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| Image copyright D.C. THOMSON & Co., Ltd |
Strictly speaking, this new magazine does exactly as it says on the tin. The BEANO Summer Activity Special contains puzzles & activity pages, as well as various comic strips throughout the mag. However, one can't help wishing that it was almost wall-to-wall strips in the age-old tradition, with only a few puzzle pages at occasional intervals.
In trying to appeal to both camps (lovers of comics, and puzzle enthusiasts), DCT may find themselves with only half the audience they're looking for as opposed to double. Kids who like puzzles might be deterred by the strips - and vice versa - and may instead plump for some other publication that fully caters to their specific interest. Perhaps I'm being too picky, but if I plucked this off the shelf expecting a typical Special, I'd be disappointed when I got home.
However, for those who know what they're buying, this is sure to tick all the right boxes, and I can't really fault it in any major way. I probably won't be adding it to my collection as I prefer my comics to contain mostly comic strips, and this particular mag doesn't have quite enough of them to induce me to part with £4.99.
Anyone remember when Summer Specials were only 2/6? Whatever happened to those days?
2 comments:
The Beano and the Dandy arrived in my local WHS last weekend. I, like you, opened the Beano and was immensely disappointed. No problem I thought, the Dandy will be just like the Dandy's of old (and the special last summer was pretty good). So I started looking through it and that was rubbish too. So note to DCT - my money is still in my pocket and not yours. I'm now worried that the 2016 annuals are going to go the same way.
My summer reading solution is to grab some old (paper) specials (or annuals) from the 70s and 80s and read them (I still have a some left that have survived house moves etc.) Nostalgia - I love it.
Yes, both were disappointing, SD, but at least the strips in The Beano were consistently better drawn than (with a few notable exceptions - Steve Bright's Beryl pages, for example) the ones in The Dandy.
I have a stack of old DCT Summer Specials from the '70s & '80s - think I'll just read them again.
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