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Lew Stringer wrote:I think most of us had them for Christmas but they've always been available months before so some had them for birthday presents, holiday treats, etc.
Another reason why the majority of the contents have never had a Christmas theme is because it'd get incredibly tiresome, page after page, for over 100 pages. If you check those 1970s annuals you'll see that festive stories are used sparingly, rather than dominating the books.
I know you are right, Lew. I think that I always thought of the annual as a Christmas book whereas in fact it is a hard-covered bumper version of the comic.
I understand the logic of having more panels per page though I always liked the bigger panels and more pages for some of the strips (not all of them I grant you) in the older annuals where it appeared that characters were leaping out of the page at you.
But going back to this year's Beano Annual, I līked it.
(Alas, I won't be getting this year's The Dandy Annual until Christmas Day).
Reading comics since 1970. My Current Regulars are: 2000 AD (1977-), Judge Dredd Megazine (1990-), Spaceship Away (2003-), Commando (2013-), Monster Fun (2022-), Deadpool and Wolverine (2023-), Quantum (2023-).
I think the extra panels are a bit of a quid pro quo for the annuals having shrunk from 144 pages as late as possibly the 2000s and certainly the 1990s to 96 pages today. More panels, compared to 8 to a page back then, so arguably we are getting more story in less space.
I still miss the big panels though!
I don't think it's too much of a giveaway to tell you that the Beano book is laid out as a year in the life. It's not quite in order, but broadly it works through from New Year to Christmas.
AndyB wrote:I think the extra panels are a bit of a quid pro quo for the annuals having shrunk from 144 pages as late as possibly the 2000s and certainly the 1990s to 96 pages today. More panels, compared to 8 to a page back then, so arguably we are getting more story in less space.
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The Dandy and Beano annuals started out at 144 pages, shifted down to 128 in 1941, up to 144 again at the start of the sixties through to the early 1990s at least. I'm not sure what happened after then, but now they have 112 pages. They've never been as slim as 96 pages as far as I know.
They're still better value than many other annuals that only have 64 pages.
One of the great things about the thomson annuals is the unpredictability of the content with it's combination of both humour and adventure strips creating that wow factor.I don't always collect the newer annuals but I am nearly always impressed with the content.
As for counting of the pages it must be understood that 40% of people are good at arithmetic and the other 80% are rubbish.I think 11 out of 10 people would agree with me on that.
Slightly off the subject, I have been enjoying reading some old online comics and here is one scrap of humour.
Last edited by abacus on 24 Oct 2016, 10:10, edited 2 times in total.
AndyB wrote:I think the extra panels are a bit of a quid pro quo for the annuals having shrunk from 144 pages as late as possibly the 2000s and certainly the 1990s to 96 pages today. More panels, compared to 8 to a page back then, so arguably we are getting more story in less space.
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The Dandy and Beano annuals started out at 144 pages, shifted down to 128 in 1941, up to 144 again at the start of the sixties through to the early 1990s at least. I'm not sure what happened after then, but now they have 112 pages. They've never been as slim as 96 pages as far as I know.
They're still better value than many other annuals that only have 64 pages.
Sorry Lew, my fault, I checked an annual, and deleted 112 instead of 96.
Hi, Koollectablz, if you read Steve Macmanus' book "My Life in the Nerve Centre", then you'll understand why the first Judge Dredd annual was a cut above the rest. After observing the dire material of past 2000 ad annuals, Steve ensured that the first Dredd annual would not go the same way and poured his heart and soul in gaining more expenditure for an annual that was expected back then and, hence, more original material to produce something that wasn't just neither regurgitated nor sub-standard content. Apparently, for a signing of the annual when it was released, there was a queue that lasted a few hours... something that was unheard of back then for a British annual. Of course, the yanks had this off to a tee years before we discovered the exercise, bless 'em.
I've been reading through my piles of annuals which have been amassing over the last couple of years.
I recently read last year's Beano Annual. Beano Annual 2017 and I was surprised how good it was especially when compared to the annuals from the year before. They've got rid of the unfortunately boring revivals of characters that had been dropped for the comic for decades and replaced it with more quality modern comics. I really liked how there was a sort of theme, as AndyB mentioned earlier back in October, throughtout the comic of a year progressing, starting with a new year and ending with christmas. Fortunately not every strip was constrained by this theme and the Beanotown adventures were a particular highlight.
