Cow Pie is off the menu

They all sound, when lumped in together like they have all the necessary attributes for a gang of modern day Superheroes.

One of them has a phenomenal appetite, another with intimidatory tendencies, a wonder dog, an aurally enhanced law enforcer, chaotic primates and a cat skilled in impersonating human traits. (answers later on in the text).

Yet, these characters have, as of yesterday, lost their place in the hierarchy of paper publications in the very sad, but somewhat inevitable demise of the printed Dandy Comic.

There may be some consolation and perhaps a little bit of hope in the transition of The Dandy to an on-line effort but to many the loss of a beloved ink based comic is the ultimate death knell. There is something very special about a comic. For many it represented the first real purchase when eligible for pocket money. A collection of comics stored under the bed or in a special box was a prized and cherished possession. You could hide away in the pages of a comic from relatives as though it were an invisibility cloak, responsibilities and domestic chores. There was always something new and fresh in the pen strokes and coloured cartoons strips even after many hundreds of times the comic had been opened and studied meticulously. You regretted a moment of tantrum or neglect that meant that the neat and flat comic became creased or worse.

It is not really a case of allocating blame for this state of affairs to a single source. You could as easily attribute the factors behind the decision to a cost cutting exercise by the publishers D C Thomson as to a complete failure of British parents to encourage their offspring to value and appreciate the written word as presented in a comic strip. 

The launch of The Dandy was not only now in a different century but also in a very different period of comparative innocence in and acceptance by children of what they were expected to do, how to behave and where their place was in the hierarchy of the family unit.

The first edition appeared in 1937 and at the peak of its popularity in the 1950's it had a circulation of 2 million a week.There was a certain reliability and consistency in the appearance of the weekly comic that could only serve to reassure young children at a time of great upheaval in the wartime and post war years. The formula of familiar characters, plot lines and antics was well tried and tested and did in fact vary very little over 75 years.

Notable deviations included the depiction of two Nasty Nazis known as Addie and Hermy during the war years, the withdrawal of meat pie from the menu of a certain mainstay character during the peak of the BSE Mad Cow crisis and even the elopement of key figures with The Spice Girls as a stunt to mark the 60th anniversary of The Dandy in 1997.

By the time of the last ever printed comic yesterday it had reached a position of the third longest running publication of its type in the world.

On reflection, the fact that it managed to hold out until 2012 is a minor miracle given that the circulation numbers had plummeted to around 8000 loyal readers a week.

I have to admit that I was not personally a Dandy reader but in your younger years there are always hard choices to make such as a preference for Marmite or Bovril, watching Blue Peter or Magpie, Slade or The Sweet, Smoking or not and these are often set in stone for the rest of your adult lives.

I was more a fan of The Beano and later on the Topper Comic but did flirt in between with the likes of Whizzer and Chips or even a closet interest , or actually reading it in the gas cupboard, in my younger sisters Twinkle Magazine. The main characters to whom I attributed mega powers are of course , in the aforementined order, Desperate Dan, Bully Beef and Chips, Black Bob, PC Big Ears, Monkey Bizness and Korky the Cat, amongst other notables.

How they will cope in cyber-space is yet to be seen but things will never be the same again and that is sad.

Unfortunately I have not been able to find a copy of the last ever printed Dandy in any of the local newsagents or supermarkets and not for want of trying . No doubt those resourceful members of the over 60's original readership have been crafty and quick off the mark to indulge their nostalgic tendencies or at least re-sell their multiple copies on E-Bay to supplement struggling savings and their pitiful winter fuel allowance.