Comic Clippings - 16 July

The Dandy is going fortnightly. In the year that will see the comic celebrate its 70th birthday, The Dandy is now struggling to find readers, despite a relaunch in 2004. With a cover price of £1.30, the comic is considerably more expensive than its younger sibling, The Beano, which is still priced 85p.

A couple of months ago, I produced some estimates for the circulation of both The Beano and The Dandy based on the combined circulation published by D. C. Thomson. For the July to December 2006 period, the combined circulation was 112,980. Based on figures from previous years, Beano accounts for 66% of the combined sales, putting the actual circulations at 74,567 for Beano and 37,283 for Dandy, a fall of around 2.3% from the figures for the first half of the year.

The announcement -- actually not so much an announcement as a simple revision to their subscription details -- comes before the release of circulation figures for January through June, but we can be reasonably sure that the circulation is now below 35,000 for this move to have been made.

One tidbit I did pick up... according to D. C. Thomson figures, the combined circulations of Beano, Dandy and BeanoMax were 157,980... meaning that BeanoMax was selling 45,000 copies a month. There are rumours that the Dandy will be revamping its contents at the same time and maybe we can expect more of a DandyMax to emerge when the paper goes fortnightly in early August.

* Jeremy Briggs, a regular contributor to Bear Alley, has a fascinating article on D. C. Thomson's Red Dagger on John Freeman's Down the Tubes. 'Graphic Novels by any other name' is accompanied by a handy guide to changes between the original appearances of stories and how they were reprinted plus a checklist of titles.

* Tintin in the Congo has had the CRE in a flap. The Sunday Times' India Knight reports that, since the book was moved by Borders (from the children's section to the adult section), sales have soared (the source of that information is probably this AFP report).