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Post by The Shad on Aug 13, 2012 22:22:25 GMT
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Post by ShayMay on Aug 13, 2012 22:49:07 GMT
...Well, [censored]. Genuinely saddened.
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Post by L. T. Dangerous on Aug 13, 2012 23:59:00 GMT
Each issue costs nine hundred and fifty-two pounds, I'm not surprised parents aren't buying it every week. It was 35p when I was a kid!!
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Post by Mambo's Here! Look Busy! on Aug 14, 2012 6:15:57 GMT
I guess the kids these days just don't like reading comic books. Now is the time for us old fogeys!
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Post by Lost Mercenary on Aug 14, 2012 8:48:00 GMT
When the Dandy became Dandy XTREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEME it had already died in my eyes. Now hearing that my childhood comic had introduced celebrity comic strips into it only makes it seem like a walking corpse.
In a way I'm glad its ended now. I still have all my old issues and annuals to remember and read. Including my oldest one from 1969. God bless Car Boot sales!
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Post by Devo DrakeFox on Aug 14, 2012 11:26:01 GMT
I never liked Dandy to begin with, to be honest. Still, it's gonna be weird looking at the magazine racks and not seeing it there.
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Post by The Stiv™ on Aug 14, 2012 13:20:49 GMT
Maybe they should just cut their production costs by including reprinted material.
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Post by Beeth on Aug 14, 2012 15:23:05 GMT
Eh, was always more of a Beano person myself. Even so, the price of one of those has gotten depressingly high since I last got it. It was something like 30p the first time I got it, come early 2002 when I gave up getting them it was double that. I distinctly remember the period it was 52p for a while, then the very next issue I got had "STILL ONLY 55p!" across the top, the lying gits. Only recently I found out the price is now one pound fifty for an issue (£2.50 if there's a "free gift" included!) so I'm very glad I ducked out when I did. Can't imagine the Dandy has fared much better price-wise. Couldn't see either one lasting tbh.
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Post by madhair60 on Aug 14, 2012 17:11:22 GMT
Maybe they should just cut their production costs by including reprinted material. Was this... are you joking? More later, you [censored]s. In other news, things cheaper before Tories, film at eleven. This is desperately sad news. Probably gonna duck out of this thread now, already a bunch of stupid, ill-informed stuff in it.
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Post by Sam on Aug 14, 2012 17:54:59 GMT
Maybe they should just cut their production costs by including reprinted material. This seems familiar...
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Post by Balls on Aug 14, 2012 18:17:23 GMT
Maybe they should just cut their production costs by including reprinted material. Was this... are you joking? Guarantee he is. I believe it's in reference to the little known comic "Sonic The Comic" to which this happened.
And then it spawned an online forum full of ABSOLUTE [censored]ING [censored]S
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Post by L. T. Dangerous on Aug 15, 2012 5:23:16 GMT
Have to say, though, this part is rubbish:
First off, how can it be a "habit" to read weekly comics that you "grow out of"? If that were the case, readership would hold continuously steady as a constant stream of readers would come and go as they fell into and out of the habit. And the article says the comic's heyday stretched into the 1980s- bit of a video game boom in that period. TV's been around for much of the comic's life, too.
The "there's lots of stuff on TV these days" excuse is more viable for a channel to use if their ratings have declined now there are hundreds of channels watering down viewership. It's not viable for a comic that can be read at any time of day. Unless, of course, DC Thompson truly believe children are hooked into a Matrix-esque machine of television and video games whenever they aren't in school. Clearly (said the guy who's not a professional) it comes down to a) the price, b) the marketing and c) the quality of the comic. I stopped reading the Dandy when I thought it stopped being good, not because of video games.
Oh and some country called Nippon has weekly comics and apparently, so the legend goes, they're really, really popular and they supposedly have loads of telly and games and whatnot over there.
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Pitt
Script Hume
Ungrateful Sonic Saxophonist
If Lando dies, I'll destroy your planet!
