Hi all

Just wondering if DC Thomson & Co. keep every copy of their famous comics ? - all the way back from 1938+ ?

I'd love to read the strips again from the 70s and 80s (IMO, that was the best era for both the Beano and Dandy).

UNtil recently they were actually republishing original strips from yesteryear in their Classics from the Comics monthly. However due to poor sales and distribution, the title ceased a couple of months ago.

I would imagine they archive every title they publish just like any office archive much of their paperwork. Don't know how much is archived as archhiving was not too big back in the early years, but I imagine they pretty much have most.

Haven't bought the Annuals in years, but don't they also republish strips from yesteryear in the Dandy-Beano Classics annual - they started with the 50th anniversary but I believe they have since commemorated most decades and have just kept the title which was originally a one-off special alive by doing such.

Thanks for the info, spaintv. And do you think the public might have access to their archives ? - especially those from the 70s and 80s ?

This is the second page from an interview with Gary Fraser. Scroll down to the last third and see the section about Classics from the Comics, it also covers aspects of DC Thomsons archive.

They're reprinting Commando #1 next year, from 1961. Seven old Beanos are online at beano.com, one from each decade 1930s through to 1990s (should be an 8th for 2000s but that one isn't working). And there was Classics and the Beano-Dandy books, all of these point to a complete archive of all their comics dating back to 1921 (when boys story paper Adventure launched). They were lucky, Thomson HQ wasn't bombed during the Second World War, so they didn't lose their archive. It'll be gradually computerised now I reckon, before the older material becomes too aged to use.

Thomson's have one one of the most comprehensive archives of their material of any publiosher in the world-virtually everything they've published since the heyday of the story papers in the 1920s, stored in a couple of huge warehouses They certainly have every Beano and Dandy, though their archive is not open to the public (the makers of the Comics Brittania series were permitted access a few years ago, a rare prrivilege).