A common problem in buying old comics is that there can often be pages missing and it's hard to tell how many were supposed to be there in the first place. There are indexes and guides out there which give the details but these are hard to come by sometimes. Does anyone know, if it's not too much trouble, how the page counts changed over time in Magic Comic, the 1930s/40s companion to Beano and Dandy?

thanks!

Presumably the same as Dandy and Beano's.

I'll list Beano's, taken from The History of the Beano.

• October 1939: Pagination reduction from 28 to 24.
• June 1940: Pagination reduction from 24 to 20.
• November 1940: Pagination reduction from 20 to 18.
• January 1941: Beano pagination down to 16. Magic cancelled.

The full list of Magic Comic page counts is as follows

24 1(22/7/39) - 46(1/6/40)
20 47(8/6/40) - 65(12/10/40)
18 66(19/10/40) - 78(11/1/41)
16 79(18/1/41) - 80(25/1/41)

Obviously the 18 page issues would have had the odd single leaf page, glued in, which could have become unglued and fallen out.

excellent! Thanks for this!

Strange that it had four fewer pages than it's two brothers. Shows how fast rationing bit too, losing two more pages only to fold completely a fortnight later.

For comparison purposes, Digi, in the first four weeks of 1941 Adventure (published Mondays) had page counts of 18 : 18 : 18 : 16, The Wizard (published Tuesdays) 18 : 18 : 16 : 16, The Rover (published Thursdays) 18 : 18 : 16 : 16, The Hotspur (published Fridays) 18 : 18 : 16 : 16, and The Skipper (published Saturdays) 18 : 18 : 16 : 16. It is worth noting though that the following week's issue of The Skipper (same page count) was its last.

Strange that it had four fewer pages than it's two brothers. Shows how fast rationing bit too, losing two more pages only to fold completely a fortnight later.[/quote]

Not that strange Digi. The Magic Comic may have had fewer pages for 2d than the Dandy and Beano but more of them included colour including the centre pages and back page which were printed in full colour as opposed to only the cover page in the Dandy and Beano.