This weeks Dandy

[Lew Stringer]

Julius Sneezer must be a difficult strip to write - the subject, a sneezing Roman Emperor, would have me scratching my head for a plot. Lew would be excused for updating old scripts. Mind you a girl looking through keyholes ran for decades.

I didn't write this one. Scripts were supplied by The Dandy office. Three complete pages but they form a nice little three-part story, which I'm sure will be spread throughout the book. Good fun to draw.

[dishes]

Hooray for superfluous rhyming couplets in comic strips, I hope they make a comeback somewhere in the new Dandy annual.

[philcom55]

Regarding Julius Sneezer there was a time when I couldn't understand why Allan Morley was so highly regarded by DC Thomson (to the extent that he was the only artist apart from Dudley Watkins they allowed to sign his work!). Whereas Dudley was curiously timeless, and young turks like Reid, Baxendale and Law represented the future, it seemed to me that Morley was something of a throwback to the early days of Film Fun with a style that was heavily influenced by silent films and Music Hall. Looking at some of his old strips today, however, I can't help noticing how brilliant he was at visual characterization: though Julius Sneezer is very simply drawn and relies on a relatively limited joke I have to admit that, as Lew says on his blog, absolutely everything is there in the visual to make him into a wholly-rounded comic figure - a perfect archetype of perpetually punctured pomposity!



- Phil Rushton

[stevezodiac]

These lyrics from Slip Inside This House by the 13th Floor Elevators should answer that - one of my favourite songs ever.

It's quite gratifying to learn, Steve, that your eBay username is as close to your heart as my comicsuk username is to me. As for the song, though, I'm struggling to make much sense of it. Have I just not had enough mind-altering substances?

The photo on my ebay log-in is from when I was a mod about 1979. I'm a bit fatter now. Taken at Waterloo station after seeing Mod band Squire at the Wellington pub.

And now back to our usual programme....

[Peter Gray]

Been rereading a recent Dandy.cover of my Dad's a Doofus.and in Bad Grandad is Rah Rah Randal...in the fairground episode..nice one Andy..

[Chris O'Leary]

Given the closure announcement, I picked up "The Dandy" from Tesco for the second week running.

It's actually really good - packed with funny stories and my kind of jokes about "Little did I know of the events that were about to unfold in the woodland. That's because they were in the future and hadn't happened yet" and washing machines being hurled from trees.

That particular strip - "the origin of the Grrrls" - has two separate pages in different places as though designed to be in two different issues.

I am unfamiliar with recent "Dandys" so I don't recognise reprints, but such a dazzlingly good issue is reminiscent of burning the candle at both ends. Is "The Dandy" going out into that dark night in a blaze of glory?

[Digifiend]

Yeah, I've noticed that, several features have appeared twice in the same issue in the last few weeks. Madvertisements, Grrrls, and My Dad's a Doofus last week, Madvertisements the week before, and this week, Grrrls, Rocky Roller, Desperate Dan, and the single line strips had an extra page. I think they were making plans to close the comic at least a month before we found out, and they started to burn through the remaining material at once. I expect some strips were stockpiled (that probably explains the Tom Paterson Fred's Bed in last week's Beano, as that character was taken over by a new artist this week, who redesigned him). Any stockpiles will need to be used up as soon as possible.

The only reprint this week, by the way, was Silly Moo.

[NP]

...I think they were making plans to close the comic at least a month before we found out...

No, that's not the case, it was less than a month.

[Gilly]

This weeks Dandy definitely feels like an issue that has been put together with the end in sight. Several strips appear two to four times within the comic with no reprints included and it definitely feels like they are using up the backlog of material they have.

Nice to see Desperate Dan get a two page strip near the beginning on the comic though as well as his usual back page strip.

[Digifiend]

Not got it yet, but I suspect the two-pager is an Xtreme era reprint. Also, Puss and Boots was advertised on last week's Next Week page. If that and Silly Moo are included, those are reprints.

[NP]

Not got it yet, but I suspect the two-pager is an Xtreme era reprint.

No, wrong again.

[Gilly]

I thought the two page Dan strip didn't seem like a reprint but I wasn't 100% sure as I didn't buy Dandy Xtreme regularly.

If that is the case then there are no reprints this week as both Puss and Boots and Silly Moo are absent. Looks like there will be one next week though as Cuddles and Dimples are returning.

[Digifiend]

It just seems strange that it was a two-pager, as they've all been one-pagers since the revamp. That's the reason I assumed that Dan strip was a reprint.

Gilly, considering that Puss and Boots was advertised last week but isn't in this week, I wouldn't be so confident that Cuddles and Dimples will appear next week either. Seems to me they're squeezing out the reprints to make room for the stockpiled new material. They've been making some late changes to the content by the looks of things.

[NP]

Who says the Cuddles and Dimples will be a reprint, should it be published?

[Gilly]

That a hint that you've been working on New Cuddles and Dimples strips Nigel?