Digital Dandy

[Digifiend]

Brassneck and Keyhole Kate are both drawn by Stephen White, the former Winker Watson artist. Don't know who draws Dan or Bananaman.

So now that there have been two issues of the digital version, what is the verdict?

Although I have cancelled my subscription, I just found that I have 100 Dandy points and enough to buy an issue so will do that tomorrow.

Everyone got 100 points for free. Kinda makes issue zero pointless.

[BeanoKev70]

I've been viewing on my Nexus & its works perfect full screen frames its lovely. The only issue I have is with some of the characters Brassneck is great but charlie needs to be changed, if DCT want to appeal to kids then have a normal school kid as charlie rather than some swot in glasses, bowtie & lab coat. Dan & Bananaman is great & would like to see a few more classics like Korky etc. Retro has a lot of potential. Overall looking good

[SID]

Well I used my free 100 Dandy points and got Issue Two. It is certainly different to the printed version. I liked some of the strips (Retro Active, Keyhole Kate and, of course, The Legend of Desperate Dan). In fact, I would liked to have seen Retro Active in the printed version. The Back Page was quite good as well (went to Winter Wonderland a few weeks ago).

All in all, I thought it was okay and I hope that it is a success with the kids.

I still think that Dan should also be in The Beano.

Added: My only criticism is that it would have been nice if they had celebrated Christmas. All they had was the Xmas message page which wasn't really that Christmassy. Maybe that is asking a lot considering that the digital Dandy has just been launched but even so...

[Digifiend]

I agree about Retro Active, they should put a story about those superheroes in the annual. It'll be fully established by the time the next one is due on sale, and even if they're still sticking to classic strips, Retro Active does feature The Amazing Mr X, a 1940s character, so it technically counts. The Dandy annuals lacked adventure stories for a while, although this year's does include Black Bob. Speaking of which, Andy Fanton posted on Facebook a couple of days ago about the 2014 annual, apparently he's writing Dan, which he says Ken Harrison will draw.

[BeanoKev70]

I wouldn't be surprised if the new Numskulls appeared in the Beano next year along with Dan expect some big changes to The Beano in 2013...

[Digifiend]

We know changes are happening, but not what. Consider Bananaman's situation though. In the current annuals, the Beano used Steve Bright, his original writer, as the artist, while Dandy used Wayne Thompson, his at-the-time-of-publication current artist. Yet Dan is by Nigel Parkinson and not Jamie Smart. And they're apparently using Ken next time. Since Dan in the Beano would likely be a reprint, and therefore in that exact same style, I can't see him becoming a two-comic character. Anyway, Eric's duality means that Dan is the only active Dandy character well known enough to function as it's mascot (as Dennis is for the Beano).

The changes will be more apparent once they do something about beano.com, which ceased updating at the end of October.

Back on topic, the Dandy should take a leaf out of the Beano's book and bring back old characters for the Minis. Issue 2, and already they resorted to material from the last few months of the printed title. If they can't come up with new ideas, update the old ones.

[SID]

Makes sense what you are saying, Digi.

Using your logic, the only way I could see Dan going to the Beano if the digital Dandy failed which I don't want to happen.

[David Gerstein]

The changes will be more apparent once they do something about beano.com, which ceased updating at the end of October.

It mystifies me that more people aren't talking about this—if they were going to stop updating the site, why not at least drop the "new issue out now" feature, and replace it with some kind of note about a relaunched site coming soon?
Leaving bold, brassy announcements/previews of an issue from months ago gives the impression that the comic is out of business.

[Digifiend]

Free Christmas bonus. http://www.dandy.com/issueplayer.aspx?nodeID=1672
It ends with a message saying that the next issue (#3) is out on January 10th.

[Spencer]

Dandy Ed - you've GOT to sort out the speed that the strips load if you seriously want kids to like this.

Each strip (apart from the ministries) takes around 90seconds to load, including the 2nd part of strips after the mini games.

With my kids, we tried desktop, laptop and kindle and had the same problems on all. The boys were losing interest quick, and my youngest has been a subscriber for the past couple of years so a big fan!

I can only get 1MB Broadband where I live but that doesn't prevent the kids playing Xbox online or me watching YouTube videos, so I wonder why such simple animations are taking so long to launch?

Is anyone else here having the same speed issues, or is it worse for me because of my broadband speed?

[starscape]

I've only tried the free issue. Broadband is considerably faster than yours and I've used laptop and tablet (you would imagine the latter is the target market). There is no way I would subscribe based on the trial issue.

I really don't understand why something so relatively simple is performing so badly. Is it the DCT servers that are slow, or are the animations of a quality well above the pixel rate that is needed for the screen?

It is probably now past the point of new readers sadly and needs substantial effort to retain current subscribers. There's not a lot of hope for the future.

[Digifiend]

I hate to say it, but it's too easy to access it for free as well. I've already spotted a pattern in the urls.

The graphics, by the way, are a mixture of JPG, PNG and SVG formats. JPG for background, PNG for characters, and SVG for speech captions.

The JPG image from issue zero and issue 1 where Charley looks at Brassneck's nameplate has the following specs:
Dimensions 1131 × 768
File size 224.26KB

Another JPG (his attic) has these specs:
Dimensions 1292 × 913
File size 174.44KB

Those file sizes aren't too big, although the image dimensions are larger than they need to be.

[Spencer]

Looking forward to issue 3 which should be released today. Hope they have sorted out the speed issues over the last few weeks

[Digifiend]

It only took 10 seconds for issue 1's Brassneck to load just now... two explanations, either it's cached, or they fixed the speed problems. Try it, guys. If it's still slow, then it probably requires a decent spec desktop computer (which is stupid since it's supposed to be aimed at Android and iPad).

[Spencer]

Hi Digi - Yes! Success!! About the same for me for all issues... 10-15 seconds for all the 'bigger' strips. Now just wondering where issue 3 is?!?!..

Still think they need to advertise it more - 1/2 page in Beano detailing next issue and what's actually IN the issues etc. Get the iPad / iPhone app up and running etc.

Want to see this succeed - if I cant have my paper Dandy, would rather have this than nothing!!!