phoenix4ever wrote:whenever I have needed to ring the British Library, I have always received courteous attention and a reasonably prompt response to my enquiry. They were always particularly good at dealing with my Reader Requests when I phoned them in from Liverpool
Maybe they preferred your accent to mine.
phoenix4ever wrote:most of the papers that are not requested particularly often are very shortly to be transferred to the British Library's new buildings in Boston Spa in Yorkshire
True but The Dandy (certainly up to 1992) is in Colindale at the moment
phoenix4ever wrote:.Don't all shout at once, 'Where's Yorkshire?' I'm a Lancastrian, how would I know?
Thanks again - I didn't expect such great responses!
You may be right about the baby boom, Steve. I'm sure there are lots of factors, causing a slow and gradual decline in sales, so I'll have to list them all. The research is taking a long time. I have to read lots of things just to find something useful. On a positive note (well...I say positive ) I managed to find the Dandy Xtreme yesterday, available for the princely price of just...£2.99? I remember when I used to complain that the price had risen from 50p to 52p - surely £2.99 is another factor that is driving away customers? I find it heavily ironic that they are claiming to issue 4 free gifts, but they are in fact adding on 74p, in this case, to compensate for the tat. What was it this week? A sweet, a waterballoon catapult, a boomerang and.... a bogies mini mag? Surely that succeeds only in catering to the lowest form of humour? Admittedly, I am outside of the target audience, but I'm pretty sure I would have been disgusted by that when I was seven, or whatever age the Dandy Xtreme (the only thing I found xtreme about it was the price) is meant to cater for - 7-12? I was only joking when I said the Dandy was all about bogies nowadays, but it seems I was right in this instance. God I sound like a grumpy old man. Ah I remember what the Dandy was like in my day... I probably have comics britannia somewhere but I'm not sure. I've been looking for it on the internet but I can't find it. What does it look like - it might trigger my memory!
Digifiend - yes I have The Beano Diaries and The Dandy Monster Index. They are quite useful, but only in listing all the characters in the comic, as they do not provide any sort of analysis or insight into the success of the two comics. I will have a look at the History of The Beano - even if it is not too relevant to my project, I will probably enjoy reading it anyway, so it's probably worth the £17.50 on amazon. Thanks for the advice about comics britannia - if I do use it, I'll make sure to double-check any information I find, and if I'm unsure, I know that everyone on here will answer any queries I have. Hmm that's strange - I see the beano everywhere, the beanomax occasionally, dandy xtreme hardly ever and I never see Classics from the Comics - maybe that's just where I live? Yes I did know that, and certainly shows to me that it has declined, although I suppose we can take heart from the fact it's still going - although that may only be because of the history of the comic, if nothing else. Hmm yes I was a bit confused by that - I don't even remember signing up in 2007 haha. I just went to create the account elliotgc and found I'd already made it :p. I have been having problems with it though. When I created the topic it said error or something and went back to the post, but I checked and it had been submitted, although it was not listed on the forums page, under dandy, even though when I went to my posts, it was listed under dandy :S. Anyway, I clicked bump and the posts started flooding in. Then when I posted the second time it said error and I refreshed and found it had posted twice - let's hope that doesn't happen this time!
Jonny - The Dandy's purpose was probably not to entertain, but that does not mean it did not contain some educational aspects which would benefit children. I'm not sure whether the parents would buy their children the comics if they thought they would have a detrimental effect on their education and humour! Hmm, I would have thought that comics would be a good idea for pre-school children, as they like a lot of pictures and this would be an easy way for them to learn words while enjoying the pictures. Still, I suppose I'm not the child expert! Hmm yes you might have thought that, although I think when those four characters were introduced sales were already beginning to fall slightly - maybe the craze of comics had worn off, and the dandy and beano were no longer radical, new, and controversial, but traditional, conservative and with a terrible sense of deja vu. I suppose children just lost interest in them. And as discussed, I think the 1950 issue was a bit of an anomaly, due to other circumstances, and as such was unlikely ever to be beaten. It's true that those four characters were revolutionary, but why didn't the Dandy have such success and continuity. Why didn't the likes of smasher, the jocks and the geordies, bully beef and chips and black bob have the same levels of success and live to such a ripe old age?
