Digifiend wrote:When Beezer and Topper folded, some of it's strips moved to Beano and Dandy but it didn't formally merge with either of the survivors (of course Blinky and the Numskulls are both Beezer strips but they ended up in different comics - something that couldn't happen if they properly merged - Blinky had to go to the Dandy though, as he was too similar to Erbert from Bash Street and therefore was unsuited to the Beano - Beryl probably went to Dandy for the same reason, being too similar to Minnie. Numskulls could've fitted in either comic). And more recently, The Beano took on Bananaman, the mini-strip concept, and the Madvertisements from the Dandy (and characters such as Nuke Noodle and Korky the Cat have made cameos on puzzle pages; they also took on the editorial staff). But again, no formal merger. That case is likely so that they didn't get backlash from the press for axing Desperate Dan.
I do think that the move not to The Dandy with The Beano was a bit of a waste. It's a great shame that all those great characters created between 2010-2012 never found themselves a new home; The Dandy annuals mostly use retro characters and the Summer Specials are all reprint (though if next year's one does have new material, I do hope that they can get some post-2010 characters in there).
Having The Beezer and Topper merge with The Dandy could have been a good idea, though having different characters distributed across both The Dandy and The Beano was probably a better decision. (and the name "The Dandy and The Beezer and Topper" sounds a bit silly) However, now that I have read some issues of The Beezer and Topper, I think it would have been better if more characters survived. More specifically, the characters conceived during the merged comic's lifetime. All of the surviving characters (with the exception of Potsworth & Co) existed prior to the merger (that includes Blinky as he was just a de-aged Colonel Blink) and Beryl was the only one to immediately transfer (all the others had to wait a few months or so) and The Beezer Annuals tended to just use pre-merger characters (and rarely any Topper characters). I think Fairy Grotto was an interesting strip that could have probably benefited from transferring to The Beano or The Dandy (although My Own Genie arguably pulled off a similar concept far better), Pxqztkle would have probably been quite at home in The Dandy, and I'd have liked to see "Ghost!" continue into one of the comics (The fact that he was brought back several years later as "Hector Spectre" implies that he was a popular enough character.) It's possible that
they were planning to keep these characters alive by continuing the Topper annual, but unfortunately such a thing never happened either way.
