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VampireBuddha Calendar enthusiast from Ireland (Wise, aged troper) Relationship Status: Complex: I'm real, they are imaginary
Calendar enthusiast
#1: Aug 26th 2012 at 8:42:49 AM

Right, here it is. As a follow-up to me read of a recent The Beano, I'm going to take a look at The Dandy #3595. Did you know that The Dandy is the longest-running comic in Britain, the second-longest-running English-language comic, and the third-longest-running comic in the world (after America's Detective Comics and an Italian comic whose name i cannot at this moment recall)? I've actually been meaning to do this for some time, but with The Dandy about to end printing, it's really now or never.

The cover shows Bananaman acting as as motorboat to pull along Desperate Dan, who is using a pair of logs as jet-skis, with Beryl teh Peril, two other dudes, and a monkey on his back. Bananaman is declaring his intention to fly into the sun, and Dan looks suspiciously happy at this news. Also, Beryl seems to be wearing a bikini.

Man, Dan looks terrible. They really picked the wrong artist for this cover. Beryl also looks bad, but I suppose she's too small and far away for much detail.

The first strip, on the inside cover, is Desperate Dan. Oh God. This... this is horrible, and I haven't even started reading yet.

Desperate Dan is down from the three pages it had when I was a lad to just one. The artist is the same as the one who drew the cover, and he's bad. Seriously, I can draw better than this. It's really sad to see one of the four great icons of British comics*

being reduced to such rubbish. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Now, one might argue that it's aimed at kids, so the art should be simple and cartoony. That's a valid point, but there's a difference between cartoony and amateurish. The Beano also has very cartoony art, but there is at least some talent there. This looks like it was drawn by one of the comic's readers, and not the child prodigy type.

And the story is also wrong. The essence of Desperate Dan is that he's a slightly dimwitted but generally well-meaning chap who doesn't know his own strength. This story contains precisely none of that.

Dan sees a man making money by walking dogs. Seeing an opportunity, he decides to offer a horse-walking service. He gets quite a bit of business, but finds that walking that many horses isn't easy, so he trains them to stand in a pyramid shape to take up less horizontal space.

That's right. Dan uses his wits and intelligence in a ridiculous way to solve a very silly problem. OK, there's wacky, and then there's stupid. This was the latter.

Not off to a good start, Dandy.

Like The Beano, The Dandy is now printed on glossier paper than it was when I was a lad, and there's a table of contents. The left side of the TOC is taken up by The Sekret (Because Poor Literacy is KEWL!) Diary of a Dandy Editor, wherein he describes how he's going nuts after getting bitten by a tarantula while on a recent holiday to the Amazon. It's OK, in a peurile sort of way. Also, there's a challenge to find some pirates's buried treasure somewhere in the issue. Hey, that's pretty cool.

What appears to be the lead strip is a new one called Mega-Lo Maniacs, by Jamie Smart, who also drew Desperate Dan. Huh, didn't know they had started crediting creators.

This story concerns a kid named Rory who is camping out in his garden, when some sort of alien ghost appears with a suit of powered armour that allows him to interact with the physical world. He announces his intention to conquer Earth with an army of ghosts, only the ghosts are more interested in playing with his mecha-suit than in taking over the world. The story ends with Rory sucking him into a hoover, and if he really is a ghost, can't he just go through the bag.

Not quite as offensively bad as Desperate Dan, but still quite rubbish.

The next page has a parody ad for a movie called The Expandables}}. The joke is that its members are fat. Did a lame pun on a movie that this comic's readers are too young to watch really deserve an entire page?

Opposite, there's a page of four mini-strips. Teacher Training has a teacher marking papers while abseiling down a cliff in what looks to be a setting where teachers are trained with millitary methods. Uh, right. Jibber & Steve has a pair of blue rabbits write 'Time Machine' on a carboard box, but when they press the button, they end up with three ears instead of two. Why? The Exciting World of Gary Barlow (NEW!) has a couple of guys named Gary Barlow and Mark Owen, who I gather are H-list celebrities, ride the best roller coaster, and Gary's expression never changes. OK, so? Angry Ducks has a pair of ducks, who are angry, tease a pigeon, who then calls in a bunch of other, really big pigeons. What's the joke here?