Hmm this is taking a long time. I'll stop now and continue in the morning, otherwise I'll just start rambling and repeating myself.
Elliotgc wrote:
You may be right about the baby boom, Steve. I'm sure there are lots of factors, causing a slow and gradual decline in sales, so I'll have to list them all.
As has been said, the decline in sales is typical of ALL publications if you compare them to 50 years ago. Kids have other things to occupy their minds these days, plus the standards of literacy have dropped. The Dandy is, like everything else, trying to survive in a shrinking market. Its sales have been lower than The Beano's for decades.
Elliotgc wrote:The research is taking a long time. I have to read lots of things just to find something useful. On a positive note (well...I say positive ) I managed to find the Dandy Xtreme yesterday, available for the princely price of just...£2.99? I remember when I used to complain that the price had risen from 50p to 52p - surely £2.99 is another factor that is driving away customers?
Possibly, but the theory is this is compensated by the four free gifts ATTRACTING new customers and the higher price is an incentive for the supermarket giants to stock it. One thing that has changed since 50 years ago is that the retail giants demand thousands of pounds just to stock a title these days, outside of their percentage of cover price. The more a publisher pays, the better shelf position the title receives. This applies to all mags, not just comics. And supermarkets like Asda, Tesco, etc are more likely to go for a comic with a cover mount - as are the kids, who now see "free gifts" as part of their comic package. Apparently the occasional increased cover price does not harm sales overall, so they'll continue to do it. In a way it's no different to the "Bumper Double Numbers" of pre-war comics which would increase their price for that issue. No extra pages in Xtreme, but extra (and in theory better) free gifts instead.
Elliotgc wrote:Admittedly, I am outside of the target audience, but I'm pretty sure I would have been disgusted by that when I was seven, or whatever age the Dandy Xtreme (the only thing I found xtreme about it was the price) is meant to cater for - 7-12? I was only joking when I said the Dandy was all about bogies nowadays, but it seems I was right in this instance.
Yes, but humour has changed since we were seven. At seven I'd have found Doctor Who Adventures an insult to my intelligence (TV Century 21 was far more informative and mature) but today's kids love it! Bear in mind the content of a comic isn't assembled on a whim, but due to market research. In an ideal world we'd all like to see comics return to the 1950s/60s style but the reason things changed is because subsequent generations found that style boring!
Elliotgc wrote:Why didn't the likes of smasher, the jocks and the geordies, bully beef and chips and black bob have the same levels of success and live to such a ripe old age?
To be fair, Smasher and Black Bob had a very long run compared to most strips. Smasher just fell out of popularity, perhaps partly because the name is no longer relevant (who calls anyone a "smasher" these days?) and Black Bob was old fashioned even by the 1960s! (Though I for one loved the strip and it taught me to read.)
What it comes down to is that changes in society have caused changes in comics. The Dandy didn't change overnight, as you know. Pick one issue from any decade and you'll see the changes which gradually led to the faster-paced, less verbose Dandy of today.
phoenix4ever wrote:The message posted by NP, to which I have replied, disappeared from the thread the moment I submitted my previous post.
Not another one... Al needs to fix this pronto. That's twice it's happened, each time at the start of a new page, and both times, your post appears twice (along with NP's missing post this time) in the Topic Review. It would appear the first two posts on the last page keep going missing. By the way, the earlier missing posts have reappeared, so you might want to remove your duplicate post Phoenix.
