Desperate Dan is a wild west character in the British comic The Dandy , this statue in Dundee City centre Tayside UK

Desperate Dan is a wild west character in the British comic The Dandy. He first appeared in the comic in issue 1, dated 4 December 1937. He is apparently the world's strongest man, able to lift a cow with one hand. Even his beard is so tough he has to shave with a blowtorch. The strip was drawn by Dudley D. Watkins until his death in 1969. Although The Dandy Annuals featured new strips from other artists from then on, the comic continued reprinting Watkins strips until 1983, when Ken H. Harrison took over. The following year Dan was promoted to the front cover of The Dandy, replacing Korky the Cat. Starting from issue 2985, dated 6 February 1999, Cuddles and Dimples replaced Dan on the front cover. This didn't last long, however, as after a readers' poll in 2000, Dan returned to the cover. Although Ken Harrison draws most of the strips, other artists have occasionally done it as well, including Trevor Metcalfe in the early 1990s and John Geering between 1995 and 1997, though not exclusively. Desperate Dan's favourite food is cow pie - a type of enormous meat pie with horns sticking out. It is assumed to contain the meat from an entire cow, although the term "cow pie" in the American West actually refers to the product of the rear end of the cow, often inconveniently left behind on the trail. When the comic strip first started he was a desperado and on the wrong side of the law, hence the name Desperate Dan.