Annuals

[Raven]

Weren't a number of the strips from The Weekly News, too, so Beano readers may not have previously seen them.

[AndyB]

At one stage Morris Heggie recycled part of a Black Bob serial (details in the Black Bob book), reformatted, recaptioned, inserted speech balloons, and finally coloured it in a 1990s Dandy Book. The only other deliberate reprint I've seen in the Dandy Books was a recycled Winker Watson adventure from a 1970s Dandy Book, again with revised captions and speech balloons and colour.

More recently two of Steve Bright's Beryl the Peril strips were printed in two consecutive Dandy Annuals, but this was a mistake.

Otherwise, unlike the IPC annuals, the Beano and Dandy annuals had almost no reprints, although some US syndicated strips did find their way into 1970s Topper and Sparky Books (Nancy and PT Bimbo respectively).

My experience with IPC annuals was that Whizzer and Chips annuals could contain up to a third reprint, while Monster Fun would be nearer 90%.

[Raven]

My experience with IPC annuals was that Whizzer and Chips annuals could contain up to a third reprint, while Monster Fun would be nearer 90%.

Only the much later ones, surely? I've just grabbed the 1979 Monster Fun Annual, which is some years after the comic's cancellation, and I'd say that just over 100, at least, of the 144 pages are new.

During the "peak" years, it does seem that just over two-thirds of material generally tends to be specially commissioned.

[felneymike]

I think I have noticed that some 70s and 80s IPC girl's annuals featured some School Friend and/or Girl's Crystal type material. Much smaller panels is a giveaway.

I have the 1972 Girls' Crystal annual, which reprints a 1950's Princess Anita strip. For some reason they have renamed it "Romantic Princess", and the art looks like it was copied from a 50's annual using a 70's photocopier! Horrible. It also has a story called "Maria of the Mountains" which has equally-sized panels and quite a bleak, atmospheric story. Possibly originally foreign?

I've just had a zip through the Sally Annuals 1971/72 and they seem to have quite a lot of new stuff in them, strips with big panels and 'colour'. But there's some black and white ones with small panels that look like they're from the 50's or 60's. These are also quite long and were possibly once serials. One has a boarding school setting, so the characters are wearing "timeless" uniforms and you don't see cars!