Elliot, unfortunately all the comics tend to charge extra when they include multiple free gifts, normally The Beano is £1.25, and Dandy Xtreme is £2.25, but the current issues are £1.99 and £2.99 due to the extra gifts. I don't like the way prices fluctuate at all, but sadly, that's how it works these days, as Lew explained. In 2007, Beano was 85p and Dandy (not Xtreme yet) was £1.30, so both have had steep price increases in the last couple of years.
Digifiend wrote:By the way, the earlier missing posts have reappeared, so you might want to remove your duplicate post Phoenix.
Thank you for pointing this out, Digi. Unfortunately I will have to rely on one of the Board members to remove it as my method has proved inadequate this morning.
You're right about the Apollonian ideals, AJ. They might not have been the most Apollonian comics of their time, and I suppose that might be why they have been so successful. They were radical and different from anything that had preceded them. Hmm, my argument is beginning to sound flawed. Maybe children just didn't like comics with Apollonian ideals and that's why those stopped. In the post-war era, it was obviously important to educate children about the war and instil in them some kind of morals, as evidenced by the popularity of stories such as General Jumbo, where good triumphed over evil. These stories would obviously be popular around that time, as the British were then very popular. Maybe as the years since the war passed people lost interest and that's why comics such as Victor and Hotspur ended?
Tony - you may be right about the arrival of those four comic strips in the Beano, but why didn't the Dandy have any strips arriving in the 1950s which compared with them? Surely with the increasing popularity of The Eagle, among others, DCThomson felt they had to do something to increase the popularity of the Beano and the Dandy. The revolutionary characters arrived in the Beano, but why not in the Dandy? You may be right about the Dandy being a bit old fashioned - Desperate Dan and Black Bob are evidence of this - but the Dandy is certainly not old fashioned nowadays - maybe it was popular because it was old fashioned, and didn't feel the need to fit in - maybe it was cool because it wasn't? I don't know.
Andy - you wouldn't happen to know what the sales figures for the 1950s were, would you? Aside from the anomaly of 22 April 1950? Why didn't DCThomson choose to put two of those four strips in the Dandy instead? Or maybe they had new strips in the Dandy, but they just didn't achieve the same levels of success? Maybe people bought the Beano to see Dennis the Menace, and the other three were just extra? If Dennis had been in the Dandy, maybe the story would have been different? The solid core of strips, with a few additions, is obviously one reason for the Beano's success, but why didn't the Dandy use the same tried and tested method?
I've got a Dandy from 2006 here, and this fortnight's issue of Dandy Xtreme. In 2006 it contained Bananaman, Hyde and Shriek, Brassneck, Cuddles and Dimples, Owen Goal, Ollie Fliptrik, Desperate Dan, My Own Genie, Jak and Beryl the Peril. Now Dandy Xtreme contains Desperate Dan, Dr Loo, Jak and Todd, Marvo, Bananaman, The Bogies and Cuddles and Dimples. Both have 36 pages, yet there is a marked difference in the number of storylines, and the lineup of the stories. I know the Dandy switched to magazine format, but why such a huge decline in the number of stories? Whatever happened to classic favourites like Beryl the Peril and Brassneck, who were around only three years ago?
Contrast that with a Beano of 2006, and last week's edition. 2006 contained Dennis the Menace, Ivy the Terrible, The Numskulls, Ball Boy, Calamity James, Billy Whizz, The Bash Street Kids, Gnasher and Gnipper, Minnie the Minx, Big Brad Wolf, Little Plum, Roger the Dodger and Bea. Now the comic contains Dennis, Billy, Numskulls, Rasher, Les Pretend, Minnie the Minx, Freddie Fear, Gnasher, Ratz, BSK, Ball Boy, Fred's Bed, Billy the Cat, Bea and Ivy, Roger the Dodger and Dennis and Gnasher. That is an improvement in the number of storylines. The only new ones area Freddie Fear, Ratz and Fred's Bed. Les Pretend and Billy the Cat had been in the Beano for many years before. The only ones missing since 2006 were Calamity James, Big Brad Wolf (was he just in that one issue?) and Little Plum. Both James and Plum had been in the comic for many years, so I think that certainly proves your point about continuity in the comics, Andy. I'm sure if I looked at a comic from 10 or 20 years ago the results would be even more conclusive. I might do that later, but I think this post is already getting rather long!