Then we come to Bananaman, which is a strip I remember from my childhood. It's better-drawn than what's been in the comic so far, but has still decayed from the quality of the 90s.

The story has Bananaman retrieving some sort of sacred turnip from General Blight and Doctor Gloom, only in the last panel, it accidentally gets eaten by a cow named Buttercup. Why is it that all cows in comedy are named Buttercup, eh?

It's not terrible, but it all seemed a tad random. Even so, there are some good moments here, and it's definitely the high point so far; however, that's not saying much. Also, there are three panels of padding at the start of Eric picking his nose and eating it, which I could really have done without. There isn't even a joke here, it's just being yucky for the sake if yucky.

Next up, we have Rocky Roller, Pest Controller (NEW!), which is about a pest controller who acts like he's played by Mel Gibson, Jean-Claude van Damme, and Arnold Schwarzenneger all at the same time. The artwork is of amateur Webcomic quality; a bit below Bananaman, but still miles better than Jamie Smart.

As a one-off, this story is OK. Rocky hears that a woman has a cockroach in her kitchen, and end up blowing up the house in a (failed) attempt to kill it. However, the entire story is rather one-note, and there really isn't much variety to be spun from the concept. Still, with less than 20 issues left, longevity really isn't a concern at this point.

After that comes Beryl the Peril. The art is, once again, simpler than I remember, but it's still in the upper range of what I've read so far; indeed, it's better-drawn than any strip preceeding it in this issue. Also, Beryl herself remains true to her essence of being a toboyish trouble-maker.

Beryl herself has been redesigned somewhat, now wearing trousers. Her dad has been completely redone, changing from generic middle-aged office drone to cool punkoid, with his black T-shirt, baggy trouses, sparse beard, and single earing.

In the story, Beryl and her dad go to a football match, and naturally enough, Beryl gets them kicked out before the game even starts. I actuall quite liked this. I got several chuckles out of it, and there is a definite structure to the story. Indeed, this should be mandatory reading for all comic writers as a lesson on how to tell an entire story in a single page. Very impressive.

Then we have The Dark Newt. The editors do realise that The Dark Knight is rated 12, right? Anyway, The Dark Newt is some sort of newt who thinks he's Batman. The swamp is attacked by giants, but the Newt manages to scare them off, garnering immense popularity from the other swamp dwellers. (As is revealed in the denoument, the giants were actually a pair of humans from some sort of health and safety thing, who thought the swamp might be a health hazard that needs to be filled in, but decide to leave it be when they see a newt dressed as Batman).

This is quite adorable, and it shows the proper way to do simple, cartoony art. Yes, they art is childish and exaggerated, but there is talent here. Also, the concept lends itself quite well to different stories; this could actually have become one of the comic books's manstays.

On a page I have to turn on my side to read is something called What's Inside an Auntie's Nest, which shows a cave-riddled hill full of aunts doing aunty stuff. I don't get it.

Then there's Grrrls!, in which a general talks about how he found Satan's daughter while exploring a cave which he found while digging a hole to hide from the Nazis, er, I mean dig a tunnel under Hitler's base in order to blow him up, and raised her to use her power to turn things into toasters in order to fight monsters.

Uh huh. The art quality has dropped back to low. There are a couple of good panels, but this strip really needs a competent artist.

From what I can gather, Grrrls! is about a trio of little monster girls who fight evil monsters. It would be improved if it had a realistic art style, and the girls were between the ages of 17 and 33, fit, and curvy, dressed in tight clothes. Why yes, I am a pervert, how did you notice?

More mini-strips follow. In Scary Bikers, an anthropomorphic goat and pig sell ice cream to kids, except the ice cream contains eyes to make them scream. It ends on a couple of the worst puns I've ever seen. In It Wasn't Me, two lads are playing cricket. One hits the ball through someone's window, then hands the bat to the other. The ball has 'It Wasn't Me!' written on it. Right. In Barbarian Librarian, the chief librarian tells a barbarian to file some books, which he does by dropping the case on the chief. So what's the joke. Finally, we get another instalment of The Exciting World of Gary Barlow, in which Mark Owen is replaced by Howard Donald, and Gary was swimming with sharks. Really, what is the point of this?

