Always keep a Dandy handy

The artist Jamie Smart's work on childrens comics has come in for some harsh and over-the-top knocks recently from a handful of critics. It even reached the ludicrous extreme of one of them setting up a hate page littered with vile personal abuse. However, perhaps even those critics would find Jamie's cover to this week's Dandy a superb example of great design and funny cartoonery. Shown here for your viewing pleasure is one of the best covers seen on The Dandy since its relaunch, and it's had some stiff competition.

Hats off to the cover designer too. That logo with its blue background should really jump off the shelves, assuming the retail staff don't place it back to front or behind The Beano again.

There are 22 pages of brand new material in this week's issue (not counting the jokes pages and suchlike). Highlights for me were Nigel Parkinson's Harry Hill strip as always, plus Alexander Matthews' Nuke Noodle, and, my particular favourite this week, the hilarious Swamp Bloke, the latest story in Wilbur Dawbarn's Rocky's Horror Show series.

There's also a new Postman Prat, with a script by David Mason and artwork by me.

As they used to say, "Always keep a Dandy handy". A phrase that never quite caught on like "Never Be without a Beano", but the intention was the same. The Dandy No.3555, out now, £1.50. Support Britain's longest-running comic!

And for those of you who prefer vintage Desperate Dan, don't worry. Jamie's equally valid and hilarious version didn't erase the original Dan from history. He's still out there, either in your old comics or popping up in parts of the Internet when you least expect him. For example, check out Nigel Parkinson's blog, where Nigel recently showed a classic early Desperate Dan strip from 1938, when Dudley Watkins was drawing in a more raw but nevertheless excellent style:
http://nigelparkinsoncartoons.blogspot.com/2011/10/dudleys-dan.html