This year’s Beano and The Dandy Summer Specials, the latter collecting some of Jamie Smart’s “Desperate Dan” strips, are out in late May. Both are available to preorder now from the DC Thomson web shop. Here’s the information on both, a look back at the last days of the weekly Dandy, and What Jamie Did Next.
They will be on sale from the usual outlets – WHSmith and supermarkets – at a later date. The Specials are also available separately or as a bundle of both Specials.
This year’s Beano Summer Special offers “The oddest adventure ever”, as Dennis, Minnie, the Bash Street Kids and others head to Oz, sort of, and no, we don’t mean Australia…
It’s a windy day in Beanotown – no, not that kind of wind! It’s so powerful it picks up the school, plus all the kids, and dumps them all in a strange land. They need to find their way home, but this place is odd. Like, really odd!
Follow the red and black road to find out if the kids make it safely back to Beanotown or if they’ll be trapped in this strange place forever! Eek!
The Beano Summer Special features 68 pages of comics, wicked puzzles, jokes and other fun stuff to keep you busy all summer long!
This year’s The Dandy Summer Special is offered as The Dandy Presents: Desperate Dan by Jamie Smart, “the ultimate collectable for fans of The Dandy comic, Desparate Dan and Jamie Smart.” It includes a foreword by Jamie himself.
Desperate Dan appeared in the very first issue of The Dandy in 1937 and remained a fixture of the comic throughout its life, becoming its cover star and signature character in 1984.
A resident of Cactusville, a strange mash-up of wild western town and a modern British city where herded buffalo could be seen side by side with red pillar boxes, Desperate Dan was the strongest, and often silliest, man in the west.
• Pre-order the Beano Summer Special for £7.99 now for delivery in late May (Only available for delivery from DC Thomson’s webshop within the UK)
• Pre-order The Dandy Summer Special now £8.99 for delivery in late May (Only available for delivery from DC Thomson’s webshop within the UK)
• Both the BEANO and The Dandy Specials are available here as a bundle for £14
The Last Days of The Dandy
In 2007, The Dandy began a three year run as a fortnightly title, Dandy Extreme, and the amazingly talented Jamie Smart was among its contributors, and began drawing “Desperate Dan” for the comic, his take enjoyed by many, but meeting undeserved vitriol from some who bemoaned Dan’s new look.
The Dandy was revamped again in 2010, returning to a weekly frequency and Jamie – today, a soaraway comic creator star with globally successful strips such as Bunny vs Monkey and more – continued to deliver his unique take on Dan and his appetite for cow pies with great relish, despite fears, for a while, that the character was to be dropped from the title.
Thanks to Jamie and other contributors such as Wayne Thompson and Andy Fanton, The Dandy enjoying a unique revival of creative craziness.
Sadly, while the reinvention helped the title continue for another two years on the newsstand, it came too late to address The Dandy’s wider declining sales, the title closing as a print edition in 2012, although it continued as a digital comic for six months.
However, The Dandy continues each year with a new annual and Special editions, and, clearly taking advantage of Jamie’s huge and deserved recognition as a comic creator DC Thomson have published this summer special, a 68-page publication collecting some of his funniest, wackiest and silliest comics in a single volume for the first time.
Writing about his experience of working on one of DC Thomson’s longest-running comics as the final bumper print issue went on sale back in 2012, Jamie said “I was honoured to be asked to draw the front cover for the final issue. And to be honest, my entire nine (or so) year career at The Dandy has been one honour after another. Getting hired was the first honour, drawing Desperate Dan was one of the biggest, and being given the responsibility to create this final front cover just blew me away (incidentally, on the back cover, a titan amongst Dandy artists has drawn his own version of the cover I did, and it made me yelp with joy. One, final, honour).”
The DC Thomson webshop also offers several other Beano books, including The Beano presents Minnie the Minx, as well as its Commando and Starblazer collections.
Despite the demise of The Dandy, and a difficult newsstand environment not helped by WHSmith deprioritising newspaper, magazine and comics as the focus of its stores in recent years, children still read comic strips – as the continued success of BEANO and The Phoenix testify, and the huge sales of longform comic albums in bookshops. While some attempts at bring new comics to the newsstand have failed – although Rebellion’s Monster Fun was recently victim to cancellation for a number of reasons, not all sales connected – there’s plenty of life in the form as far as kids are concerned!
What Jamie Did Next
Since his days on The Dandy, Jamie Smart, already integral to the creative roster on The Phoenix then, as now, has become a comics superstar.
He studied art at college for four years, but this, apparently, was just an excuse to practise drawing animals with boggly-eyes. His comic Fish-Head Steve was the first comic to be shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize.
Over his career, Jamie has illustrated comics for The Sunday Times, The Dandy and the Beano. His well-loved Bunny vs Monkey and Looshkin stories are regularly published in The Phoenix comic, and as bestselling graphic novels. Jamie is also the author of the illustrated middle-grade Flember novels, and the Max & Chaffy comic series for younger readers.
He won Illustrator of the Year at the British Book Awards 2024, and Bunny vs Monkey: Multiverse Mix-up won Children’s Illustrated Book of the Year. Earlier this year, he was the first ever Creative of the Fair at London Book Fair.
If you want to see what Jamie is up to today, then we again recommend grabbing a copy of Bunny Vs Monkey: The Whopping World Of Puzzles, available in bookshops or direct from The Phoenix webshop in a bundle exclusively at The Phoenix comic webshop.
The book is tremendous fun, absolutely crammed with fiendish brain-twisters, amazing activities, and ridiculously fun games to join in with, all wrapped up in an intriguing, hilarious comic story. It’s simply brilliant!
• Pre-order the Beano Summer Special for £7.99 now for delivery in late May (Only available for delivery from DC Thomson’s webshop within the UK)
• Pre-order The Dandy Summer Special now £8.99 for delivery in late May (Only available for delivery from DC Thomson’s webshop within the UK)
• Both the BEANO and The Dandy Specials are available here as a bundle for £14
• DC Thomson is currently offering a Beano comic subscription from just £5. You’ll get the first five issues of your subscription for £5, £13.75 for every five issues thereafter
This is the perfect subscription for kids aged 6 to 12. But beware, it’s so good you might find yourself reading it after their bedtime! Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
• From the downthetubes archive: The Dandy comic recalled
With thanks to Lew Stringer for alerting us to the new Summer Specials
- About the Author
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John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: British Comics, British Comics - Current British Publishers, Comic Previews, Comics, Creating Comics, downthetubes Comics News, downthetubes News
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Great Post. Loved Jamie Smart era of Dandy.