You can’t escape The Dandy today on the news here in the UK: the last printed issue of the 75 year-old comic has just been published, as it moves to being a digital-only product.

From now on, you’ll be able to get The Dandy from its website or, at some point, from mobile and tablet apps. So, characters like Desperate Dan, Keyhole Kate, Bananaman and the Numskulls will live on, but on screens rather than in print.

“We all know how popular digital devices have become with children so we’re drawing on our traditional heritage and updating our product to make it relevant for today’s children,” says editor Craig Ferguson.

Well, up to a point. The new digital edition does sound technically innovative: a motion comic with embedded games and its own mini-TV show, accessed on computers, tablets and smartphones. But making it relevant to kids will take more than that.

In the politest possible way, how many children today care about the characters in The Dandy? That’s the key challenge for Ferguson and his team to solve now.

I can see some of the format problems: The Dandy was squeezed on one side by TV shows, games and now apps, and on the other by a blizzard of branded magazines with lots of covermounted gifts.

But characters are the thing: I don’t think children in 2012 have any less desire to experience – which includes ‘watch’ and ‘play’ as well as ‘read’ – stories with strong characters than the children of 1937 did, when The Dandy launched.

It’s just that in 2012, those characters are likely to be the Angry Birds (and pigs), Om Nom from Cut the Rope, Talking Tom Cat and his parade of Talking Friends, or looking beyond the apps world, Skylanders creatures, Moshi Monsters beasties, Pokemon even. And then, obviously, TV shows from Ben 10 and SpongeBob SquarePants through to the reborn Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

A great character that children love can go anywhere: video (whether broadcast TV or YouTube), games, apps and yes, comics. Moshi Monsters seems to be doing rather well from its print magazines, while popular apps like Temple Run and Squids have spawned their own digital comics.

That’s why I think The Dandy’s reinvention as a digital comic may only be a step towards what it needs to do to stay relevant. Perhaps it should think of itself less as a publication, and more as a collection of characters, all able to strike out on their own on different media, rather than being confined to one place.

And if those characters aren’t strong and relevant enough in 2012 to tempt children away from Angry Birds, Om Nom and Talking Tom Cat, maybe The Dandy needs some new characters who are.