You certainly know the Beano well, Digifiend! Little Plum returned in the 2000s, even though he may be slightly old-fashioned, and he was, I believe, popular, yet a lot of the Dandy's characters were deemed old-fashioned. Why didn't the return of classic characters in the Dandy have the same levels of success? Why did General Jumbo and Billy the Cat stop? I always thought they were great stories, which were very well drawn, and were different from anything else in the Beano. They are great examples of good triumphing over evil, something which doesn't seem to happen in today's comics - maybe they're just being more realistic? In life, justice doesn't always prevail - maybe they are trying to educate children by telling them that?
Thanks for the list of those books, phoenix. I've looked at them on google books and they look very relevant. Unfortunately they were limited preview so I'll go down to the local library tomorrow and ask if they can get them. It may take a couple of weeks though, and I looked on abebooks and found a couple of them for £5 including p&p, so it may be worth just buying them.
When I said I collected comics and annuals, you probably thought that just meant I'd bought each comic and annual for the years I'd been collecting didn't you? You probably didn't think it meant I had over 2000 annuals, did you? I don't blame you, my collection surprises myself at times haha. I have every Beano annual since 1950, and every Dandy annual since 1952, apart from 1954. I have complete sets of Victor, Hotspur, Eagle, Warlord, Desperate Dan, Bash Street Kids, Beezer, Topper and Sparky and near complete sets of Valiant, Dennis the Menace, Beryl the Peril, Cor, Whizzer and Chips, Black Bob, Lion and Tiger. I sell my duplicates on ebay, and buy replacements for the ones I am missing with profits. I'm kind of glad I didn't start properly collecting comics, or I think it would have cost me a great deal more! I have probably about every Beano and Dandy comic back to 1980, and they're just ones I picked up at carboot sales. I'll buy a Dandy comic for every five years since 1950 so I can compare the "evolution". I have those Golden Years books, and they are very useful, especially Great Stories from the First Fifty Years. I'm sure those other books will provide invaluable aids with my project, how did you find them?
Thanks for the advice on the British Library, NP. Unfortunately, as I live in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, I will probably be unable to go there. I am going down to London for a law day at the College of Law later this month, but I doubt I will have time to go to the British Library, and I certainly won't have time to go to Colindale. You said you cannot take things away from the library in Colindale, but can you take things away from the library in St Pancras?
You're right about the increased circulation in 1950, Lew, I remember reading that somewhere else. The Beano has been consistent, that's true, and I suppose that's one secret to it's success. It still puzzles me why the Dandy did not do the same, but that's another matter. The characters are familiar to older generations, but I'm sure they'd find something to complain about with the modern Beano, for example the price, the different drawing styles, the glossy paper and the different storylines, but I suppose that's just a generational thing. I'm sure in fifty years I'll be complaining about the decline of comics...oh wait...that's what I'm doing now!
In the past the Dandy was always different from everything else, and was seen as radical and exciting, and that was why it was successful. What did they hope to achieve by copying another comic? Children who buy Toxic aren't suddenly going to switch to buy another comic which is almost exactly the same are they? It's like with music records - the copy is never as good as the original! True, we aren't the target audience, but the facts speak clearly enough of the comic's "evolution". It may not be DCThomson's fault, and may, in part, be due to the increasing popularity of video games, among other things, but the Beano sells almost three times as many copies as the Dandy, and is published twice as often. If the Dandy had kept the same formula, namely of consistency, as the Beano, it might have had the same levels of success. Of course this is all hypothetical ifs, buts, maybes and mights, and we can't change the course of History. Maybe the Dandy has gone too far down a path from which it will never return, and nothing lasts forever, but I think that DCThomson have to try something to save the Dandy from its downward spiral. Whether that means bringing back successful characters from the past, I'm not so sure.
