2013 Annuals (Covers added 5th May)

[dandy mad]

I bet that prose Beryl is the one about the witch who kidnaps two princes, and Beryl and her uncle (who gets turned into a dog at one point) have to rescue them. If so, it's from the 1975 Beryl annual.

The 2 prose stories that feature Beryl are Cinderberyl and the magic button and Beryl and the beanstalk

[Peter Gray]

I've seen the Panto book in WHSmiths and have to admit to being a bit disappointed like the other two...the material is too recent and reprints from the annuals which I have..

Though there a few pages I like...Dudley D Watkin's original art for Danny longlegs...a few old Bash Street kids...so will be getting it for those..all the annual reprints are by some of my favourite artists..its just that I've got them Some nice Gordon Bell Pup Parade etc..
The recent 75 years of The Dandy WHSmiths exclusive is better...I like seeing adventures stories and 40's..50's and 60's period best as I don't have many of those..

So next year Beano and Dandy book..more earlier stuff...more from the comics..more original art..and adventures stories..and no fillers like a joke page with just writing...a old minnie the minx could have filled that!

[dandy mad]

DCT have already done the adventure story book back in the early 90s and haven't done another since mainly because prose and picture story telling is a long forgotten feature in British comics and the more recent reprinted strips are to cater for folk under the age of 70 because I can't see some old dear/man spending their bingo money on the beano and dandy panto time book.....

[Digifiend]

You realise that picture stories didn't disappear completely until VERY recently, right? The Beano stopped featuring them regularly in 1975 (when General Jumbo ended), but had run three Billy the Cat serials in the 2000s as well as a one-off General Jumbo in the 60th birthday issue, and even attempted to revive the prose format by serialising one of Dick King Smith's books in 1998. The Dandy stopped featuring picture stories regularly in the mid-80s (when Black Bob finished), but has had adventure strips more recently with Tricky Dicky Doyle (1997) and The Comet (2000).

[MadGaz]

Spotted the Broons and Oor Wullie 70s annual in the Ayr Waterstones today. Seeing as Tom Lavery and the scriptwriter of the time have both passed on, Morris Heggie and a ghost artist attempt to explain Dave McKay's mysterious disappearance.....I won't spoil anything!

(Interestingly, the annuals featuring reprints from that era attempted to hide his engagment to Maggie by altering the panels.)

On the subject of Lavery, did he briefly return to Wullie in the 80s? The 1986 annual seems to be a mix of his and John Polland's work - unless they were simply 70s leftovers.

[dandy mad]

You realise that picture stories didn't disappear completely until VERY recently, right? The Beano stopped featuring them regularly in 1975 (when General Jumbo ended), but had run three Billy the Cat serials in the 2000s as well as a one-off General Jumbo in the 60th birthday issue, and even attempted to revive the prose format by serialising one of Dick King Smith's books in 1998. The Dandy stopped featuring picture stories regularly in the mid-80s (when Black Bob finished), but has had adventure strips more recently with Tricky Dicky Doyle (1997) and The Comet (2000).

I'm on about the prose and illustrations over numbered text stories not the later picture strips

[Digifiend]

Prose stopped in the late 50s, and Black Bob is an example of the text with illustrations, so the point still stands, they weren't extinct until the 1980s.

[dandy mad]

But the Black Bob stories (if you can call them that) where reprints plus I'm not on about picture adventure strips but the ones that used prose and numbered text those as you say went out of favour in the late 50s anything after that I'm not interested in as my main interest is the late 30s through to the mid to late 50s so forgive my ignorance on anything after that point in time.