Flashback to 15 Years Ago and Dandy day 2010

Life certainly passes by more quickly as you get older. I'm surprised to find that it's been 15 years today since The Dandy had its revamp, returning it to a comic format after the controversial Dandy Xtreme magazine era. 

That new look Dandy, published on Wednesday 27th October 2010, saw it drop all the magazine features from 'Xtreme' and return to being a comic from cover to cover, with all brand new material and a bunch of new characters.

I had the privilege of being invited onboard to do two of those new strips; Postman Prat (written by Craig Graham, Ally Bernard, and David Mason and drawn by me) and Kid Cops (written and drawn by me). The character concepts had been created by The Dandy staff and I designed them. Here's my first roughs for Postman Prat from back then that I doodled in my notebook before finalising the design...

After a while I also scripted Postman Prat. He was a good character to work on, and the concept of a halfwitted postman presented lots of scope. Kid Cops was a bit more of a challenge; two brothers who are convinced they're policemen, patrolling their neighbourhood (or sometimes just their own house) to clamp down on any crimes they find, real or imaginary. All good daft fun. 

The revamped Dandy put Harry Hill as the star of the comic, with barmy strips by Nigel Parkinson. The comic also saw the debut of Andy Fanton on George and the Dragon and had Jamie Smart doing Desperate Dan. It was a Dandy of the like never seen before, modern and experimental but still with lots of laffs. 

Sadly it was a revitalisation that came too late. Sales of The Dandy had been dwindling for decades, and the previous revamps had only given it a temporary reprieve. Sales on the 2010 revamp were good at the start, thanks to lots of publicity in the press and on TV, but afterwards sales fell again, shops cut down their orders, and the comic published its final issue in December 2012 on its 75th anniversary. 

Adult critics, who hadn't supported the comic in years anyway, blamed the content, but comics in general had suffered poor sales for a long time. The Dandy was one of the only two surviving "traditional" comics (the other being Beano) so we should celebrate its longevity rather than cast blame for its inevitable demise. Today, readers look back fondly on those final two years of the comic. Ironically, the last ever issue, a bumper size edition, sold so well it had to be reprinted! If only those extra readers had supported every issue.

The Dandy lives on of course in the form of a summer special and an all-new annual every year. It's been 13 years since the weekly ended so today's youngsters will only know of The Dandy as a special and annual. Let's hope they continue for a good while yet. 

I've been a contributor to The Dandy Annual since the 2012 dated edition, but I'm not in the latest (2026) one. I will be back in it next year though in The Dandy Annual 2027 with three Dinah Mo stories (and Postman Prat has a short guest appearance in one). The pages were completed a while ago so expect to see them when the book goes on sale in September next year.