I think I lost interest in the Dandy at 12, because I just didn't like the new format, although looking back now, it doesn't seem too bad and is still about 95% comic strips. I kept buying it, purely because I wanted to continue my complete run, in the vain hope that Dandys from the 1990s and 2000s might be worth something one day. I'm sure people in the 1970s and 1980s used to complain of the changes. I suppose people just don't like change, although I very much doubt that the seven year olds of today see the Dandy Xtreme as "the height of traditional comics".
I was wondering, maybe I should ask a bunch of 7-11 year olds to read a Dandy from today and a Dandy from a few years ago and see which they prefer. The results would probably be very useful, although I'm not sure they'd like the old black and white formats from the 1950s. Maybe magazines are just the things kids like nowadays. I doubt they would say that it is the best thing ever, as I'm sure they could find fault with something, even if it was the disappearance of Dreadlock Holmes, for example. Plus, a Dandy Xtreme reader is a harder thing to find nowadays than it might sound. There are only 28000 copies sold each issue, out of a population of 60000000, which is around 1 in 2000 people, and for all we know, they might not even like it. It could be collectors like ourselves buying them purely to own every Dandy in existence. Even when I was buying the Dandy aged 7 I didn't think it was the best thing ever, and I realised it was on a downward spiral, far-cry from the days of Hungry Horace and Black Bob, but maybe I'm just an exception.
It's unfortunate that the Dandys have not yet been transferred to the British Library's new buildings in Boston Spa, as that is only about eight miles away from me! Are you saying that some comics may already be at Boston Spa? Do you think it would be worth having a look?
True, the standards of literacy have dropped, but in the early days of comics they were mainly text based stories, which expanded the children's vocabularies. Children still read books nowadays, so what's wrong with mainly text based stories?
Ah I had not thought about the retail giants' roles in all of this, Lew. That may be true, but with the Dandy Xtreme costing £2.99 this week, I still found it at the back, behind the Beano, and there was only one copy of the Dandy, compared to the 6 or 7 of the Beano. Maybe this is because the Beano is more popular, or maybe less Dandys are published?
You may be right about the gifts attracting new customers, but whenever I bought the comics I bought them purely to read about the adventures of Desperate Dan and Bananaman, among others, and had no interest in the useless tat that was offered with the comics. Most of the gifts are still attached to the front of the comics, in the vain hope that the comics may be worth more in the future, due to the presence of the free gifts. A few years ago the Beano and Dandy used to offer several free gifts, but they managed to keep the prices the same for each issue. Why can't they do the same now?
I realise that DCThomson have obviously conducted a lot of market research before making any drastic changes, and I applaud them for realising that a big change was needed. Just because I don't approve of the change, it doesn't mean the change wasn't successful, but the facts speak for themselves. Sales declined after the change in 2004, and have further declined since 2007. Maybe if they tried re-releasing a comic from a couple of decades ago, to see what the reception was like? I'm sure lots of people would buy it, even if for nostalgia's sake, but maybe children would like it too, although I guess we'll never know.
The very fact Black Bob taught you to read is evidence of the literacy standards in the Dandy, and evidence of the fact that the comic was once, if no longer, educational.
Elliotgc wrote:
Tony - you may be right about the arrival of those four comic strips in the Beano, but why didn't the Dandy have any strips arriving in the 1950s which compared with them?
The main reason may be that Leo Baxendale didn't work for The Dandy.
The other reason may be that The Dandy has always been for a slightly older reader than The Beano, so the tone of its strips was different.
Another reason: kids relating to characters. Kids allegedly relate better to child characters in familiar settings, which The Beano has always dealt with more than The Dandy has.
