Desperate Dan is a wild west character in the now-defunct Scottish comic magazine The Dandy.

The character was created by Dudley D. Watkins, originally as an outlaw or ‘desperado’ (hence his name), but evolved into a more sympathetic type, using his strength to help the underdog.

Desperate Dan's final appearance left his fate ambiguous after being caught in an oil well explosion.

Later on, however, he switched sides and become a friendlier character, helping the underdog, although sometimes his great strength caused more harm than good.

While the first few issues ran them in the original monochrome, they have since been run in coloured form, all reprints were adopted from the 1997 Legend of Desperate Dan book which was released to celebrate his 60th anniversary.

One was the usual Dudley Watkins reprint, the other was a brand new one by Jamie Smart, who later became Dan's artist and writer for 12 issues in April 2008.

The MegaComix Special also featured a guide to drawing, by Jamie Smart, which showed how he drew the Desperate Dan strip (which was over the page).

A number of spin-off strips have appeared in The Dandy over the years, including Desperate Dawg in the 1970s and 80s, Danny and Katey in the late 1980s and Aunt Aggie in the 2000s (before the 2004 relaunch).

[2] A statue of him (and his dog Dawg) can be found in the High Street of Dundee, Scotland – The Dandy is published by Dundee-based D. C. Thomson & Co.