“Following extensive research, we discovered The Dandy readers were struggling to schedule a weekly comic into their hectic lives. They just didn’t have enough time. They’re too busy gaming, surfing the net or watching TV, movies and DVDs. They still enjoyed The Dandy, but if they were going to buy it themselves they expected more than just ‘a comic my dad used to read’,” Craig Graham, editor of the long-lived Dandy comic talking to the BBC.
Hard as it may be to believe, but the Dandy, which has been providing entertainment to generations of British kids for seven decades, has been changed to the now fortnightly Dandy Xtreme, the first time it has been published fortnightly since paper shortages during World War Two as far as I know. As well as a name change the new-look Dandy has a revised format, with more of a ‘lifestyle magazine’ feel to it apparently (do eight year olds need lifestyle magazines now? Perhaps they do, but that makes me rather sad. When I was a kid these comics were our lifestyle – changed days). Dundee-based D C Thomson said that the format had been updated due to feedback from the readership, but along with the new look many famous British comics characters will continue to run in the new Xtreme version (presumably promoting correct English will not be a part of the comic’s remit), so Desperate Dan and his Cow Pies do still have a home, which is good. And to be fair, it does continue the publisher’s push to keep all of their comics creations relevant to today’s kids, as D C Thomson’s Euan Kerr told me last summer, where he commented on competing against multi-channel TV, video games and music aimed at younger audiences.
The Scottish publisher also claims it will continue to remain the world’s longest running comic as it is an update rather than replacement, although I imagine a number of readers may not be 100% convinced on that score. Still, sad as it may seem to us, the acid test is how it appeals (or doesn’t) to the younger readers who actually pick it up and not older duffers like me who remember it while sporting rose-tinted spectacles. And since it looks to me to be not entirely dissimilar to the kid’s comic Toxic (and D C Thomson’s own Beano Max, perhaps) which has proven successful, perhaps this is what today’s kids want from their comics – and that’s what’s important at the end of the day. And if it means kids will still be reading comics, then that’s what publishers have to do.
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August 4th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
It can’t “remain the world’s longest-running comic” – because it never has been! Detective Comics started about 8 months earlier.
August 5th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Well, there you go! Mind you, it must be the longest running British comic.