Elliotgc wrote:Surely with the increasing popularity of The Eagle, among others, DCThomson felt they had to do something to increase the popularity of the Beano and the Dandy. The revolutionary characters arrived in the Beano, but why not in the Dandy?
Perhaps the Dandy editor felt that the comic was selling great so it wasn't necessary to mimic the Beano? Although The Dandy was behind The Beano in sales, it was still selling huge numbers, and both were outselling Eagle.
Elliotgc wrote:Contrast that with a Beano of 2006, and last week's edition. 2006 contained Dennis the Menace, Ivy the Terrible, The Numskulls, Ball Boy, Calamity James, Billy Whizz, The Bash Street Kids, Gnasher and Gnipper, Minnie the Minx, Big Brad Wolf, Little Plum, Roger the Dodger and Bea. Now the comic contains Dennis, Billy, Numskulls, Rasher, Les Pretend, Minnie the Minx, Freddie Fear, Gnasher, Ratz, BSK, Ball Boy, Fred's Bed, Billy the Cat, Bea and Ivy, Roger the Dodger and Dennis and Gnasher. That is an improvement in the number of storylines. The only new ones area Freddie Fear, Ratz and Fred's Bed. Les Pretend and Billy the Cat had been in the Beano for many years before. The only ones missing since 2006 were Calamity James, Big Brad Wolf (was he just in that one issue?) and Little Plum.
Big Brad Wolf appeared for only a few months - issues 3323 (1 April 06) to 3340 (29 July 06).
Elliotgc wrote:You certainly know the Beano well, Digifiend! Little Plum returned in the 2000s, even though he may be slightly old-fashioned, and he was, I believe, popular, yet a lot of the Dandy's characters were deemed old-fashioned. Why didn't the return of classic characters in the Dandy have the same levels of success? Why did General Jumbo and Billy the Cat stop?
If I don't know the info about the Beano, I can check the Beano Index in my copy of The History of The Beano: The Story So Far. However, I've been buying every issue since September 1995 (I was 11 at the time, so I started reading it late by modern standards).
General Jumbo and Billy the Cat were dropped because The Beano dropped all its adventure strips. Can't think why they did this though, as Billy at least was still popular. Beezer and Topper stopped theirs in around 1987-1990, Dandy stopped their serious ones with Black Bob in the 80s, but still had comic adventure strips Brassneck and Winker Watson until just before the Xtreme relaunch (they became more pure comic strip during the 90s though, and Brassneck's appearances were very sporadic) - both remain in the annual. Two serious adventure strips appeared in The Dandy at the end of the 20th century. Tricky Dicky's (can't remember the last word) appeared in the 1997 60th anniversary issue, and continued for a few issues afterwards. This was about a boy whose family had a joke factory, during World War II. The other, in 2000, was a superhero strip called The Comet, which ended at some point before the 2004 relaunch, I don't know exactly when.
Elliotgc wrote:When I said I collected comics and annuals, you probably thought that just meant I'd bought each comic and annual for the years I'd been collecting didn't you? You probably didn't think it meant I had over 2000 annuals, did you? I don't blame you, my collection surprises myself at times haha. I have every Beano annual since 1950, and every Dandy annual since 1952, apart from 1954. I have complete sets of Victor, Hotspur, Eagle, Warlord, Desperate Dan, Bash Street Kids, Beezer, Topper and Sparky and near complete sets of Valiant, Dennis the Menace, Beryl the Peril, Cor, Whizzer and Chips, Black Bob, Lion and Tiger.
Wow elliot, that's an impressive collection, considering your age. My oldest annuals are a 1967 Sparky Book (the first one!) and a couple of 60s Beezer annuals. And my collection is far from complete. Also, I focus only on DC Thomson unisex comic annuals, for space reasons (i.e. not boys papers like Victor, nor girls ones like Bunty, nor Fleetway stuff like Whizzer and Chips, just Beano and similar from DCT).
