2024 Comic Summer Specials

 The good thing about being a little sissy gurl is you get to enjoy little life all over again as you really were

What's that Temptations song?

It's Summer.

As sure as eggs are eggs Summer comes around after things like year Exams and things like GCSE's (or O levels in my day) and your A's we work through before the six weeks or more before the start of the next term.

Unless your folks are the sort that pulled you out school for a week before, which happened then, and sure enough does today but soon what started of as "Yay freedom" soon turns to "I'm bored" and then if you were away the day you wanted to go to the beach, it was raining over Bill's mothers too so that was off.*

You needed something that didn't just occupy the time, you needed a good laff to bring a smile back on your face after that disappointment and for many of us it was the special Comic Specials.

Specials that had exclusive new stories were it and back then their were loads such as Tammy, Jinty and The Dandy which you might of taken with you or bought as soon as you got to that resort or camp site.

We lost the Dandy way back at the end of 2012 as weekly comic but an experimental Summer issue in 2013 proved successful and today we get one a year and an annual.

Thing is, us old-young at heart readers are slowly reducing so it's not enough to just cater for the retro adult market, you need to reach out to actual modern children so you can't just keep old cartoon strip series in, you need to add new ones that exist more in the modern world and so we continue with last years Dandytown Scouts, modern but easy for us older readers to relate to as much as todays youngsters.

Then D C Thompson have reimagined Dina Mite  as Dinah Mo as a ecological activist caring about the environment (and we should) and had Lew Stringer draw her with both new strips with a more diverse range of children from we had in 1977 or even 88 reflecting how society has changed.

This is being cross promoted by another long standing comic - The Beano.

Unlike the Dandy despite both having a trouble identity crisis driven period around 2007 to 2010, this still continues and is last man standing of the old school weekly comics although the revived monthly Monster Fun can join it.

There's no denying it has changed, somethings such as more inclusion, more ethically diverse characters more welcome for reflecting the world and addressing poor representation of girls, disabled children (something that irritated me back then) and so on.

Being a weekly the setting needs more to reflect the world as it is now with internet and smartphones in it even if grown ups rightly are debating how much of children's time should be spent with such things.

Because Rodger, Minnie, Dennis and the Class of 2B are still ten they're still around but in that world and they go on super summer adventure that has a common theme - pranks and pranking - and they guest in each others comic strip series in the summer edition with a common story.

They are joined by newer strips that have none of the baggage older comic strips have some of which tend to work a bit better than others so it's a little less of a retro experience but if you enter the headspace  of a ten your old  today it makes lots of sense and is quite funny.

It just isn't 1974 but this isn't typewritten then but posted online in 2024!

Out now at major newsagents, Amazon and thank god this year D C Thomson's own website.