tony ingram wrote:felneymike wrote:Apparently the advent of Commando's digital distribution and the publicity and "events" surrrounding it's 50th birthday have seen sales rise. The Dandy should take several leaves out of their book for the 75th birthday. Maybe each issue could reprint a strip from it's corresponding issue in the first year (the birthday issue have something from issue 1, next week something from issue 2 etc). Also give it the big coffee table book treatment, really "push" the annual and include a "You can read this every week!" advert in it. Also during that summer set up an exhibition of original artwork / workshop with "meet the artist" days and so on at some popular holiday destination... and so on.
It aint over til the fat cowboy sings!
Commando has never had as significant a drop in sales as the Dandy has suffered in recent years, anyway. It has been fairly consistent in terms of sales for decades despite never having tried to significantly reinvent itself.
Hmm, I wonder if there could be something to be learned, there...
I wonder if you haven't hit the nail on the head there.
My boy (having talked about him before) LOVES the old comics (obviously a lot down to me) - now having just turned 5 he's not up on the reading himself yet and is a bit young for The Dandy given it's now celebrity obsessed content and it seems generally punchline free (I have read my son a Bananaman from this latest incarnation of The Dandy, and an old one from a Nutty - no prizes which one got the biggest laughs). We read The Beano together, but there is just the feeling that some stories just aren't that funny.....I mean, sometimes D&G just does not have an "ending" as such, sort of tails off, and Ball Boy, well they may as well just not have that there! Of course, the laughs are still there, Minnie, BSK, Numbskulls, Roger... my opinion of course and no doubt I influence my boy.
Compare this with a reading from, say, Classics From The Comics - a beginning, a middle, and an end of a strip, normally with a clever play on words happening. I was reading from the Buster Egmont special the other night and he was laughing out loud to the like of Chalky etc. More so than I have seen of late with The Beano and especially The Dandy, which we stopped reading pretty quickly I'm afraid to say.
I dug out a Big Comic Annual tonight - a good mass reprint starter - and the same again, Sweeny Toddler (a favourite of us both), 'Orrible Hole, X-Ray Specs etc - LOL moments, (Chalky drawing weights on a fence to outwit the bully, queue ending remarking about "WEIGHTING around for me" etc etc and many laughs from my son - he just gets it; I don't know how many times we've both been left a bit "meh!" at the end of the more recent comic strips.)
He still says he likes The Beano, but I can only say what I see when he laughs and points out what has happened in the older strips - in fact tonight I was told I must find an Evil Eye strip (he had spotted him in the splash panel to Fun Fear and he likes Evil Eye, surely a classic where the tables were turned on the Eye week after week!). Alas there was no Evil Eye to be found in this Big Comic book, although Creepy Car and 'Orrible Hole were there, I tried the palm off about finding one tomorrow - "But Daddy, I remember seeing Evil Eye in the Whoopee! before!" Hmm, maybe I've taught him too well.
Now I'm not living in some early 1980s bubble (for that was my era) - I do let my son play with the Astro Wars now and again, erm, I mean the Nintendo DS
but given the choice he HAS chosen the comic at times - it's just that that choice IS rather limited now. We are plouging through the DFC now, so he likes an adventure strip, and I hope that when he can fully read himself he will tackle my collection on his own (I'm currently embarked on a Spike/Eagle(80s)/Champ reread (in order natch), only interupted by finishing off Preacher 11 years after starting it in Judge Dredd Megazine).
I remember my favourite irreverant Amiga mag, Amiga Power, being cancelled in '96 due to an ABC around 18,000 (and being down to around 52 pages for months before The End). These days any single format computer mag would die to have that kind of circulation!
So maybe it is not the end of The Dandy, but it sure does look like it - if the recent Bananaman "advertorial" in The Beano is anything to go by (and I am sorry if the writer/artist is here) it just isn't funny, or pleasant on the eye. Again, only my opinion which probably I am passing on to my offspring. Back to Nutty for us.
But he laughs out loud at the oldies....
Maybe if more young folk could have immersed themselves in some of the funny business I'm on about or some adventure action they might not have felt the need to go out panning windows in to get some trainers or a big telly to watch the flipping X Factor on....
But then Waterstones and WH Smiths were among the only shops NOT to be targetted.
Jeez, sorry for the rant but I do worry about my son in this age of instant gratification.
Oh and his fave is Meebo & Zuky - or do I mean Puss 'n' Boots
I voted for Home Invasion, shows how much I know.
Thank you ISPY, I had a great day. I didn't dye my hair though!
