It's here! The Dandy Annual 2019

The weekly Dandy comic sadly ended on its 75th birthday in 2012 but the annual continues every year with all-new content. The Dandy Annual 2019 is available now, with 112 full colour pages featuring favourites such as Desperate Dan, Cuddles and Dimples, Corporal Clott, Korky the Cat, and many more, including a new Jack Silver adventure story. 

I've produced four new Keyhole Kate pages for this book, plus a puzzle page. I've created a new nemesis for Kate in the form of Doorknocker Donna, who spoils Kate's nosey antics and gets wrongly accused for the door-knocking. 

Another supporting character I created, Kates's mad inventor uncle Black Hole Bert, returns in one of the other stories, bringing with him Dupli-Kate, a robot double of Keyhole Kate!

The Dandy Annual 2019 (along with its companion the Beano Annual) is out now at a R.R.P. of £7.99. 

Preview: DANDY ANNUAL 2018

The weekly is long gone but the annual keeps on coming! Amazon have revealed the cover to The Dandy Annual 2018, which is a special 80th anniversary edition. Cover by Nigel Parkinson.

I have several pages in this book, and I'll show you previews over the coming months. For now though, here's a panel from a Keyhole Kate page I did. 

The Dandy Annual 2018 is scheduled for July (but more likely to be August or September in the bookshops). 

An Annual treat

The 2016 dated annuals were published in July, and available from Amazon then, but it looks like High Street shops have finally decided to put them on the shelves now. WH Smith is currently doing a deal whereby if you buy one annual at full price you can have another for a pound. That works out at about the discount you'd get if you bought two annuals from online sellers. 

I know many people are tempted to wait until after Christmas, hoping to get them all for a quid each but if we all did that annuals would quickly die out as it simply wouldn't be worth the bother for publishers and retailers to do them for such little return. Thankfully there do seem to be enough people who support the UK comics industry who are happy to pay a little more and get the books early. 

I've illustrated this piece with a couple of panels from my strips in The Dandy Annual 2016. I'm starting work on pages for the 2017 dated Dandy Annual now, but I won't be previewing those for a good while yet. 

If you have difficulty obtaining the annuals you could always get them directly from D.C. Thomson at their online shop:
https://www.dcthomsonshop.co.uk/our-brands.html

A Dandy of a bargain!

In Sainsburys today I noticed that their selection of Christmas annuals were all discounted now and that The Dandy Annual 2015 is down to only a pound a copy! It's not part of a buy-one-get-one-cheaper deal or anything like that, just £1 for the book. Even the most cynical Dandy critic surely can't begrudge paying that for 112 pages of top class fun? 

Amongst the all-new pages by Nigel Parkinson, Paul Palmer, Wilbur Dawbarn, Ken Harrison and more you'll find 12 pages by me on The Smasher, Keyhole Kate, and Korky the Cat. In one of the stories I have Keyhole Kate go back in time to 1937 to meet the original Keyhole Kate, which I hope will appeal to readers of all ages! 

Treat yourself (or someone else) to The Dandy Annual 2015 from Sainsburys now, for just a quid! (Annuals are available in other stores too of course.) 

It's arrived! The Dandy Annual 2013

  
Here it is! The Dandy Annual 2013 with a great cover by Nigel Parkinson. Time was when comic annuals came out in early September, but now they have a longer shelf life to hopefully maximise sales. (It's certainly worked for The Beano Annual, which has been the top selling annual for the past couple of years.) 

Traditionally, annuals were given as Christmas presents, and I know some of you won't be receiving yours until Christmas Day so I'll only show a brief glimpse of some of its pages here to avoid too many spoilers. 

This edition of The Dandy Annual is somewhat special as it celebrates the comic's landmark 75th birthday (coming up in December). To mark the event the book brings back a load of classic characters in brand new stories, - Brassneck, Winker Watson, Greedy Pigg, Owen Goal, The Jocks and the Geordies... and even a new adventure with Black Bob! 

The Black Bob story is drawn by Steve Bright and he does a fantastic job of ghosting the style of Jack Prout, the original artist. The story is in four single page chapters scattered throughout the book, so each chapter ends on a cliffhanger as the original series often did. 

Another classic character making her return is Keyhole Kate, in a nifty modern style by Laura Howell whist retaining the classic character design...

...and I've done a couple of characters too, - The Smasher and Julius Sneezer.

All in all it's a very good annual. Packed with strips that often have around 10 panels a page, which gives a bit better value for money than the average 6 panels a page that many annuals used to offer. 


Despite the plan to get it in the shops early, I haven't actually seen it on shelves yet, but it is available to buy from online booksellers Amazon, Speedy Hen Ltd. and The Book Depository (and hopefully others soon). Follow this link to buy your copies (and The Beano Annual, which I believe is also out now):
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dandy-Annual-2013-Annuals/dp/1845354877/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342643880&sr=8-1

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Today also saw the beginning of my new six-part strip in The Dandy weekly. The Dark Newt tells the saga of the Protector of the Pond and this week's issue features his origin. That's in The Dandy No.3590, on sale now!