This year's Dandy and Beano Summer Special covers revealed

D.C. Thomson have revealed the cover artwork for this year's Dandy Summer Special and Beano Summer Activity Special in two small images on their web shop. Cover artwork on Dandy is by Ken H. Harrison, whilst the Beano cover is handled by Nigel Parkinson. Both will be in the bookazine format they've used over the past few years.

The Beano special contains new material, and the Dandy special will feature selected reprints from its archives. 

They'll be in the shops this summer (naturally) but you can pre-order them from the publisher here:
https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/books

By the way, I've written a brief article about the history of Summer Specials for issue 5 of Comic Scene which will also be out this summer! Support and subscribe to the mag here:
https://getmycomics.com/ComicScene

Beano Summer Special 2018

Art by Nigel Parkinson.

Here's the cover to this year's Beano Summer Activity Special that should be in the shops soon. Once again, it'll have 68 pages and be in the bookazine format with card covers, and include a sheet of free stickers inside.

I've no idea if there'll be a Dandy Summer Special this year, but you can order the Beano edition directly from the D.C. Thomson shop here:
https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/our-brands/the-beano/beano-summer-special-2018.html

50 year Flashback: BEANO SUMMER SPECIAL 1967

When I was a kid, I'd wait until I was on holiday to buy the latest summer specials. Picking up this Beano Summer Special from a stall on Blackpool prom in 1967, accompanied by the sea air and the sounds of seagulls and trams, was all part of the holiday experience. It also provided something to read in the guest house during the inevitable rainy days. 

Let's take a look at a few pages from this wonderful special. The cover artwork is by Dudley Watkins, showing a seemingly reckless Biffo the Bear leaping off the pier, but there's a safe resolution on the back cover...

Inside, the 32 tabloid sized pages were packed with all-new strips and features. The layout was often interesting, with strips sharing space, such as this spread with Punch and Jimmy by David Jenner alongside Dennis the Menace by David Law...

Most of the strips had a holiday theme of some sort. This Roger the Dodger page by Robert Nixon shows an old-style railway carriage and a stereotypical boarding house landlady...

This special had a good selection of adventure strips too; General Jumbo, The Q Bikes, and a great full colour centrespread with The Iron Fish, drawn by Sandy Calder...

A really nicely illustrated Lord Snooty and His Pals story by Dudley Watkins...

A very funny Dennis the Menace page by David Law...

...and what I think may be the very first Bash Street Dogs story, simply titled Dogs' Tale. The dogs had appeared in a few Bash Street Kids episodes in the weekly, but this is months before they achieved their own Pup Parade strip. You'll notice that they look a little different to how they appeared in the regular series. Art by David Sutherland...

That was a few pages from the 1967 special. Don't forget that the current Beano Summer Special is in the shops now!

Cover by Nigel Parkinson

All artwork in this post ©D.C. Thomson and Co. Ltd.

Here come the 2017 Summer Specials!

Summer Specials for both The Dandy and The Beano will be in the shops soon, but you can pre-order them separately or as a pack from the DC Thomson Shop right now:
https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/our-brands/dandy/the-dandy-80th-birthday-special.html

As in recent years, the Summer Specials are in the 68 page card-cover softback format, rather than the 32 page glossy tabloid size of years ago. This makes sense, as regular comics are glossy these days so a similar-looking Special just wouldn't look very... special. 

The Dandy special features reprints taken from over the course of the comic's run, to celebrate the fact that 2017 marks the 80th anniversary since The Dandy first appeared. 

The Beano Summer Activity Special features new material and includes puzzles and activity pages too. 

Keep a look out for them both in WH Smith and selected shops around 14th June, or order them from the link above.

Dandy and Beano Summer Specials are here!

No doubt they'll be arriving in the shops soon but for now the 2016 Summer Specials for The Dandy and The Beano are available to order directly from the publishers at the D.C. Thomson Shop:
https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/our-brands.html

As in recent years, the Summer Specials are now in the 68 page 'Bookazine' format as opposed to the big 32 page glossy tabloids they used to be decades ago. This makes sense. The weekly Beano is a 36 page glossy these days, so a 'Special' in the same format would hardly be significantly special. There's also the problem of retailers wanting a more uniform size of course. A bigger footprint on the stands would demand a separate display space, and we know how retail giants like to charge for those! 

As far as I know, The Dandy Summer Special will contain reprint again, but The Beano Summer Activity Special will feature new material. I don't have any material in either so your guess is as good as mine at this point. Both feature new covers by Nigel Parkinson.

Anyway, summer's here so make it special with these two comics!

Here comes Summer!

Summer Specials for both The Dandy and The Beano should be arriving in the shops in June, or you could order them directly from the publisher DC Thomson. (Update: Available around June 16th.) 

