DC THOMSON'S KINGSWAY BUILDING

I visited DC Thomson's Kingsway offices today.

As the weather was beautiful and sunny again, I thought I would take some photos of the pictures of Dennis the Menace, Desperate Dan and Oor Wullie that now adorn two sides of the building. Hopefully you'll get a sense of the scale of them, and how fun they are.

Here we are approaching the building on the Mid Craigie Road (misspelt Mid Craige Road on the street sign)...

Here's Oor Wullie at the front of the building. His bucket can fly in this depiction and is smashing its way out the window...

And here's a closer photo of Dennis and Dan...

The characters are all reading the local papers put out by DC Thomson.


Mid Craigie is also where I went to primary school. The building was just across from the DC Thomson offices, but is long gone now. The school gates remain though...

To finish off, here's the street adjacent to the school gates...

GOODBYE DANDY

Tomorrow, as every week (give or take) for the past 75 years , The Dandy comic will go on sale. But the difference this time is that it will be the last edition. To pay respects, here are some choice cuts from the earliest issue I have - number 1929 from 11th November 1978. Korky the Cat:

Desperate Dan:

Peter's Pocket Grandpa:

Greedy Pigg:

Tom Tum:

Winker Watson:

Izzy Skint:

Black Bob:

The Smasher:

Desperate Dawg:

Rah-Rah Randall:

Bertie Buncle:

Bully Beef and Chips:

Looking through the comic again, I remember how much I enjoyed these stories. Nostalgia rules! More recently, the publishers have tried a few things to keep The Dandy going. There was a format and name change to Dandy Xtreme, and a revamp which featured Harry Hill. But to no avail, the sales figures were not up to scratch and now they've decided to put the old girl down. Tuesday the 4th of December 2012 will be a sad day for the UK comics industry.

UPDATE - SATURDAY 8th DECEMBER 2012 I'd be interested in seeing how sales of this last issue went, as on Tuesday I went into six different shops to pick it up, and they had all sold out. One even had a hand written notice up saying "WE DO NOT SELL THE DANDY COMIC", so they'd obviously been asked a lot of times for it too. I decided to have a look online to get a copy and saw the likes of this. £42 for the comic! Crazy. It's still for sale from the publishers online for £5.50! I ordered it there. Also on Tuesday, I was running a children's reading group and just for interest I asked them who had read the Dandy. Two of the six had, and one of those was very enthusiastic, namechecking a couple of characters.