On the other hand the cover was one of the worst I'd ever seen and so was the book belongs to section. They felt a lot like stock art. The inner cover pages however were absolutely brilliant and I liked the cameos from older characters that didnt appear in full strips. I think Nigel Parkinson must quite like his Dangerous Dan character he gave me quite a few cameos.
The Dandy Annual 2017 was surprisingly good for similar reasons gone were the dull nostalgic revivals and there was more Postman Prat and other examples of the excellent strips from the late Dandy. The late Dandy was quite brilliant in parts and I'm glad it ended on an experimental high rather than the low that was the Dandy Xtreme. The Dandy Annuals from 2016 and earlier almost put me off getting the Dandy Annuals again but this years has one me back. It keeps making me think of how I missed out on the Dandy when I was younger. I only got one annual back then. I think the Beano's playful jokes at the Dandy's expense scared me away from the comic which was very unfortunate and I hope that wasnt one of the reasons the comic ended up dying.
I've just finished reading the Raiders of the Lost Archive, 2017's Beano and Dandy reprint annual. Did anyone else notice the Korky misprint? There was one Korky page, I assume a reprint from an Annual, but they only printed the first page so the story and punchline was unfortunately left unfinished.
And another one of the stories was also in a reprint annual from just a couple of years ago.
Overall though most of the content was absolutely brilliant. A lot of Baxendale, Reid, Dudley Watkins and David Law. But overall the best strip in the whole book was the Brassneck christmas riot one. It had a beautiful full page panel and was quite funny.
Some of the pages have pencil numbers on and many of the Biffo and Korky covers are missing dates. I wonder if they are early versions rather than the fully released versions of the comic.
Tin Can Tommy wrote:
Some of the pages have pencil numbers on and many of the Biffo and Korky covers are missing dates. I wonder if they are early versions rather than the fully released versions of the comic.
I didn't notice any pencil numbers but the cover dates have been removed, presumably so young readers won't think they're "too old". (I can't think of any other reason why the dates would be Photoshopped out.)
Tin Can Tommy wrote:I think the Beano's playful jokes at the Dandy's expense scared me away from the comic which was very unfortunate and I hope that wasnt one of the reasons the comic ended up dying.
Those jokes worked both ways. It was a friendly rivalry, totally harmless. No different to the Whiz-kid vs Chip-ite thing (they certainly didn't expect you throw away half of each issue of Whizzer and Chips, lol). They'd crossover every so often, especially in the Comic Libraries (where they also played host to characters from other comics, which also used those same jokes - Beano was assigned Nutty and Dandy got Beezer and Topper, as such Bananaman's first few libraries were Beano ones, which would probably make a modern reader think he's been Beanotown's resident superhero for a lot longer than he actually has). The was one time when Desperate Dan sleepwalked and ended up at Dennis's house. The Dandy Embassy and Beanotown Racing was another notable crossover.
Dandy's death was ultimately because Xtreme failed and the new revamp didn't recover the lost audience. Beano had the right idea, keeping the weekly comic intact and doing the features laden version as a different title (BeanoMax, which has now evolved into Epic).
Tin Can Tommy wrote:
Some of the pages have pencil numbers on and many of the Biffo and Korky covers are missing dates. I wonder if they are early versions rather than the fully released versions of the comic.
I didn't notice any pencil numbers but the cover dates have been removed, presumably so young readers won't think they're "too old". (I can't think of any other reason why the dates would be Photoshopped out.)
I'm not sure it was really pencil numbers it was more little pencil crosses +.
Strange that they removed those dates but kept some of the dates on the Beryl the Peril strips which had them, mostly from 2001, printed on some of the panels.
Tin Can Tommy wrote:
Some of the pages have pencil numbers on and many of the Biffo and Korky covers are missing dates. I wonder if they are early versions rather than the fully released versions of the comic.
I didn't notice any pencil numbers but the cover dates have been removed, presumably so young readers won't think they're "too old". (I can't think of any other reason why the dates would be Photoshopped out.)
I'm not sure it was really pencil numbers it was more little pencil crosses +.
Strange that they removed those dates but kept some of the dates on the Beryl the Peril strips which had them, mostly from 2001, printed on some of the panels.
The crosses are just for the printer to check the colours are aligned properly during the print run. Things like that used to appear a lot in comics years ago.
