This week's issue

[Phoenix]

And your point is, caller?

This post is definitely off topic, but very relevant to this thread. I have been wondering for some time, Scoobie, whether or not to ask you why you are constantly having a go at Swirly, and from time to time at Digi. I have this evening consulted Al's Forum Rules Statement to see if such a question would fall foul of his Rules or not. I have decided that Rule 2, Respect other people's views and respond constructively, not insultingly, will allow me to say what I want to say to you. Like all other forum members, I am always open to the views of others, and I will consider them, respond to them when I think it appropriate to do so, and I will change my expressed opinion if a response is persuasive enough. I am assuming that as a forum member you are quite happy to go along with this approach yourself. So, very much in the spirit of responding constructively to your recent posts, I would like to ask you to reread them and focus first on those areas where you are responding constructively, and then on those areas where you deviate from Al's Rule 2, the bit about not responding insultingly is the part I am referring to. It should hopefully soon be obvious to you that such a division of focus does exist, and that if in future you were to resist the temptation to include all those areas where you deviate from that third part of Rule 2, where you allow personal antagonisms to interfere with the thrust of the constructive responses that you wish other forum members to consider, there would be absolutely no need for any forum member ever to complain about you. Not only that, but you would become a valued member and contributor yourself.

[colcool007]

I'm getting too old for this. And I know Phoenix definitely is! But his comments saved me the need to break down the last few posts.

Can we keep the comments to fact and not opinion if you are going to deconstruct someone else's post. One more strop on this thread and it is closed.

We all wander off-topic and if it goes too far off the beaten track, a new thread will be started by Al, AndyB or myself. Or if it suggested by anyone, we will start it on your behalf.

/Grumpy moderator mode on standby...

[swirlythingy]

An assortment of random and inconsequential thoughts about issue #3592:

Nuts and bolts on the logo. Seems more variation is going to become a regular thing, then, which can't be bad.

The school noticeboard is hardly "new", is it? Nor is a mistake like that - the so-called "pull-out" was advertised as "new" for a good month. Speaking of which, as I predicted, they've finally given up pretending - the phrase "pull-out" appears nowhere, and the "Bash Street Kids" entry in the contents gives the page number of the strip, not the preceding page. About time, too - it never amounted to anything more than a slight change in pagination, and it kept getting shoved aside by adverts.

At least they got their own code right this time, but when do we get more than joke punchlines?

Every time that picture of the Comic Maker Kit gets printed it seems more pixellated than before. Was somebody actually stupid enough to use the same file as the thumbnail on the shop website? I mean, there's a perfectly good photograph of exactly the same toy on the subscription adverts which were current at the start of the year. Did it get lost?

I see Laura Howell's on Minnie again, for the second time in the last few weeks. Is Ken Harrison working on something else?

That dartboard is a perfect duplicate of the prank dartboard given away only five issues ago! Oh, come on, surely kids can't be that stupid, or that goldfish-like? The only changed detail is the picture in the middle, and the fact that you don't get any darts with it this time. That's one of the most blatently desperate page-padders I've seen in a long time, and I've seen a few.

These Cuthbert's Conundrums are rather classy, aren't they? Much better than the traditional comic anagram puzzle which can practically be solved by the same technique as that famous joke email with all the letters except the first and last jumbled up. I was quite proud of being able to solve this week's without looking at the story.

How can anybody vote for who they'd like to score goal number 1,001, when the strip will have been written, drawn and finished weeks ago? Unless, of course, Ball Boy's team only score one goal every few weeks. It would have been plausible in the no-hoper anti-hero John Dallas era, but the mere fact they've already managed 1,000 rather puts the damper on that theory.

Reprinted Numskulls? Whatever happened there? Temporary artist absence, or is another strip about to pull a Roger? Surely there's no shortage of ghost artists? (If it's covering for the extra third page of Fred's Bed, it's doing a bad job, because we've lost two pages and gained one.)

Ooh, look - a very, very tiny square in the far corner of Retro Beano gives us our first official mention, weeks after it went on sale, of the Ultimate Beano Summer Special. It looks as if it was designed to be the very barest minimum to fulfil a contractual requirement! Meanwhile, of course, the Summer Annual gets a full half-page. I suppose, what with it being only at WHSmith and all, since DC Thomson aren't allowed to sell it they have no incentive to promote it.

New Roger the Dodger at last! All three cameo-only panels of it! Drawn by David Sutherland, who I believe has no history with the strip whatsoever. He's made a pretty decent stab, considering. What with all the other characters in the strip, he seems to be in a bit of a ghosting mood - that's definitely an upright sweaty sock in the background of the last panel. I wish somebody - anybody - could give Roger some love, but David's got two two-page strips per week already. Whoopsy, isn't that Ivy in the background of a couple of panels? And Vic Neill Billy Whizz in the one before? I see the scriptwriter's a Monty Python fan.

There's definitely an artist squirrelled away inside the Dodge Diary somewhere. Today's clip-art looks as if it's been drawn with a real black marker pen, which must have required at least some effort to end up on the printed page.