Elliotgc wrote:I was wondering, maybe I should ask a bunch of 7-11 year olds to read a Dandy from today and a Dandy from a few years ago and see which they prefer. The results would probably be very useful, although I'm not sure they'd like the old black and white formats from the 1950s.
Your survey suggestion sounds a good one - but they've already kind of tried it on a smaller scale. The earliest Xtremes had black and white Desperate Dan reprints from the late 40s. They weren't popular, so before long they became colourised, and were then quickly replaced by new stories drawn by Jamie Smart.
Phoenix, it should've been possible to just edit one of the duplicated posts down to just "(deleted double post)", but I did notice earlier that the Delete Post checkbox wasn't appearing on the edit screen, so I think once it's been replied to, you can't delete it. Al or a moderator can though.
Lew Stringer wrote:Black Bob was old fashioned even by the 1960s! (Though I for one loved the strip and it taught me to read.)
Lew
Is there no end to that dog's talents?!
Elliotgc wrote:Thanks for the advice on the British Library, NP... can you take things away from the library in St Pancras?
No, they don't even let you into the reading rooms at St Pancras without a kind of Kafa-esque series of interviews, filling out forms, being sent away to libraries the length and bredth of the country to see if they have what you want and finally buying outlandishly expensive 'premium' tickets. In my experience. So, no.
NP wrote:No, they don't even let you into the reading rooms at St Pancras without a kind of Kafa-esque series of interviews, filling out forms, being sent away to libraries the length and bredth of the country to see if they have what you want and finally buying outlandishly expensive 'premium' tickets. In my experience. So, no.
I think NP must be trying to frighten you into staying in Yorkshire, Elliotgc, wherever that is. He probably goes to the British Library himself every day, gets there a bit late due to there being a 'good service' on every underground line except the one he uses, and when he finally gets there all the seats in the reading rooms are taken up by students like you who, to judge from their bulging food satchels, racks of sharpened pencils and thick, unused A4 pads, look as if they are there for the whole day. Take no notice of his fractured mood. The essence of his answer that is unquestionably accurate is his opening word. There is a brief and inoffensive chat with some faceless individual who simply wants to know why you wish to become a Reader, in other words what the subject of your research is. The form you fill in is on a computer screen. I think this is to save trees in Finland and to be as offputting as possible to old stick-in-the-muds like me. It'll be a doddle for you. Then they take your photograph in colour and in two shakes of a lamb's tail you will be able to see it along with your name on your green membership card, which is the same size and shape as a debit card, you'll know what one of those is. It lasts for exactly three years and membership is free. Trust me, I know these things.
Elliotgc wrote:I know the Dandy switched to magazine format, but why such a huge decline in the number of stories? Whatever happened to classic favourites like Beryl the Peril and Brassneck, who were around only three years ago?
Characters come and go. Brassneck had been out of the comic a long time before he was revived a few years back. Strips are kept if they're popular. If they're not, they're quietly dropped. Brassneck was very popular in the Sixties, but presumably not so hot with today's readers.
Elliotgc wrote:Contrast that with a Beano of 2006, and last week's edition..... The only new ones are Freddie Fear, Ratz and Fred's Bed.
Cough. Super School. Cough.
Elliotgc wrote:Why did General Jumbo and Billy the Cat stop? I always thought they were great stories, which were very well drawn, and were different from anything else in the Beano.
Again, down to reader response. Everything has its day. Perhaps Jumbo will return in a more modernized version one day, who knows?
Elliotgc wrote:They are great examples of good triumphing over evil, something which doesn't seem to happen in today's comics - maybe they're just being more realistic? In life, justice doesn't always prevail - maybe they are trying to educate children by telling them that?
I think you may be reading too much into it. Dandy Xtreme is entertainment. Its remit isn't to be a yardstick for morality. Today, Jak and Todd may get away with being cruel to their teacher, Cuddles and Dimples may get away with playing pranks on their dopey Dad, but the comic assumes its readers are bright enough to distinguish reality from exaggerated fantasy. But this is a direction that was growing in The Dandy long before it went Xtreme.
