Current Artists

[Jonny Whizz]

Riot Squad (Hoot Squad) was also a reprint, from the short-lived Hoot comic from the mid-1980s. You're right about Olaff the Madlander (originally Adrian the Barbarian) and Fred's Bed, both of which were reprints from the Beezer and Topper comics. What happened there - why was it that they changed from Fred to Olaff, but then back again? Of course, now Fred's Bed is firmly in the Beano establishment with brand new strips. Most Beano readers would have been unlikely to have read these stories as the Beezer and Topper is long gone (at first I didn't know Fred's Bed was reprint).

All the other strips are reprints from old Beano comics from (usually) the 1990s (Rasher was 1980s though). Roger the Dodger has only been reprinted a couple of times over the past two years (there were a few more used around 2006). I think they reprinted Calamity James in early 2007 but that run was short and that strip stopped anyway (sad, because it was one of the best in the comic). I assume this was done to quietly drop the character, as Alan Digby doesn't like him.

In last year's Xmas issue, they reprinted 'Too Riski' which was a page of short strips drawn by Trevor Metcalfe. This along with occasional reprints of his Billy Whizz strips is somewhat ironic, given that DC Thompson (unfairly) dropped him.

I don't read the Dandy, and never have done, but I think there aren't any reprints in there now. However, it definitely has less comic pages than the Beano.

[Digifiend]

There aren't any reprints in the current Dandy Xtreme, that's correct, but when it launched two years ago, Red Hot Chilli Dogs (Snip and Snap) was a reprint from the 1970s Sparky (and was probably a forebear of Gnasher and Gnipper!), Desperate Dan from 1940s Dandy, Bananaman from 1980s (Weekly News?) and Smasher from the 1990s. Chilli Dogs and Smasher have been axed and the other two taken over by new artists. They also later reprinted some 1990s Korky, but this too has gone. The dandy actually has less new material than Beano, despite being 100% new material. I wouldn't mind extra strips being reprinted in The Dandy if it was to replace some of the features introduced when Xtreme launched. Could happen actually, Xtreme is a total flop - last place says Wikipedia (I'd like to see the source they're quoting, people are notorious for not using the <ref> tag - myself included!).

Anyway, we're getting a tad off topic here...

EDIT: Just thought, Digby doesn't particularly like Freddie Fear either - that might explain why Ball Boy is reprints (I'm assuming they're currently using the last few stockpiled FF strips) as artist Dave Eastbury has shared Kev F's fate i.e. they stopped commissioning him.

[kevf]

Re: Reprints.

Before we start chronicling the decline of the Beano, is this level of reprint unusual? Or was there always reprint material? Does anyone know?

Not having been a Beano reader until the last decade I've only spotted the obvious reprints listed above (reprints of a dead guy's signed strips tend to stand out!). But as a kid I was an IPC reader and, after a while, I discovered half the things I was reading were reprints.

Karl The Viking was a reprint of Erik The Viking (or vice versa), there were other examples in Valiant and Lion. Annuals were stiff with reprint. And Vulcan, it turned out, was all reprint.

So has this always been the case at DCT?

[Digifiend]

Apart from the Dennis and Bash Street books, annuals are usually reprint-free. The Dandy Annual has used a Black Bob story, a 1970s Winker Watson script with new artwork (because the cane was in the original), and a 1950s Tin Lizzie text story in the last two decades - these are rare exceptions.

The comics (both Beano and Dandy) only started using reprints regularly about 5 or 6 years ago (by the time of Dandy's 2004 relaunch, it was about 50% reprint, Beano was still usually all new, but not for much longer). Before that, it was just occasional adventure stories in the 50s (such as Shipwrecked Circus and Jimmy's Magic Patch) which were reprinted. So it's really a recent phenomenon for DCT, especially as if people want to read reprints, they can buy Classics From The Comics (although Fleetway did have an equivalent at one point - Big Comic Fortnightly). Believe me, the quantity of reprints is getting worse - thanks to what happened with Ball Boy, the extra new page gained by Fred's Bed becoming new episodes was cancelled out (and that means there's one more reprint story than there was, even if the number of pages hasn't changed).

I suppose the quantity would drop if Dandy Xtreme's situation gets bad enough to force a merger - as that would result in Wayne Thomson, Jamie Smart and C. McGhie joining the art roster (as I can see Jak and Todd, Desperate Dan and Bananaman being the survivors). Not that I'd want that to be necessary of course. But personally, I can't understand why either comic needs reprints - there are artists out there who'd jump at the chance to draw something for the Beano, yourself included! (Trevor Metcalfe also springs to mind - judging by his website he's been reduced to drawing for McDonalds! If he returned it would eliminate at least the Billy Whizz reprint)

[AndyB]

But personally, I can't understand why either comic needs reprints

Only one reason - Alan Digby doesn't have the budget to pay the artists for 20-odd pages of new material every week. I'm certain he, Euan and Craig would love to abandon reprints.

[kevf]

But personally, I can't understand why either comic needs reprints

Only one reason - Alan Digby doesn't have the budget to pay the artists for 20-odd pages of new material every week. I'm certain he, Euan and Craig would love to abandon reprints.

I know they would. And I'd like to stress that my leaving DCT hasn't reduced my respect and praise for my Beano & Beano Max editors who were fantastically supportive, even dare I say indulgent, to me during my time. Talent spotting folks like Mike Pearse, Hunt Emerson, Laura Howell, Gary Northfield and Jamie Smart (& me) radically transformed the feel of the comics and moved them into the 21st century. The reprint, which drags portions of the comic back as far as the 1980s, must annoy the hell out of them.

