumped to only 8,000 a week. Although its recent redesign with all these new creative characters had drawn praise from its small but dedicated fanbase, it was only inevitable that by this point its days were numbered.

The announcement came in August 2012 and four months later, on December 4th, exactly 75 years since its first publication , The Dandy finally folded with a run of 3,610 issues. However, it definitely ensured it went out in style with a whooping 100-page edition featuring a countdown of the comic’s top 75 characters and a special cut-out copy of the comic’s very first issue. Ultimately, The Dandy would’ve gone out on a high note if it weren’t for its brief continuation online. In a last-bid attempt to save The Dandy, DC Thomson, hoping to cash in on the technological trend, introduced The Digital Dandy, operational on the comic’s website and on its own app. It was a noble effort, but due to the app being plagued with bugs and glitches, the digital relaunch was overall a failure and ended just six months after it had premiered.

The Dandy was among the world’s longest-running comics at the time of its closure, and I suppose it did have a good run overall, but still its demise serves as a reminder of the dying industry of children’s comics, with kids nowadays paying more attention to screens rather than books. The Dandy does still live on in yearly annual editions coming out every Christmas, featuring brand new strips of its beloved characters. I must also thank The Dandy for being such a big part of my childhood and for just bringing a couple more laughs into this world.

Happy 81st Birthday, Dandy. It was a blast while it lasted.