Elliotgc wrote:In the past the Dandy was always different from everything else, and was seen as radical and exciting, and that was why it was successful. What did they hope to achieve by copying another comic? Children who buy Toxic aren't suddenly going to switch to buy another comic which is almost exactly the same are they?
The Dandy didn't need to imitate anyone else when it's sales were high. But as its sales continued to decline it was only natural business sense to think "Ok, our model isn't working for the 21st Century, so what IS selling these days?" They tried a revamp in 2004 and the new Dandy was different to other comics but sales still declined, so one can't blame them for imitating a format that was considerably outselling theirs. This is something that publishers have always done. Xtreme isn't a direct copy of Toxic but it's close enough to see the resemblance.
I'm sure some have jumped from Toxic to Dandy, although I'd prefer them to stick with Toxic obviously.
Elliotgc wrote: It's like with music records - the copy is never as good as the original!
I agree absolutely. I've always said that the most successful comics are those that were innovators for their times - Comic Cuts; Dandy/Beano; Eagle; 2000AD; Viz. All of those have made ripples in the history of comics and influenced others. But give Dandy its due; it's been around for 72 years. It's hanging in there, but sales on ALL publications are falling.
Elliotgc wrote: If the Dandy had kept the same formula, namely of consistency, as the Beano, it might have had the same levels of success.
It may have, but it's too late to tell the editors in the 1950s that now. Same could be said of The Beezer, Topper, Sparky, or any of the other hundreds of titles that have come and gone over the years.
Elliotgc wrote:I think that DCThomson have to try something to save the Dandy from its downward spiral. Whether that means bringing back successful characters from the past, I'm not so sure.
No offense but you keep treating The Dandy as if it was the only publication in "decline". All publications are losing sales year by year. Some comics sell even less than The Dandy. DC Thomson are trying to save it, hence the two revamps in the last five years. They may not be steps you approve of but they are trying. Recent issues have seen an increase in comic pages and a tweak in cover design. There are numerous reasons why comics aren't selling the numbers they did 50 years ago, but I don't think a lack of text stories or moral focus has anything to do with it.
) I managed to find the Dandy Xtreme yesterday, available for the princely price of just...£2.99? I remember when I used to complain that the price had risen from 50p to 52p - surely £2.99 is another factor that is driving away customers? I find it heavily ironic that they are claiming to issue 4 free gifts, but they are in fact adding on 74p, in this case, to compensate for the tat. What was it this week? A sweet, a waterballoon catapult, a boomerang and.... a bogies mini mag? Surely that succeeds only in catering to the lowest form of humour? Admittedly, I am outside of the target audience, but I'm pretty sure I would have been disgusted by that when I was seven, or whatever age the Dandy Xtreme (the only thing I found xtreme about it was the price) is meant to cater for - 7-12? I was only joking when I said the Dandy was all about bogies nowadays, but it seems I was right in this instance. God I sound like a grumpy old man. Ah I remember what the Dandy was like in my day... I probably have comics britannia somewhere but I'm not sure. I've been looking for it on the internet but I can't find it. What does it look like - it might trigger my memory!
Al needs to fix this pronto. That's twice it's happened, each time at the start of a new page, and both times, your post appears twice (along with NP's missing post this time) in the Topic Review. It would appear the first two posts on the last page keep going missing. 
By the way, the earlier missing posts have reappeared, so you might want to remove your duplicate post Phoenix. 
I don't like the way prices fluctuate at all, but sadly, that's how it works these days, as Lew explained. In 2007, Beano was 85p and Dandy (not Xtreme yet) was £1.30, so both have had steep price increases in the last couple of years.
Same could be said of The Beezer, Topper, Sparky, or any of the other hundreds of titles that have come and gone over the years.