Yes, although The Dandy sadly ended as a weekly in 2012 it still continues as a Summer Special and an Annual. I'm not sure how much of The Dandy Summer Special 2015 is new or how much is classic reprint, but I know some of its contents are new. (Nothing by me in there I'm afraid.)

According to the cover blurb, The Beano Summer Activity Special contains "All New Beanotown Adventures", but I haven't seen either Special yet so I don't have a clue as to the contents. Covers for both issues are by Nigel Parkinson.

I presume that, as with last year's editions, both publications will be in the squarebound 'bookazine' format with card covers. 

Summer has well and truly arrived!

D.C. Thomson have moved into merchandise quite a bit in recent years, with various items available using their comic brands. Amongst the items you can now buy are a Dennis the Menace long-sleeved stripey T-shirt, a box of 100 Beano postcards, and T-shirts featuring covers from Jackie comics magazine. Check out the DC Thomson Shop for more information.  

All images in this post are Copyright © D.C. Thomson and Co. Ltd.

Summer Specials 2014

The Summer Specials finally arrived at my local shops yesterday (although they've been in some parts of the country for a couple of weeks). These days they're no longer in the tabloid format they had years ago, but they're twice as thick and squarebound with sturdy card covers. 

The Dandy Summer Special 2014 has caused a little controversy in some fan circles because last year's edition promised to be the "Last Ever". Indeed, that was the intention, until WH Smith suggested to DC Thomson that as it sold so well it might be a good idea to continue it. This last minute decision to revive the title sadly meant that there was no time to commission new material (save for covers by Mike D) but what we have instead is a fine collection of reprints spanning the 1960s to 2010. Yes, as some have noted, one page of a Blinky story is printed twice by mistake (due to the short production time), but hopefully the other 66 pages in the comic will prove sufficiently rewarding. My opinion: focus on the positives. There's a lot of misery in life but a mistake in a comic isn't part of it.

I was particularly pleased to see one of my favourite Smasher strips by Hugh Morren from The Dandy Summer Special 1967, and a Dudley Watkins Desperate Dan from that year too. And look, - The Smasher strip features a teacher whacking him. It seems Political Correctness hasn't gone mad after all. 

There are also a couple of Winker Watson strips by Eric Roberts (from the 1970s I think) and a 1983 Brassneck strip by Bill Holroyd. For those of you with more recent nostalgia, there's a good selection of material from the 1980s and 1990s too.

The Beano Summer Activity Special 2014 contains a free gift of bound-in stickers, although a few people have reported these are not in their copies so check before you buy. 

The Beano one is all new, and features a good balance of comic strips and puzzle pages. Only the main Beano characters are included, so there's plenty of fun with Dennis, Minnie, Bash Street etc. but no appearances by Rasher, Tricky Dicky and suchlike. 

Both specials should now be available from WH Smith, Asda, and other retailers at £4.99 each for 68 pages. 

General Jumbo saved my life! (Perhaps.)

When I was growing up we lived in an area where there was a bridge at the end of the street leading to the nearby fields. There was a railway line below, often used by freight trains and passenger trains. I used to play in those fields a lot, as did other kids. Some of the kids used to play down the embankment and trespass on the track. I never did. My parents had warned me not to of course, but it was something else which was the main deterrent. The Beano Summer Special 1964.

That first Beano Summer Special contained a two page General Jumbo story drawn by Dave Sutherland in which a boy had his foot trapped between the rails as the points changed. It stuck with me forever. 

Back then, when I was only 5 years old, I hadn't developed the habit of saving comics so I threw out the special after I'd read it. However, this image was so powerful that it was committed to memory...

...and I also remembered there was an oncoming train in the story...

I found that panel with the trapped foot such a powerful image that even to this day, 50 years later, it comes to mind sometimes if I'm near a railway track. Heck, it even springs to mind every time I walk over the tramlines at Blackpool! Even though there were no points on the stretch of track at the bottom of my street, the message that trespassing on the lines was dangerous still hit home.

Back then, after throwing out the comic, the details of the story were mainly forgotten. (For years I'd misremembered it as Jumbo himself getting his foot trapped.) The only panels that were burned into my mind were the one with the foot trapped and the onrushing train. I knew that in reality there would be no toy soldiers to save the day, so the message was clear: keep off the track!  Subsequently I never played on, or crossed, the track as a kid. (Or as an adult, in case you were wondering.)

As far as I know, no one was ever killed or injured on the railway line near my old house, and perhaps I'd have been safe too, but thanks to that General Jumbo story I didn't chance it. 

As I said, that Beano Summer Special is long gone but a few years ago comics historian Ray Moore kindly sent me a photocopy of that story which I'm showing here. So thanks to Ray, thanks to artist Dave Sutherland for drawing such an influential image, thanks to whoever wrote it, and thanks to General Jumbo for (perhaps) saving my life.

Images Copyright © DC Thomson & Co. Ltd. Click on the strip to see it at a readable size.