Analysis: Innovation created the Dandy and it may also help to save it

IF THE closure of the print version of the Dandy was confirmed, it would be very sad news for British comics. The Dandy is acknowledged as one of the world’s longest-running comics and certainly the longest-running in the UK.

It was started by DC Thomson in December 1937, edited by Albert Barnes, who remained as editor until his retirement in 1982. The comic was very much his domain. It reflected his personality: although he was a very stern man he was also a bit of a prankster, and his rough and tumble sense of humour was reflected in the Dandy.

He created many of the best-known characters. He developed Desperate Dan with the artist Dudley Watkins, and Watkins modelled Dan’s famous chin on that of Barnes, who I’m sure was secretly chuffed.

The reason the Dandy was so successful was that it wasn’t like anything else on the newsstands. We perhaps forget just how innovative comics 
like the Dandy and then the Beano really were. In 1937 the other publications around were very much story comics, mainly text stories with some illustrations. These weren’t the kind of visually dynamic, sequential stories that the Dandy brought in.

That innovation came about through DC Thomson’s awareness of American comics and also cinema and the sort of visual slapstick and physical storytelling that was seen in the likes of Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin. The comics were very colourful and bright, and that made them stand out.

At the height of its success in the 1950s and 1960s, the Dandy’s circulation topped two million. And that is a conservative figure in terms of readership, because of course children shared their comics and many of these copies would have passed through many grubby hands.

What has happened since then is there has been a dramatic change in comics publishing and an increase in competition for children’s time and attention. We now have things like computer games, the internet and television.

The Dandy has had to face those challenges. If the print version is closed, and that’s by no means certain, it seems likely that there may still be life for many of the characters in different forms, perhaps appearing in other comics like the Beano but also in digital formats. A life in online comics seems one way that the best-known Dandy characters may develop. There may be a chance here for DC Thomson to innovate once again in comics, in the digital world.

• Dr Chris Murray is an expert in comics, film and popular culture at Dundee University