Posts: 7,007
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Post by Pitt on Aug 15, 2012 21:44:31 GMT
That's disappointing. I preferred The Beano when I was younger but The Dandy was still a big thing for me.
Same goes for Classics From the Comics, though I honestly didn't notice that series' own cancellation until I looked it up out of curiosity.
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Post by Charles on Aug 15, 2012 23:12:14 GMT
This would, of course, happen when I started picking the Dandy up again two months ago - someone told me how good it now was and he was right - so it's my fault and I'm very sorry. It's not just the loss of really, really funny strips - there's also, as Lew Stringer points out, the sudden loss of work for UK comic creators in the UK. And as Alexander Matthews, creator of the brilliant Nuke Noodle and Grrrls points out, there's no equivalent comic at the moment for kids (the Beano, sure, but it's not as funny atm). Artist Andy Fanton got in a pretty nasty dig on the press coverage: "Ah, where were they all when we needed them, eh? Ah yes, bemoaning the fact that Desperate Dan looked different, that’s where." Now hearing that my childhood comic had introduced celebrity comic strips into it only makes it seem like a walking corpse. The celeb strips went out with the last Harry Hill in Christmas 2011 (with the exception of The Bogies and their pisstakes). And going back to Lew again, kids comics have been using celebrities since the 1920s, including the Dandy ("issue one of The Dandy in 1937 featured Our Gang... a strip based on the Hal Roach films.") We can also thank Harry Hill, in a roundabout way for the Dandy becoming a comic in 2010 again after three years as the "Dandy Xtreme".
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Post by Sam on Aug 15, 2012 23:14:41 GMT
Lets never thank the mess that is Harry Hill for anything.
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Post by Charles on Aug 15, 2012 23:17:36 GMT
If Harry Hill is responsible in any way for Jamie Smart doing anything comic-related, I will thank him with my life.
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Post by ShayMay on Aug 16, 2012 0:07:40 GMT
Man, Jamie Smart is incredible. For those of you who have yet to check out Corporate Skull, firstly, send all children and relatives away, and secondly, make sure you do - it's hilarious. To be honest, there was a time when I was like 'ugh, Harry Hill comic, ugh, Desperate Dan looks weird', but then someone brought up the excellent point that it was different, which doesn't automatically mean worse. I don't actually know whether it is worse or not; the fact is, I'm not going to go and buy a comic I have no interest in any more (even if it were excellent) to find out. However, I do think that the argument that 'kids have more to entertain them nowadays' is bogus. Back in the much-touted '50s, television would have been the hot new thing on the block, yet the Dandy still sold well. I don't have a clue whether or not the Dandy hasn't changed enough or whether it's changed too much (as, again, I haven't read it and haven't talked to any kids who have), but I certainly don't think its decline was inevitable. The one thing that has disappointed me the most about the whole situation has been the old-time fans who have been quite vocal in their condemnation of not just the Dandy but a number of related comics as well, and the subsequent responses from the creators. I understand that being lambasted for doing your job by people who should be far too old to care would get frustrating, but responding to it really only exacerbates the situation. It just ends up with both sides trading supercilious comments, and it doesn't do much for the whole "immaturity" stereotype surrounding comics. I really do hope the Dandy can find a way to get through this and draw readers back in. I really enjoyed being able to trade Desperate Dan stories with my younger cousin back when he bought it, and it's a huge part of our heritage and my childhood that I think kids should be allowed to experience - even if it's not exactly the same experience I had.
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Post by Charles on Aug 16, 2012 0:11:56 GMT
Man, Jamie Smart is incredible. He does the whole layout of the Dandy for them and half the puzzles - the Batman tie-in one was a classic. ("Bruce's greatest enemy, THE TERRIBLE JOKER (really it's his dad) has got all his awful Batman puns mixed up!") Mm. Fanton pointed out that not only does the Beano sell 30k extra issues, the Moshi Monsters magazine sells 170,000. These licensed mags sell - not for very long because it's tied to a fad brand, but they do sell quite a bit. Other entertainment doesn't stop kids then. EDIT: Oh, hey, maybe this is why the Dandy's bombing, it doesn't have enough free gifts*!God, imagine if that was the reason? * Only occassionally - and in the 90s, they were regular. There were TV ads for the Beano and Dandy and they always focused on that week's free gift!
