Is The Dandy no longer educational?

[Raven]

I might change my project, in light of your advice, to something more cheerful about why the Dandy has survived so long, but I'll read some books before I decide.

Elliot, you should feel under no obligation to write "something cheerful" if your original slant is what you want to stick to. As Lew implies, people in the industry may understandably have their own motivations for putting a positive spin on everything, just as the hackles of Dandy lovers may rise at criticism - but you're planning an objective academic piece, and if you genuinely feel it's declined, then you can certainly work from that angle. Be true to *your* feelings and judgements. Maybe they'll change as you do your research. Maybe not.

You may well feel that declining standards of literacy are not something just to shrug the shoulders about and say "Ah, well, that's just the way it is now," but rather something to be extremely angry about indeed. There's so much pressure in modern society to just be a passive consumer. If you don't like it, well it's not for you anyway, so just move on and consume something else. Well, young people *should* get angry and protest about what they think's wrong with society - that's one of the things you're there for! And one can criticise things from a point of love - because you *care.*

However, people are making plenty of good points here also. Though I don't agree that your planned work sounds mean-spirited, maybe it does sound pre-judged, and I don't think Dandy was ever intended to be educational to any great degree. Nothing wrong with something that's pure entertainment. It's also a bit odd that your project *must* be "controversial."

If you think sales have plummeted due to decline in quality go along that route but, as Lew says, get your facts right along the way (you shouldn't be turning to Wikipedia but reliable original sources), and be prepared to look at it from a wider angle, taking into account all the changes in society through the decades. That's a good reading list that phoenix4ever suggested!

And, yes, kids certainly were left to watch without mother while she did the tumble drying and dish washing in decades past ...

[Lew Stringer]

Elliot, you should feel under no obligation to write "something cheerful" if your original slant is what you want to stick to. As Lew implies, people in the industry may understandably have their own motivations for putting a positive spin on everything,

Whoa. I implied nothing of the sort. I loathe and detest the term "positive spin" and consider it a sly and dishonest practice. What I said was the subject was close to our hearts and "accuracy is important". No agenda other than accuracy. Unfortunately Elliot's original hypothesis had followed a train of thought which, as we explained in previous posts, was not strictly accurate, fair, or well informed.

Lew

[Raven]

Whoa. I implied nothing of the sort. I loathe and detest the term "positive spin" and consider it a sly and dishonest practice. What I said was the subject was close to our hearts and "accuracy is important". No agenda other than accuracy. Unfortunately Elliot's original hypothesis had followed a train of thought which, as we explained in previous posts, was not strictly accurate, fair, or well informed.

Lew

I thought there was a slight 'reading between the lines' implication of why you'd naturally need to feel protective in your bracketed "and indeed it's our careers in some cases," but apologies if I misrepresented you.

I think Elliot does indeed need to be better informed fact-wise in some instances, and he's received some helpful pointers, but he was also getting stick for simply taking a critical (or, some would say "negative") stance, which is perfectly legitimate in itself.

[Elliotgc]

The project has to be controversial, in that there is scope for some debate. My idea is evidently controversial, as there have been over 60 replies, each stating a different point of view. It might well be that it is controversial because it is wrong in stating that the Dandy was once educational, as its remit was never to be educational. The problem lies in finding academic works to back up my findings, and this may not be possible for the educational option. However, although there are plenty of works regarding the success of the Dandy and Beano, that is not at all controversial, and if it's not controversial, I'm not allowed to do it. Unfortunately I don't make the rules! A controversial title would be something along the lines of "The decline of the Dandy is responsible for the decline of society as a whole" but that may be taking it a bit far. I don't mind the heated debate. I said don't be afraid to disagree with me, and it's interesting to be able to hear other people's opinions on the matter.

[Raven]

The project has to be controversial, in that there is scope for some debate.

Yes, I suppose if it just means something debatable - which would provoke opposing views, though I suppose just about everything does that, really, anyway.

[Lew Stringer]

Whoa. I implied nothing of the sort. I loathe and detest the term "positive spin" and consider it a sly and dishonest practice. What I said was the subject was close to our hearts and "accuracy is important". No agenda other than accuracy. Unfortunately Elliot's original hypothesis had followed a train of thought which, as we explained in previous posts, was not strictly accurate, fair, or well informed.

Lew

I thought there was a slight 'reading between the lines' implication of why you'd naturally need to feel protective in your bracketed "and indeed it's our careers in some cases," but apologies if I misrepresented you.

