It's a long walk from Fleet Street to Dundee

Jeremy Briggs has very kindly sent some photos from a recent trip to Dundee in response to my own walk down Fleet Street. If you missed it, John Adcock has recently also taken a historical trip around London thanks to John Tallis' London Street Views.

Jeremy's trip reveals some of the interesting sights relating to D. C. Thomson in a little piece he calls...

It's a long walk from Fleet Street to Dundee

Your walk along Fleet Street inspired me to take my camera with me to Dundee at the weekend. Despite their comics carrying the London address on the letters pages, Dundee is of course the home of D C Thomson and their headquarters is in the Courier Building in Albert Square, named after their Dundee Courier newspaper.

This imposing building was built in 1902 and so predated the renaming of the Thomson publishing business by David Couper Thomson in 1905 and the takeover of their Dundee publishing rivals, John Leng and Co, in 1926. The tower at the rear was added in 1960. The Albert Square entrance has Courier Office embedded into the steps leading up to the entrance.

Meanwhile the Meadowside entrance is rather more imposing with statues of Literature and Justice gazing down on what is now a taxi rank. A much older photo of the same entrance can be found in Dundee City Council’s Photopolis website.

It is also at the Meadowside entrance where the brass company name plate can be found, listing the company as Thomson-Leng Publications, as can also be seen on the London branch.

Of rather more interest to the tourists is the statue of Desperate Dan striding manfully through the pedestrianised zone of the city centre.

Yet his faithful Dawg is rather more observant of his surroundings.

Dawg sits down in his attempt at attracting Dan’s attention.

For what Dan has not realised is the young Minx who is preparing launch the contents of her catapult at our hero.

Only one problem… no elastic!

The statues at the corner of High Street and Reform Street are a source of amusement to all, a popular photo shoot for the tourists, and a plaything for young kids to clamber over.

END

My thanks to Jeremy. I had hoped to post this Sunday night or Monday but I've been laid low with some bug which has knocked my schedule completely out of whack. Hopefully I'm over the worst of it and normal service can be resumed shortly.

A Little DCT History Lesson

(* As I'm in the middle of proofing and translating and not, as some might think, watching the repeat of A Touch of Frost, I'm handing over Bear Alley to Jeremy Briggs for this evening. Jeremy very kindly sent in the article below and I think you'll enjoy it... )

With D C Thomson's new monthly title BeanoMax being released on 15 February, here is a little DCT history lesson.

Thomson's have a long history of releasing new titles in January & February and even the amalgamation of their titles, when one was merged with another and then the combined title relaunched, has frequently occurred during the same time period. Consider the cover dates of the first issues of these new or merged titles:

11 January 1964 - Jackie

16 January 1960 - Judy

20 January 1973 - Wizard and Rover

20 January 1979 - Crunch

20 January 1987 - Bunty and Suzy

21 January 1961 - Rover and Adventure

21 January 1978 - Scoop

21 January 1978 - Mandy and Spellbound

22 January 1983 - Spike

22 January 1983 - Mandy and Debbie

23 January 1963 - Diana

26 January 1985 - Judy and Tracy

31 January 1981 - Victor and Hotspur

02 February 1980 - Hotspur and Crunch

14 February 1970 - Wizard (comic strip version)

14 February 1976 - Bullet

14 February 1976 - Hotspur and Hornet

14 February 1981 - Buddy

17 February 1973 - Debbie

23 February 1985 - Nikki

25 February 1961 - Victor

25 February 1978 - Emma

25 February 1984 - Champ

So why the start of the year? It would be nice, since many appear around St Valentine's Day, to have some sort of romantic notion of "a new year and a new comic", but it is probably much more mundane than that. As much as we were lead to believe in our younger days that the comics we avidly read (either from DCT or from other publishers) were there to make sure that we were alert for the presence of Nazi agents in 1970's Britain or to warn us of the threat of the extraterrestrial Inter Stellar Federation, it is probably much more down to earth.

With the approach of the end of the financial year in March, releasing a new comic or promoting the relaunch of an old one was probably done for financial reasons. The costs in promoting a launch or relaunch could be absorbed into the financial burden of the end of the year.

Alternatively a new or relaunched comic, complete with free gifts to entice the readers to part with their pocket money, would expect to see higher sales than normal before those sales settled down into regular readers. Those high sales figures would look good on the balance sheet for the end of the financial year report. Of course, since it is D C Thomson that we are taking about, we will probably never know the true reason.

However I have more important things to do than dwell on it too much. I need to round up the rest of my Skateboard Strike Squad and go check the shed. You never know where a Gestapo agent might be hiding!

(* Buddy and Warlord images are © D C Thomson.)

Brian Thomson (1918-2006)

Brian Thomson ("Mr. Brian"), Chairman of D. C. Thomson, died on 7 November, aged 87. His father, W. Harold Thomson, was the son of the original D.C., David Couper Thomson, who founded the publisher, famous for The Beano, in 1905, although their history dates back even further.

Obituaries for Thomson have so far appeared in The Times, Daily Telegraph and The Independent.