The centre of the comic is given over to The Banana Bunch by the Great Nigel Parkinson. This seems rather out of place; it really feels like more of a Beano strip. Anyway, it concerns a group of kids called the Banana Bunch who get up to various mischief, here by making things fall from the top of a church tower so people think it's the end of the world. In the end, the leader gets an accidental haircut, which in context is a karmic punishment for her, but everyone else gets off Scot free.

I have to wonder why they're called the Banana Bunch. They have a dog shaped like a banana, and the leader has a pair of bananan hairclips, but none of the others are in any way bananaish. Perhaps in the early days, they tended to use banana skins to trip people up. Anyway, this strip is OK, but I get the impression Parkinson wrote this particular one on an off day.

Now it's another Grrrls! strip, this time about the general meeting a goblin girl in the forest. Really, Dandy? Two of the same strip in one issue? It's obvious they're just throwing everything in their slush pile into the comic book.

Bull Beef and Chips is another of my childhood memories. For some reason, Beefy is shoveling cow dung. He fills up a bucket with it, and rigs it so that when a rop is pulled, the puller will be covered in bovine faeces. Finally, he attaches a sign to the rope reading 'Pull here for good luck!'

Chips comes across the rope and timidly gives it a gentle pull, frustrating Beefy into showing him how to do it right and getting covered in ruminant shit. As Obscurus Lupa explained to Oancitizen, IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE IT'S POOP!

Oh, and the art here is the same as that of Bananaman.

Silly Moo is a recently-added strip about an unusually stupid cow. It's badly-drawn and crap. Mooving on (sorry!)

The Bogies is a strip that apparently has its own website. I don't get this. Why is everybody a snot? This would work just as well with humans.

The story is about Tony Hock, an incompetent skateboarder who accidentally does a series of awesome stunts. There are some decent moments, but it just kind of trails off at the end. I've seen better.

The fan page has some Fan Art and jokes submitted by readers. It's about what you'd expect from 8-year-olds. Some of these kids should give Jamie Smart some lessons.

More mini-strips on the next page. Flatman and Ribbon seems to think kids today still watch the 60s Batman show. Whoever does Constable Clod (NEW!) needs to learn that showing beats telling, and sometimes less is more. The Exciting World of Gary Barlow (NEW!) is the same as the last two, but with someone named Robbie, and Gary rides a motorbike through a flaming hoop. In Jibber & Steve, one of them is sleeping while the other is about to play an electric guitar with an imperial fuckton of speakers pointed at the sleeper. It should have lost the speech bubble.

Next up, we have one called Starsky's Hutch... OK, really? Are modern British under-10s really going to appreciate a reference to Starsky & Hutch?

Anyway, Starsky's Hutch is about anthropomorphic police rabbits. It seems like it's going for rapid-fire comedy, but it just falls flat. Next.

After that, there is a puzzle page called The Maze of a million ten dooms!!!. It's a basic maze, but with several spaces that result in failure, such as being attacked bu ninja penguins, being bored to death by a teacher, and having the Cute Kitten of Death melt your heart. It does challenge the reader to cut a hole in a piece of paper and place that over the maze to simulate being in a real one and only able to see directly in front of you, but it's not like that's going to happen. Still, that's a pretty decent page.

The same cannot, unfortunately, be said for My Dad's a Doofus. This seems to be about a man who is such an idiot he's in the same class as his son. He tries to fix the principal's car, but it ends up exploding. Oh, and it's drawn by Jamie Smart. Seriously Smart, take an art class.

Then there's another Rocky Roller: Pest Controller strip. Rocky chases after a rat, causing massive damage as he does so, and tries to kill it with a grenade, which ends up unleasing all the rats on the city. This is getting tiring; let's move on.

Crap. Can we go back, please? I really don't want to describe yet another page of mini-strips. Oh, I have to? Fine. Whatever.

Jibber & Steve sucks. Flatman and Ribbon sucks. Scary Bikers sucks. Angry Ducks sucks.