I'm far too blunt to imply anything Raven. I mean wot I say and I say wot I mean. What I meant was that we made it our career because we're passionate about comics, not that an inaccurate review would put our jobs on the line. (If indeed I actually worked for Xtreme, which I don't.) We love comics and we want to see them represented fairly. I'm sure we're all open to fair criticism and I understand my generation's distaste for "gross humour" - but at the moment today's kids seem to love it. And we do try to be funny with it, not to shock.

The readers went wild over Buttface in Toxic...



Lew

[STARBOY]

I'm just suprised that a 6th former is doing a dissertations / report on the Dandy - I think that's quite positive for UK comics that there is interest in this subject still - I would have imagined most would be more "arty" or modern subjects on (at 6th form level) the works of folk like, Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, Robert E Howard, , Manga, slasher films, Man Utd, Rap music, War agaisnt terror, Japanese cinema etc - good to see such a "traditional" subject taken seriously -good luck E.

[Digifiend]

Never heard of the first three.

[Raven]

Never heard of the first three.

Robert E. Howard was a prolific writer for the pulps who created Conan the Barbarian, which I suspect a certain Beezer character may have been based on. Solomon Kane and King Kull too; quite a few of his have been adapted for comics, actually.

Journalist Hunter S. Thompson: well, Johnny Depp's hilarious portrayal of him in Terry Gilliam's 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' is well worth a watch. There was a documentary film on Thompson: 'Gonzo' on BBC2 the Sunday night before last.

And Charles Bukowski was a prolific 'literary outsider' American poet and writer of fiction, often writing about low life, often from his own experience.

[STARBOY]

I would strongly recommend reading anyof these authors if you get a chance - easy to read and very good at their respective subjects which are all very different - R E Howards books are pretty common and quite a favourite with many comic book fans - Bukowski is (IMHO) simply fantastic (not so keen on his poems ) his stories are amazing (and a film was made of his book "Factotum"). Hunter S Thomson, as Raven notes was portrayed very well in a pretty good film - his writings appeared in many mags like Rolling Stone, mostly of their day and mostly (but not all) based on US politics/drugs etc but still all very accessible to anyone with a smatering of recent history - all are pretty "hip" (showing my age there with that word) with a lot of students. The Dandy's ok as well.

[Raven]

Is Rimbaud still "hep" with such students, do you know?

Or maybe they're all into Korky the Cat now ...

[STARBOY]

I would imagine Rimbaud would still be "hep" Raven, but not as much as Paul-Marie Verlaine or for that matter the symbolism of the Numskulls (thank goodness for Wikipedia )

[Kashgar]

The Dandy certainly wasn't a regular venue for war stories in the post war period. In fact the only two that spring instantly to mind didn't appear until the end of the 1950's and the beginning of the 1960's respectively namely Iron Hands and The Blitz Kid. Nor did the Dandy ever go out of it's way to teach its readers knot-tying or any other sort of field-craft, it just wasn't ever that sort of title.
I don't imagine that a parent ever saw their child reading the Dandy, even in its more literate days, and thought of it as 'quality' reading matter. It was never Look and Learn (Thank God!) and if it educated it did it by happy accident rather than design. By the mid 1950's (even before my time) the Dandy had given up the ghost with the text story in favour of strip only content presumably because kids were already skipping over the 'sesquipiddledan verbejooce' and leaving it on their plate like a loathesome parsnip.
BTW Eliott you could try tracking down a copy of the D C Thomson Bumper Fun Book edited by Paul Harris which includes a very irritating and controversial article on the D C Thomson comic titles by social historian Owen Dudley Edwards as well as much else.

[Digifiend]

6 copies available on Amazon. http://www.amazon.co.uk/D-Thomson-Bumpe ... 155&sr=8-9

[Kashgar]

Why did the Dandy and the Beano's circulations peak in 1950?
1) No more paper rationing so Thomsons could print as many as they could sell.
2) A lot less direct competition thanks to so many rival titles being lost in the period 1939-1945. A consequence that Thomsons could only exploit once paper became available.
3) In the Dandy's case the truly iconic status achieved by Desperate Dan during the war period didn't hurt either. By 1950 nearly every schoolboy had fantasies of being the Cactusville cowboy.
4) Thomsons really pushed their own comic titles, as to increased availability, in all of their own in-house, adult orientated magazines and newspapers. The summer of 1949 having seen the return to weekly publication, although still on a limited number basis, while the Spring of 1950 saw the return to full supply and demand publishing with the reward of the new 'bigger' Dandy and Beano promoted in early June.
5)Of course, like in so many booms, peaks have a tendency to level off once the 'feeding frenzy' has passed and within months the Dandy and the Beano had to settle for being only fantastically successful rather than ludicrously so.