Comics UK

nobody probably buys it anymore i think we all prefer the printed version

I like paper better than the screen...it made my eyes tired...

I like the digital edition but no one ever talks about it on here except for Digifiend. Digifiend and I might as well discuss it on the unofficial Dandy Forum...

I no longer get it since it has gone digital. Like other people, I like my comics to be printed rather than being interactive websites. But that doesn't mean I don't want it to succeed.

I know that this has been asked before but how is the Dandy faring?

We don't know. But the Youtube videos are lucky to get 50 views.

When you read the comic do you have to watch the youtube videos?
Because if that is the case then it would look like the Dandy has less than 100 readers which is an abysmal total.

No. At the end of the comic there's a "Back Page" which links to the Youtube video. So it is skippable. There's two possibilities. Either Dandy TV is a very unpopular feature, or the comic is failing. If only there was some way to find out how sales are doing...

Well, I've only watched one Dandy TV episode and I can say it must be one of the dullest things I've watched on YouTube. The humour (if you can call it that) is mainly toilet humour and bad jokes - plus, they need to include a Dandy logo in the corner just to remind you you are watching something about The Dandy.

I really dislike this part of The Digital Dandy - I hope it goes.

The problem with the Digital Dandy for me is that I have nothing to run it on properly.

I tried it on my mobile phone and some of the strips just wouldn't run. I also have an old PC so I'm guessing there is no chance of it working on there.

However I'm due a new mobile phone this summer as my contract runs out so when I get that new phone I will download the Dandy app and try it again.

Issue 8 is out.

Digifiend, do you prefer the digital version of the Dandy compared to the printed version?

I do miss the printed version (the Beano is starting to adopt certain aspects though, like the mini-strips and the use of certain artists), but there are some good strips on the digital edition - especially Retro Active. My PC is modern, so it has no trouble running it. There's definitely room for improvement though. I wouldn't like to see it fail.

Since the Dandy shop is horrendously unclear about this, simply listing prices for buying credits without, as far as I can make out, explaining how many credits you need to purchase anything, can anyone confirm exactly how many credits you need to buy issues of the digital Dandy? I see on the first page of this discussion that it was £1.49 for 1 issue (which is the price listed for 100 credits on the Dandy site), etc, but does that still hold true? The Dandy site is frustratingly unclear about this.

The other thing I would like to know, before paying good money for issues, is "do I get to download them to my PC?" I don't particularly want to pay out for comics, only to potentially discover that one day the Dandy site becomes defunct and all the comics I paid for are inaccessible and lost to me. One of the things I like about printed books and comics is that you own your copy, and, while you might be at risk of losing them to fire or theft, you can't be suddenly cut off just because the company that sold them to you has gone out of business or changed their mind about providing the service.

Stuart V wrote:Since the Dandy shop is horrendously unclear about this, simply listing prices for buying credits without, as far as I can make out, explaining how many credits you need to purchase anything, can anyone confirm exactly how many credits you need to buy issues of the digital Dandy? I see on the first page of this discussion that it was £1.49 for 1 issue (which is the price listed for 100 credits on the Dandy site), etc, but does that still hold true? The Dandy site is frustratingly unclear about this.

The Digital Dandy requires 100 credits per issue as far as I'm aware. Your best way to get the credits is to subscribe for a year - that way you won't have to worry about missing out on an issue and having to scan through all of them to see which issue you hadn't bought.

Stuart V wrote:The other thing I would like to know, before paying good money for issues, is "do I get to download them to my PC?" I don't particularly want to pay out for comics, only to potentially discover that one day the Dandy site becomes defunct and all the comics I paid for are inaccessible and lost to me. One of the things I like about printed books and comics is that you own your copy, and, while you might be at risk of losing them to fire or theft, you can't be suddenly cut off just because the company that sold them to you has gone out of business or changed their mind about providing the service.

Sadly not. This is where my problems lie with The Dandy. What if their site was to just break? DC Thomson have had bugs all over their websites before so this is fairly plausible. What I think The Dandy have messed up on here is having the comic in the format it is in - they could have interested a far wider range of people had they used something like Issuu, the animations and canvas introduce many problems which could be ignored if only they included a version of the comic with everything laid out on a page (you know, like a normal comic?).

But despite these problems, you shouldn't be put off by The Digital Dandy - it's still a very good comic with some incredibly strong stories (Retro Active, Harry and his Hippo, Bad Hair Day, Jibber & Steve, Blinky, Bananaman, The Numskulls, The Laughing Planet) with a wide range of artists (these being: Jamie Smart, David Parkins, Andy Janes, Stephen White, Nick Brennan, Tom Paterson, Dan Gaynor, Alexander Matthews, Stephen Waller, Nigel Auchterlounie, Gary Boller, Dean Rankine, Mike Pearse, Rick Eades, Wayne Thompson) so there's something for everyone!

You can probably download the stories by going directly to their urls, which usually have the format http://www.dandy.com/issues/issue #/storyname/storyname.html, where # is the issue number and storyname is obviously the name of the story (although some aren't obvious, Brassneck sometimes has bn for it's address). You can find these urls out by loading the story as normal and using the F12 command console in Chrome, or using the right click option "open frame in new tab/window" in some browsers. Once opened in a dedicated tab, just save it like any normal webpage. So downloading is possible but not supported.