Nearly done, thank Satan. The penultimate strip is Bad Grandad, in which an elderly man acts like a petulant child and ruins his grandson's birthday party. The kids get back by playing Pin the Tail on the Grandad. The art is OK by modern Dandy standards, and would just barely have gotten in back in the 90s.

OK, back. Page. Oh Yog-Sothoth, it's another Desperate Dan.

Well, I admit I actually rather like this one; if it only had a good artist, it would have been a classic. Basically, a Native American dude tells Dan some nonsense about where the sun goes at night and how to prevent the moon from crashing to Earth, all to get Dan to bring him milkshakes.

However, this hits upon a personal bugbear of mine, which is using the word Indian to refer to Native Americans. Guys, Indian already meanas somebody from India, and it did back when Columbus found America. Could someone please come up with a name that doesn't refer to people on another continent?

Ranting aside, that's the end of the comic. Final thoughts? Disappointing. The art never really gets better than mediocre, the stories are mostly lame, and it really seems like the people involved just didn't care. I can really see why this thing is going to cease printing, and to be honest, they're probably making the right decision. The Dandy has gone from being one of Britain's great comics to a sad, pathetic remnant of what it once was, and what good there is can't make up for all the half-arsed crap. That's rather upsetting.

Ukrainian Red Cross
SKJAM Since: Jan, 2001 Relationship Status: Baby don't hurt me!
#2: Aug 26th 2012 at 4:50:44 PM

This sounds terribly sad.

I mostly agree with you about Grrls, but would be willing to accept a competent cartoony art style, ala Lil Abner.

Also, Dan Dare is a redlink?! Nope, but Comicbook/ Dan Dare is...

edited 26th Aug '12 4:51:47 PM by SKJAM

TamH70 Since: Nov, 2011 Relationship Status: Faithful to 2D
#3: Aug 28th 2012 at 3:06:18 AM

Gary Barlow and Mark Owen are founding members of Take That, which is one of the most successful British groups ever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_That

Hardly H-List. C-List now, probably, (since I don't like them much, at least none of their pre-comeback material)

But apart from that, reasonably fair. The comic must be somewhat that bad or else it wouldn't be going out of print.

edited 28th Aug '12 3:07:56 AM by TamH70

C0mraid from Here and there Since: Aug, 2010
#4: Aug 28th 2012 at 5:20:58 AM

Barlow is now head judge of the X-Factor, which I think may be the most popular show in the country and is currently airing. I have no idea why you think kids won't get the Batman references or that a lot of them won't see a 12 rated film.

I think you may be being too critical of this, although it's impossible to tell without a copy. You've criticised pop culture references as obscure without having a good frame of reference yourself, criticed art without considering how it might appeal to it's target audience and brought in your own preconceptions of how paticular characters should be portrayed.

Am I a good man or a bad man?
VampireBuddha Calendar enthusiast from Ireland (Wise, aged troper) Relationship Status: Complex: I'm real, they are imaginary
Calendar enthusiast
#5: Aug 28th 2012 at 7:47:07 AM

[up][up] and [up]Oh, is that who he is? I'm not into music at all, so that's why I missed him. Yeah, kids would probably know who he is.

Fair enough on Gary Barlow. You might be right; I'm definitely not in the target audience, but at the same time, I was able to enjoy The Beano when I read it a while ago. Also, I was specifically wondering whether kids would appreciate a reference to the live-action Batman TV series from the 1960s; of course they'll appreciate a general reference to Batman.

As for The Dark Knight, upon reflection, The Dark Newt has nothing to do with it other than being a general parody of Batman, which the kids would get. I think I was just a it cranky from the general suckiness by the time I got to that point.

By the way, this is a sample of Jamie Smart's artwork. As you can see, it's rather poor.

ETA: Found some sales figures. Apparently, in July - December 2011, The Beano sold an average of 38,333 copies a week, compared to The Dandy's average of 7,489 per week in the same period; furthermore, The Dandy's sales have been a fraction of The Beano's for some time. Clearly, either one is doing something right, or the other is doing something wrong.

edited 28th Aug '12 7:59:45 AM by VampireBuddha

Ukrainian Red Cross
C0mraid from Here and there Since: Aug, 2010
#6: Aug 28th 2012 at 9:45:08 AM

The artwork isn't good, but I'd rate it as substandard as opposed to awful. I'm not sure you'd be so harsh on the same artist if he chose to draw in a different style; whether that style appeals to children I don't think it's for either of us to say.

