A slightly delayed look at the last ever Dandy, Part 3 - who was missing!

Here we go, the reason this post was so long in producing. It's...

25 Dandy Characters Who Perhaps Should've Had A Place In The Top 75 Dandy Characters Ever

And that's shouting! Admittedly, this lot are mostly from 1988-2001 or thereabouts, but this is my list and those were my years for the Dandy.

So, in no particular order, here we go:

Xmas is here...

Well, Christmas Eve anyway. And there IS something special about Christmas Eve that makes it stand out more than any other day in the year, even more than "the big day" itself. Bill Murray (who else?) puts it best:

With this being the last post here before Xmas happens, I'd just like to say a MASSIVE thank you to everyone who's been following this thing since it started in July. Anyone who's commented on it or just looked at it, and obviously ANYONE can "do a blog", but... I'm still grateful, really.

So, in keeping with the season - join in!

Sing some songs:

Have some parties:

Be NICE for a change (or nicer than usual, if you're already nice):

Remember who your friends are (and that's ALL the time, not just at this time of year):

And overall, have a smashing Christmas:

Cheers!

Christmas At Scream Inn

It's only recently I've started to discover the wonders of Fleetway's Shiver and Shake comic (mostly due to my Welsh benefactor who's sent me two annuals so far), and there's a LOT to enjoy within those pages. Of particular note is Brian Walker's Scream Inn - a haunted hotel run by ghosts, that offers the prize of a million pounds to any guest who'll last the full night there. Readers of Shiver and Shake could suggest who they think might stand a chance, and if their suggestion was chosen, they'd be rewarded with a shiny pound coin.

Anyway, the annual from 1977 (or 1976 if you like, the way annuals are numbered will always be a source of confusion) featured a festively-themed tale, with the "guest" being a sweet old lady who writes poems for Xmas cards. Here it is:

(Oh, in case you don't know by now, click on the pictures to make them bigger, then click again to make them even bigger than that!)

The Dandy nears its end - so go back to the start

Here it goes again - the scanning's complete so things can get back to normal without any strange green women standing around. Less than a week to go until the Dandy dies, sort of. Look at it a number of ways...

-Some might say that it's NOT dead, because it's carrying on in a digital form (this doesn't count).

-Some are counting the current issue as the last one (due to next week's "official" last ever issue being a bumper celebration/funeral sort of affair, this week's being the last of the standard format ones).

-Then there's the folk who believe that the Dandy died whenever "their version" of it ceased to exist (that's me!).

For me, that "version" would be the one that ended in October 2004, just before it turned into something that was less a comic, more a magazine-with-occasional-comic-strips (and then THAT would morph into that hideously unmentionable incarnation). So really, and I'm certain I'm not alone in saying this, but the REAL "last ever" Dandy looked like this:

And it was catastrophic reinvention after reinvention after reinvention following this issue, leading us to the sad state we find the Dandy in today (for those late to the party, Lee James Turnock sums it all up hilariously). And it IS depressing, and depressing things aren't fun to write about. Instead, we'll be looking at where the Dandy all started for me on a personal level, back in the Summer of 1992 in a now-defunct newsagents...

Yep, we're looking at the 1992 Dandy Summer Special!

Obligatory Dandy Dedication

I'm a few days late with this, clearly, but everyone's heard the news by now: The Dandy is dead. Sort of. It's still got until the 4th of December (nice of them to let it shuffle on to its 75th birthday), so that's... another fifteen issues to go? And it'll carry on in digital form after that. What that entails, I do not know. I don't have an iPad and'm not really a fan of reading comics on a computer screen, so it may as well be dead.

There's been tributes and comments all over the place this last week - nice sentimental stuff from the likes of John Wagner and Lew Stringer; "sensible" bollocks from big-heads like Charlie Brooker; a sad little satirical cartoon from Lee James Turnock; and an agreeably honest look at what went wrong from Kid Robson. So, what more can I add? Nothing much, except for a look back at happier times.