A Dandy advert? A Lego City advert? I thought we'd seen the last of both weeks and weeks ago? Where's the advert for next week's issue? At least those are sometimes informative. I see the Dandy isn't "100% New!" any more.

[Digifiend]

The Dandy ad was appropriate too, as Mr Meecher is back next week. Numskulls being a reprint is odd, as if Barry Glennard isn't available, Tom Paterson can easily cover, as Laura does when Ken's too busy for Minnie.

[Jonny Whizz]

I think The Numskulls reprint is from about 2005. In truth, if you didn't already recognise the story, then you probably wouldn't have been able to tell that it was a reprint, but it's not unprecedented to reprint strips that are otherwise usually new material - for example in 2009 several Jim Petrie Minnie strips were reprinted due to the postal strikes at that time. Unusually, in that case the Beano website openly described these stories as reprints.

Tom Paterson seemed to have loads of strips in the last Beano annual, including both of Dave Eastbury's, but Fred's Bed is the only strip I've seen him draw in the Beano lately, and even then DS is often the artist instead. It seems surprising how little we have seen of his work recently when you remember how much work he was doing three or four years ago.

As for the appearance of Ivy in Fred's Bed, it could be that DS (or the writer) hadn't been informed that she's been dropped. I remember in one issue in 2003, Billy Whizz appeared on the cover (drawn by Jimmy Hansen) but was drawn in Graeme Hall's style with the lightning bolt hair, when Wayne Thompson had taken over three months prior to that - this shows that some changes take a while to filter through in terms of the character's accepted appearance. I do agree that Billy's cameo in Fred's Bed looked much more like Vic Neill's than Nick Brennan's current version.

I don't think the extra page of Fred's Bed can be blamed for the Numskulls being reprint. However, there seem to be far fewer ghost artists around now than there were a few years back - this is probably a good thing overall, as in many cases the ghost artists simply weren't as good as the regular artists (I remember one ghost on Ball Boy whose artwork I didn't really like).

Overall I thought it was a good issue this week. I particularly liked the Roger the Dodger story.

[Jay]

A Dandy advert? A Lego City advert? I thought we'd seen the last of both weeks and weeks ago? Where's the advert for next week's issue? At least those are sometimes informative. I see the Dandy isn't "100% New!" any more.

I don't mind the Dandy ads/reprints at all. Infact I applaude them. It can only be a good thing if it persuades Beano-only readers to give Dandy a try.

Can anyone confirm that it was Diego Jourdan who drew the lego advert?

[Digifiend]

It's signed. But the signature was cut in half by the bottom of the page.

[swirlythingy]

I don't mind the Dandy ads/reprints at all. Infact I applaude them. It can only be a good thing if it persuades Beano-only readers to give Dandy a try.

I agree; I think it's good that the Beano is trying to rub off some of its higher readership on the Dandy, and the reprint-adverts are certainly more likely to convince than its previous tactics, which usually focused only on an upcoming free gift, with no actual description of the comic at all. (Or meaningless hype, as used before the 2004 revamp.)

However, I can't help feeling it's too much, too late, especially after such a long gap with no adverts. And why was the comic's existence not even acknowledged until ages after the revamp? As has been discussed here before, that was a major PR fail, right there.

In the end, if there's only room for one of an ad for next week's Beano or for the Dandy, I'd either choose the former or at least have some form of information somewhere in the comic (such as in the contents, which was where they put it the last time paid-for ads swarmed all over the company's advertising space). But I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the best place ever found for next week info (and, for that matter, subscription details) was in Gnasher's Gnews Bites.

[Digifiend]

As has been discussed here before, that was a major PR fail, right there.

Yeap, epic fail alright. I've said it before and I'll say it again, they should've been advertising it in October 2010!

[Jay]

I was reading this weeks Ball Boy and something just wasn't right. It wasn't untill I got to the last panel when I realised the grass was green! My eyes instantly flicked to the sky and lo... it was blue with an horizion of lush green trees! I'm so glad Ball Boy and his chums no longer have to play in the burning heat of the Arizona National Park.

Please read the above paragraph in massive sarcasm quotations.

[Digifiend]

Hmm, Beano's Fred's Bed and Dandy's Little Cheryl and Bananaman were all clearly written and drawn before the news of Cheryl Cole's exit from X Factor was announced. Fred has last year's judging panel as "Hex Factor" judges, Little Cheryl makes reference to her going to America, and Bananaman supposedly saved her job.

They really shouldn't try so hard to be topical. To get caught out three times in the same week is pretty bad form.

[NP]

Dandy's Little Cheryl ...clearly written and drawn before the news of Cheryl Cole's exit from X Factor was announced. ,, Little Cheryl makes reference to her going to America

Try reading it more carefully, the Cheryl story is entirely and specifically about her being upset because Simon WON'T let her go to America. How can that be anything but a reaction to her exit from X Faxtor USA?

[Scoobie]

Digifiend's very own Epic Fail.

[colcool007]

Digifiend's very own Epic Fail.

Scoobie, play nice.

[Digifiend]

That strip did end with Cheryl boarding a plane to America. The assumption was an easy one to make. Apparently a mistaken one, but everyone makes mistakes sometimes. No need to gloat, Scoobie.