Comics UK

Digifiend wrote:Covers have been revealed for the 2012 annuals!


Beano's looks OK. Dandy's was clearly drawn before last year's revamp - but that's no excuse for using the late 70s logo instead of the current one!

It's unlikely to be a mistake as that logo wouldn't be present in digital form to get confused with the 'proper' one, it would have to be specially recreated.

No it wouldn't. Just scan it in.

Regardless, I think it probably already was present in digital form, as this logo appeared on all of the '50 Golden Years' books and their sequels up to the 60th anniversary, squashed to fit across the masthead with a similarly squashed Beano logo. It also appeared in a distorted form on the "50 Years Young" stamp. (It was out of date even then.)

Both the Beano and the Dandy seem to have adopted standard 'Retro' forms of their logos, distinct from the everyday ones, as seen on e.g. the official Retro Beano pages. They've been used in so many places I'd be surprised if DCT hadn't bothered to recreate them in digital form by now.

Ah, here's a good example: Beano and Dandy Vintage Comic Collection Jigsaw.

I really hope there is a Beano and Dandy special book...love these..what with Classics going..

I hope it will be revealed soon on Amazon...does anyone know yet if there is to be one does anyone know who works at DC Thomson?

Not keen on the Dandy cover this year prefered last year...The Beano annual cover is a good one..
last year I said the opposite...

swirlythingy wrote:Regardless, I think it probably already was present in digital form, as this logo appeared on all of the '50 Golden Years' books and their sequels up to the 60th anniversary, squashed to fit across the masthead with a similarly squashed Beano logo. It also appeared in a distorted form on the "50 Years Young" stamp. (It was out of date even then.)

Actually, the 50 Golden Years books used the next logo, used on the weekly comic from 1984 to 1987, and the Comic Libraries until 1993. It wasn't out of date on the 50 Years Young stamp, as the logo was still in use at the start of the year.


However, the two most recent Classic books did use the 1970s logo.

Maybe the scope of the "old reprints" book could be expanded to other DCT comics and it could be re-named the "Classics From The Comicas Annual". We'd get a dose of 'all over the place' classic strips and stories and they wouldn't have to spend more than they normally would.

Oh, mind you though, if they do feel like spending a bit more than they normally would could this hypothetical Classics Annual be 1000 pages long? ta.

I think the cover of this year's Beano annual is better than the last two were. I didn't like the 2010 annual cover much, I didn't think it was a very effective design. Last year's design was okay but there was too much empty space on the cover, and the lack of a different back cover was, personally, a bit of a disappointment. In my opinion, most of the best Beano annual covers in recent years have been very busy designs with lots of characters on the front - the 2000, 2004 and 2007 annuals are good examples of this, and the 2012 annual is a step in the right direction as the cover is much busier than the previous two.

Digifiend wrote:Actually, the 50 Golden Years books used the next logo, used on the weekly comic from 1984 to 1987, and the Comic Libraries until 1993. It wasn't out of date on the 50 Years Young stamp, as the logo was still in use at the start of the year.

I had to look really closely to spot the difference between those two! I hadn't even realised it had changed, but yes, the "Golden Years" and stamp used that later version. The jigsaw I linked to used the earlier one. And, of course, the 60 years retro collections in between used the then up-to-date version. Confusing! They seem to have settled on the earlier one at the moment.

No such problems for the Beano, of course, whose logo is 40 years old this year...

Looking through my back catalogue of retro annuals, the divide seems to be at "Golden Age Classic Comics" of 2010 - before that, the pre-2004 logo was used (despite being twice outmoded). The aforementioned annual used a version of the Beano's 1938 logo, which was much older. Doubly confusing.

With the launch of a Retro Collection and with it at last the glimmerings of a coherent policy, I hope the latest rebranding is here to stay.

Digifiend wrote:No it wouldn't. Just scan it in.

That might work here on the fanternet, but it's not the proper way to do it. Scans are nowhere near good enough for use as a professional logo. You can spot them a mile away. Swirly is probably right, just a branding decision.

Beano.com seems to have no issue using masthead scans for the adverts on the retro section. And the original artwork would be larger than the comics, therefore higher resolution (in fact Dandy's current logo is hand drawn, so that's probably a scan too). I'm sure all they will have done is a bit of clean up in Photoshop. You can't make a logo like that from scratch.

There is no need to either scan it in from a published comic or recreate it from scratch, D C Thomson have the original artwork for almost everything filed away. And all the title logos were hand-drawn. (For everything prior to about 1998 anyway.)

Digifiend wrote:Beano.com seems to have no issue using masthead scans for the adverts on the retro section. And the original artwork would be larger than the comics, therefore higher resolution (in fact Dandy's current logo is hand drawn, so that's probably a scan too). I'm sure all they will have done is a bit of clean up in Photoshop. You can't make a logo like that from scratch.

Original artwork is different from a scan of a printed comic, though, and could well be used as the base for a logo: however, it is still likely to be converted to a vector graphic format so its use can be as consistent as possible.

Why couldn't you make that logo from scratch?

i hope the beano & dandy books go back to normal size as last years dont fit on my shelves properlyas they were slightly bigger also hope theres a bash st kids annual this year.
i actually prefer the old style dandy logo to recent ones & i think it is mainly adults that buy the annuals anyway

big bad bri wrote:i hope the beano & dandy books go back to normal size as last years dont fit on my shelves properlyas they were slightly bigger

Sorry, but they're going to be the same size as the 2011 dated ones. (That's the size I was told to draw to anyway.)

Lew Stringer wrote:

big bad bri wrote:i hope the beano & dandy books go back to normal size as last years dont fit on my shelves properlyas they were slightly bigger

Sorry, but they're going to be the same size as the 2011 dated ones. (That's the size I was told to draw to anyway.)

At least that's an improvement from last year, when you weren't told.