Kashgar wrote:No Digi, they never asked to use the DMI or for the use of any notes that I'd prepared on the Dandy subsequent to publication of the final part of the Dandy Index in 1990. Mind you, as they had used the Dandy Index to help prepare their own in-house index of the comic in 1995 (a large hardback book with a coloured cover and b/w photocopied pages) and which they kindly sent me a copy of, they really didn't have to. I'm sure a history of the Dandy was planned but it sadly got overtaken by events.
I'm quite interested in the non-appearance of this book because it would appear that much of the necessary groundwork on the content of
The Dandy had already been done with plenty of time to spare. As Kashgar points out, Thomsons had prepared an update of the comic as far as 1995, so you would think they would then simply continue to keep their records up to date month by month, and even if they didn't, it wouldn't have taken a seconded employee more than a couple of weeks or so to play catch-up. Given that the company must at the time have been planning their lavish production of
The History Of The Beano, the decision not to proceed with an equivalent for their first-born 1937 flagship comic would not appear to have been made on grounds of cost, and if not, then to me the decision is almost incomprehensible. I am certainly not persuaded that the switch to
Dandy Xtreme, or the reasons for that, were behind such an important and far-reaching decision because the book wouldn't have been written for any particular nostalgic cohort.The only possible reason that makes any sense to me is that the initial idea for the double project was presented to the hierarchy of decision makers too late in the day for
The History Of The Dandy to be written in time for the comic's 70th anniversary. They realized, however, that they had six extra months in which to prepare for
The Beano's 70th birthday. The idea was good, and that project was achievable in the time available, so all the eggs went into the one basket. In the light of the above personal musings, does anybody know if
The History Of The Beano turned out to be a financial failure for the company? How many copies did they shift? Digi's obviously got one and I've got one but, at £25 a pop, there will have been significant resistance I imagine, even though it was on sale in the runup to Christmas.