As for 60's Batman; it was on ITV 4 at 4pm last week. Any child with sufficient interest in Batman will probably learn that there used to be a live action tv series about it. It's easy enough to track down as one of the oldest television programs still reguarly shown and the DVD of the film is always on sale in misleading packaging. Even discounting this, surely a parody of that show is a parody of the goofier side of Batman which children will be familiar with due to the recent Brave and the Bold series?

Am I a good man or a bad man?
HueJass84 Since: May, 2011
#7: Oct 9th 2012 at 9:59:07 AM

@Vampire Buddha The Dandy's sales have been a fraction of The Beano's for some time. Clearly, either one is doing something right, or the other is doing something wrong.

The Dandy's sales have been a fraction of The Beano's since about the 70s or 80s. Although the Dandy must have done something right because unlike nearly all the other comics in the same genre as The Beano (such as The Beezer and Whizzer and Chips) it didnt die in the late 80s/early 90s. However I think it's been on it's last legs for almost a decade because they keep revamping it (It was briefly a god-awful fortnightly called Dandy Xtreme) which really just means they've been trying to stop it from dying for ages but the comic has now finally succumbed to its wounds.

On another note I just read the Dandy's most recent issue (issue 3601) they are obviously using a lot of reprints currently these are drawn in a more traditional style then most of the rest of the comic, they are entertaining moreso than some of the non-reprints but a large amount of reprints usually signals a comic's demise. The mini-strips are still terrible. They should attempt to fit more panels into one strip because currently these mini-strips are too short too really get a good joke in. Luckily in this issue there was very little celebrity caricatures, they had a whole strip called Celeb School and other celeb themed strips a while ago and these were very annoying, unfunny and I often wondered whether the target audience understood who the celebs were. I know when I was a young kid I hated celebrities and was a fervent marxist so I found anything positive being written about the rich and famous offensive also I did not know the names of many celebrities back then either.

edited 9th Oct '12 10:00:26 AM by HueJass84

Digifiend Since: Sep, 2009
#8: Nov 26th 2012 at 8:21:56 PM

Well, two issues to go, and then the Dandy won't be on newsagents shelves any more. But it's NOT ending outright. It'll continue online, just not in print. I'm wondering, does that make it a Webcomic? It'll probably be more retro, although there will be some new characters.

As for Jamie Smart, he writes his own strips, as do some of the other artists. So give him some credit. Nigel Auchterlounie, the artist and writer on The Bogies as well as Jibber and Steve, has admitted that his artwork isn't up to par. He's focusing more on writing, and just took over writing duties on the Beano's Dennis and Gnasher (which is drawn by Nigel Parkinson). You should take another look at the Beano - it's undergoing a gradual revamp itself, with the Dandy's editor moving across to it.

edited 26th Nov '12 8:22:07 PM by Digifiend

markstickley markstickley from London Since: Nov, 2012
markstickley
#9: Nov 28th 2012 at 5:18:26 AM

The artwork is great. If you look at the sorts of things kids like these day, whether in TV or other comics, you'll see the artwork is often simpler, bolder and brighter than the sort of thing that was being produced 20 years ago or more. Looking at a comic aimed at kids from an adult perspective is not going to be very constructive. If you're hoping to see the same comic that you read when you were growing up of course you're going to be disappointed. Things change and mature both in you and any publication: perspective, taste, sense of humour. Everything changes over time and this is no exception.

I feel you're being a little unfair on Jamie Smart as well with some attacks that seem quite personal. If you don't get or appreciate a particular style of art, that's fine but there are plenty of people who do, including most kids I'd bet. His strip 'Bunny vs Monkey' in comic 'The Phoenix' is one of if not the most popular among readers.

Also, I noticed that in your review you claim that you could do better, which may well be true. I'd love to see an example of your work though. Feel free to post it.

edited 28th Nov '12 5:19:59 AM by markstickley

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