Ooyah! Further news from the beleaguered DC Thomson show us a story with a few more twists in it than anyone anticipated.
As Alexander points out in the comments of my previous post, I fumbled the figures on The Beano, adding an extra nought to the total. But it’s also interesting to note that the figures for the Dandy are even worse than I reported, dropping down to under 7 and a half grand. Full figures here.
Meanwhile, the mainstream press are finally starting to notice, with London’s free daily paper Metro giving it’s traditional geeky page three splash over to the story. But there’s a twist. It turns out that DC Thomson hadn’t planned for the news to come out, and the offices are now in “lockdown” to prevent further leaks of future plans for the title. Official confirmation came from Dundee only yesterday–which meant that once again, Twitter had a four day lead on traditional news sources. The leak left DC Thomson, who were clearly unprepared for the broad spread of reaction, reeling.
As for the lockdown: The Dandy website is now a single intriguing splash page with a countdown set to run out at the end of the year, a link to the Dandy App and an email sign-up.
Comics creators, most notably Desperate Dan artist and writer Jamie Smart, passionately pointed at the comic’s rich history and continued worth. Any campaign to kickstart sales and get Thomson to reconsider the shut-down of the print edition are, I fear, too little, too late. But I’m happy to declare that the title of my previous blog post was wrong, and that the title will continue. In the Dandy’s landmark 75th year, it will be fascinating to see how Thomson and the editorial team move forward into a new, digital-only edition.
I hope it’s a success. I really do. And I’ve already signed up to see what the new edition is going to be like.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 
Sky news reporting that after paper version finishes in December the comic will be available online!