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Post by ShayMay on Aug 16, 2012 0:24:11 GMT
This is probably the best time to mention this: I actually got a hold of the Beano Annual 2011 (my great-aunt, who got me into the Beano, the Dandy, and even STC back in the day can be a bit forgetful nowadays), and I have to agree. The art is still fantastic (especially Tom Paterson's work, which is inherently funny), but the scripts have lost a lot of 'pop' in almost every way. Sentences that should be exciting and be punctuated with an exclamation mark seem to make use of ellipses instead, and the antics of the characters don't seem to have the same energy or imagination behind them. I know the obvious counter to this is 'but Shay, you're almost twenty! Of course it won't seem as fresh or exciting to you!', but I don't find myself making that complaint with old Beano annuals. I do accept that I may just be nostalgia-blind as a possibility, but honestly, I think the Beano might just be a prime example of a comic not doing enough to change, and stagnating as a result. On a further tangent, Oor Wullie and the Broons are another two culprits (this may be outside some of your frames of references, but bear with me). In what I can only think of as a baffling attempt to bring back more traditional values, there was one startling, sexist moment in which the mischievous scamp-with-a-heart-of-gold Oor Wullie exclaimed: 'Next time, ah'll leave the cookin' and the sewin' tae the womenfowk. I ken my place!' If this is what comes of never changing a formula I want no part in it. It doesn't help that the comic timing seems a bit off. There was one Broons strip in which the joke was revealed one panel shy of the end. The last panel was literally just Joe reiterating the joke. That said, 'gi'en' it moose laldy' is one of my favourite sound effects. Mm. Fanton pointed out that not only does the Beano sell 30k extra issues, the Moshi Monsters magazine sells 170,000. These licensed mags sell - not for very long because it's tied to a fad brand, but they do sell quite a bit. Other entertainment doesn't stop kids then. That was a point I was intending to make, actually. These magazines designed to cash in on this month's hot new toy have a huge sales boom, but also a very fast decline. I don't think they can really be compared to the Dandy. And as for the free gifts, I can't remember anyone who bought comics when I was a child being particularly fussed about them. They were a nice bonus on a magazine/comic we wanted to buy for the content. I really don't think children's attitudes have changed so vastly in the interim, either.
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Post by L. T. Dangerous on Aug 16, 2012 10:16:10 GMT
If the comic does end, it will be interesting to see what will become of the Dandy brand. There are decades worth of material there to be reprinted in books aimed at older comic fans. But those fans probably won't be terribly interested in the more recent strips. It'll be interesting to see what, if anything, is marketed with the Dandy name on it in the immediate future.
Out of interest, how many issues do comics like Simpsons Comics and SpongeBob shift? Fair enough, they're monthly and they're reprints of American comics (and Simpsons Comics is aimed more and more towards kids over here, oddly, despite, I've always felt, being a teen-to-young-adult-centric book in America) but obviously they're doing something right to survive for so long in a dying market while mainstays are suffocating.
On that note, actually, how well does Spider-Man Magazine do and has Disney's interference with it led to a drop in sales at all since the strips stopped being created by UK writers and artists?
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Post by ShayMay on Aug 16, 2012 11:43:25 GMT
Perhaps it'll be relaunched online, and Beryl the Peril will murder her dad in cold blood after he grounds her!
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Post by L. T. Dangerous on Aug 16, 2012 13:19:57 GMT
Might as well, every other comic's taking the dark, gritty route these days. Thanks a lot, Chris Nolan
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Post by The Shad on Aug 16, 2012 15:17:42 GMT
Might as well, every other comic's taking the dark, gritty route these days. Thanks a lot, Chris Nolan Frank Miller? Alan Moore?
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Post by Balls on Aug 16, 2012 15:22:21 GMT
actually it was me I did it
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Post by Charles on Aug 16, 2012 17:41:07 GMT
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