Dandy Relaunch THIS WEDNESDAY!!!

[Phoenix]

Postman pr*t

What's with the asterisk, Peter? It's not as if the word Prat is even remotely obscene or racist or whatever, at worst it's a synonym for idiot, so at no time would an asterisk be necessary, and when all is said and done Postman Prat is the title of the strip, if my copy is to be trusted, and should therefore be quoted in full.

[Digifiend]

The Sun advertised the Little strip for the second week running, in the TV Biz section. I wonder if they'll mention it every week? Good publicity for the comic.

Steve, what's Lord Sugar's Twitter address?

[AndyB]

Digifiend, pay a little more attention to page 2

[Lew Stringer]

No he doesn't. The only footballers I see are on the Little Lord Sugar page.

So that poor chicken suffered for nothing. Ah, comics can be a harsh business.

[Peter Gray]

Don't rmemeber typing it like that..postman prat..
strange...

Its happened again the library is censoring me!!!
thats what has happened..

[Digifiend]

prat
Prat

Ah, I see. There's a swear filter on the word, as long as it isn't capitalised. So just remember to use a capital P and it'll show up fine. Although quite frankly if the word is good enough to be used in The Dandy, it doesn't need to be censored, so sort it out please Al (I've mentioned this in the support forum as well).

[Steve Henderson]

Lord_Sugar is his twitter account. I would repose them but I'm doing this on my phone! Really quite nice to think that NPs works putting a smile on his craggy miserable face!

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

Putting cartoon caricatures in the DANDY is fine...I haven't watched TV since around 2003, but I still recognized the 'celebrities' lampooned. Well, apart from some of the TV chefs in 'Harry Hill; but no shame in that!

The new Dandy reminds me of OINK circa 1986: who'd have guessed that OINK was so far ahead of it's time nearly a quarter of a century ago!

This week's issue is the first contemporary funnies comic I have bought in almost 20 years.

[Lew Stringer]

The new Dandy reminds me of OINK circa 1986: who'd have guessed that OINK was so far ahead of it's time nearly a quarter of a century ago!

That's because in between drawing pages for The Dandy I travel back in time to 1986 to draw Tom Thug for Oink!

Only joking of course. (Or AM I?)

The mistake that Oink! made, in my opinion, was that some of its features were too old for its readership, and some too young for older readers. Therefore it fell between too stools and put off both camps. (The DFC made the same mistake imho.)

The Dandy avoids that pitfall. It's primarily a children's comic but also appeals to the young at heart without being too dark or obscure. Hopefully it'll fare better than Oink or The DFC.

Unfortunately a shop I visited in Coventry this afternoon had copies of The Dandy on its top shelf between Viz and Loaded! (That inappropriate kind of shelf placement was another thing that killed Oink!) I moved them beside The Beano.

[Digifiend]

Well, we can safely say postman prat without worrying about the capitalization now, Peter.

Supernews has an advert for The Dandy in it's window display. Yet they didn't sell Dandy Xtreme - nor the weekly Beano, although they do sell BeanoMAX. Yes, that's a shop which now sells the Dandy, but not the statistically more popular Beano. I don't quite understand how they chose which titles to stock. They should be selling all three titles, IMHO.

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

I remember taking issue one of OINK into D C Thomson, Lew: they were certainly aware of it's existance, and looking through it, one of the editors remarked it was very contemporary-looking. I definately had heard of VIZ before some of the Thomson editors, though!

Quite remarkably, D C T put together a portfolio of original artwork of a proposed comic along the same lines as OINK! at approximately the same time: I definately saw this in '86, and it even had a similar PIG motif [like the 'uncle pigg' editor of OINK!] quite by coincidence, I'm pretty sure.

Probably because of the glaring similarities, the DC T comic never even got to the 'dummy' stage, and the artwork existed only in a large folder.

I can't remember what the Thomson rival comic was to be called, but the cover artwork was by Henry Davis, who was certainly capable of some weird-and-wonderful stuff.

Definately unfamiliar territory for Thomson in 1986, and no doubt it got turned down flat as a going concern from 'them upstairs' [a term often used in their offices].

Who knows what other experimental gems never got off the starting block?

[felneymike]

Dez Skinn did a blog about some comics that never got past the dummy stage a while ago. Can't remember the link now though.

One was "far eastern themed" to cash in on the kung-fu film craze of it's time. Thing is if that had been started and then kept chugging along up to the 2000's all the Manga fans might have snapped it up/it could have started publishing translated manga as serials like how they originally appeared.

Ah hindsight...

[Digifiend]

If anyone hasn't got this week's issue yet, Lord Sugar put his comic strip on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= ... 8186356192

[alanultron5]

Did Dandy Extreme fail then? I havn't kept track, but wondered if it has failed! `If` it has then my view is the `gross-out` humour (my term) Snot/Fart etc `ain't as popular as DCT think. `

This is why I have me doubts on the long term future of the new Dandy because it doesn't seem much different from `Extreme` not in my eyes! But! I hope to be proven wrong as others are enjoying it, so, for their sake, I hope it works...

[kevf]

From the chalkface (of my Comic Art Masterclasses) I can report that "gross out" humour of the poo bum fart variety is the most popular thing among 7-9 year olds, as are Simon Cowell, Cheryl Cole and Harry Hill.

I have been brandishing The Dandy in my classes for two weeks now (free copies would be welcomed and would go to a good home - well, okay, an early grave of being over-thumbed by kids, but you know what I mean) and it has been universally well received. The most popular request has been "can I see what's in Cheryl Cole's hair?".

Teachers are torn between asking "does The Dandy still exist then?", minutes after they have been shown a copy of what is very clearly this week's Dandy, and saying "Desperate Dan didn't look like that in my day" or "does he still eat cow pies"?

In short, what happens in classrooms is pretty well entirely what you'd predict, and jolly good show too.

Oh, Michael Jackson is inexplicably popular, for reasons I cannot fathom. So if you were to run a strip starring Michael Jackson, fighting a dinosaur, in a pineapple under the sea, in Simon Cowell's trousers, wearing Cheryl Cole's hair, and with the catchphrase "Poo bum botty burp wee wee - shamone!", you would have a sure fire hit on your hands. I'll draw it, when you're ready.

Kev F out of the Doctor Who Adventures (not as catchy as Out Of The Beano, but it'll have to do till DCT come to their senses)