I wonder when the reprint limit is. ie how recent stuff you dare reprint. Mike Pearse's Christmas and Halloween strips saw a reprint when they were only 7 or 8 years old. So, if I'm lucky, I might start popping up again in 2011.

[Raven]

The comics (both Beano and Dandy) only started using reprints regularly about 5 or 6 years ago (by the time of Dandy's 2004 relaunch, it was about 50% reprint, Beano was still usually all new, but not for much longer). Before that, it was just occasional adventure stories in the 50s (such as Shipwrecked Circus and Jimmy's Magic Patch) which were reprinted. So it's really a recent phenomenon for DCT ...

Wasn't The Dandy using reprints from the early Seventies, reprinting a Dudley Watkins Desperate Dan every week for years after he died - and wasn't the weekly Screwy Driver strip a reprint? And Black Bob and Dirty Dick, too?

[Digifiend]

Not Dirty Dick - after Eric Roberts' death, another artist took over, and it only lasted another couple of years (same goes for Winker Watson, except he continued and did eventually have some reprints just before the 2004 relaunch). Should've remembered about Dan, he was of course only new in annuals and specials after Dudley Watkins died, until 1983. Wasn't aware of Screwy Driver, that one's news to me, this is where a Dandy version of The History of The Beano would come in handy. As for Black Bob, did no-one else take over after Jack Prout's death then, because I always assumed a new artist took over (it's also unfortunate that they happened to be running a story set in Argentina during the Falklands War, was that one a reprint, and if so, why didn't they simply abort it?).

Anyway, this reprint business is certainly a recent thing for The Beano.

[AndyB]

Screwy Driver being a reprint was an urban legend as far as I can tell. As long as I can remember, the vast majority were new - I remember clearly that the Screwy shown in the weekly comic was the same newer style as Bill drew in the annuals, rather than the less developed Screwy of the original series. I'd be happy for Kashgar to correct me, of course!

Dan and Black Bob were reprints, and it was normal, for example, to reprint Dave Jenner Tom Dick and Sally strips in the Beano when Keith Reynolds was on holiday. Even the kids and Roger were reprinted sometimes during the summer. By the mid-1980s, reprints had almost been abandoned.

[AndyB]

same goes for Winker Watson, except he continued and did eventually have some reprints just before the 2004 relaunch

Now that bit's new to me. I remember around that time that Stephen White was doing Tintinesque illustrations for Darby Doshman, which was a recycling of the Robin Boodle scripts.

[Raven]

Screwy Driver being a reprint was an urban legend as far as I can tell. As long as I can remember, the vast majority were new.

I'd recalled Lew saying on this very forum that the early 70s Screwy Drivers were reprints ...

Not Dirty Dick - after Eric Roberts' death, another artist took over, and it only lasted another couple of years

... and Kashgar mentioning that Eric Roberts regularly drew Dirty Dick from 1960-67 but only did a few after that; yet there were lots of Eric Roberts DDs in the early 70s, weren't there?

I'm happy to be corrected, of course, if I'm wrong!

[Lew Stringer]

Screwy Driver being a reprint was an urban legend as far as I can tell. As long as I can remember, the vast majority were new.

I'd recalled Lew saying on this very forum that the early 70s Screwy Drivers were reprints ...

Some Screwy Driver pages in the early 1970s were reprints. Easy to tell from the word balloons for one thing, which had more squiggly tails, as per older comics.

Reprints appeared in The Dandy in the 1960s too. Three pages of Barney's Bear in 1964 for example which ran for a few months, and The Purple Cloud in 1969. And of course Desperate Dan was reprint after Watkins' death in 1969 right up until Ken Harrison took it over in the 1980s (with a few exceptions drawn by Charlie Grigg).

The Beano has had less reprint. Offhand I don't recall any reprint from 1964 to 1974 except for the occasional Lord Snooty. After then I stopped reading it for a few years, but I still don't recall any regular reprint until a few years ago.

Lew

[Jonny Whizz]

Kev, the limit for reprints is 7 years. The most recent reprint I've seen in the Beano was a reprint of a Bob Nixon Xmas strip from 2000 (2007 Xmas issue). The Beano has only really been using reprints for the last three years or so, starting from summer 2006. They used a few Nixon reprints of Roger and Ivy in late 2005 and early 2006, but before then the Beano consisted entirely of new material.

However, I recall there have been a couple of times when strips appeared to have been accidentally reprinted. For example, in one June 2004 issue (3229) there is a Joe Jitsu strip which was then reprinted in issue 3231, a mere TWO issues later and in the same month! That certainly wasn't intentional, and it is hard to work out why this happened.

[Digifiend]

same goes for Winker Watson, except he continued and did eventually have some reprints just before the 2004 relaunch

Now that bit's new to me. I remember around that time that Stephen White was doing Tintinesque illustrations for Darby Doshman, which was a recycling of the Robin Boodle scripts.

Oops, my mistake, I thought they'd only changed the speech captions, including Robin/Derby's name being changed.

Re: Joe Jitsu - that strip was a stockpiled one as well, it was one of only about 3 or 4 used at that time, and he hasn't appeared since.

[AndyB]

Oops, my mistake, I thought they'd only changed the speech captions, including Robin/Derby's name being changed.

Easy done - the giveaway was that Eric's originals were being printed in Classics from the Comics at the same time!