Not sure there's much PC about an Afro-Caribbean amateur detective character called Dreadlock Holmes - he could have come straight off the pages of Viz by the sounds of him.
Still, I think re-designing Desperate Dan smacks of ... well, desperation I suppose.
I don't know what they think they're going to achieve by taking his gun off him, I mean he's a cowboy, cowboys have guns and no seven year old is going to think differently just because Dan doesn't have one any more.