It is the 80th birthday of two things I have known my whole life. One of them was my mother. The other was The Beano.
Yes, 80 years old. A permanent fixture of my childhood which I loved dearly. After falling from favour as I grew into adulthood, I eventually returned to appreciate from a more cultured perspective what can be offered today.
And the same can be said of The Beano.
Growing up in the UK in the 1980s meant experiencing the last golden era of humour comics. The old guard survived (Topper, Beezer, Buster, Whizzer and Chips), new titles came and went (I'll always have nostalgic glows when I think of School Fun or Hoot) and publishers could still experiment with the format (Nipper, Oink!).
But it was the Big Two, the unassailable juggernauts of UK comics that looked down on all the others. The Dandy and The Beano.
They weren't just fun, they carried a weight of history. Your parents read them. Your grandparents maybe did. Your teachers did. Everyone knew the characters.
They were everywhere in pop culture besides. If you wanted to shorthand comics for a joke it was one of these two.
Eric and Ernie sit in bed, Ernie's reading the financial Times, Eric's reading the Beano. Billy in Kes reads a Desperate Dan story. Benny Hill plays a sports reporter but the camera cuts early and he's reading The Beano. Yosser Hughes in Boys from the Black Stuff tells the kindly priest: "I'm desperate, Dan."
I could go on.
Incidentally, if you were thinking of telling me it was The Dandy in that Morecambe and Wise Sketch, have another look. It's a Beano with a fake (and inaccurate) Dandy masthead. Viddy:
Anyway, in 1987 DC Thomson started hyping the 50th Anniversary of the Big Two. And it seemed exciting. Special celebratory issues were hotly anticipated (well, by me, at least), The "50 Years" logo was slapped on everything and a special bumper book was published.
I loved that book. I pored over every page. That nerdy part of my brain that loves to learn the history of something was tickled for maybe the first time. I loved learning about the weird old characters that no longer exist (particularly wartime propaganda efforts like Addie and Hermie and, ahem, "Musso the Wop") as well as seeing what my favourite characters looked like as originated by their creators. Of course, this being a DC Thomson publication, none of those creators were credited (they're much better at this now).
I also got the Beano and Dandy Panini sticker album. The only sticker album I ever filled. 30 years later and I'm still proud of that.
I have to admit that over the next few years I strayed. I became a bit of a Fleetway snob. Especially after the release of Big Comic, an all-reprint fortnightly which taught me a lot of comics history and celebrated the creators, whose names I started to learn.
Then after leaving school I became more interested in American comics and stopped buying UK-created ones. I feel kinda guilty now given that very soon after Whizzer and Chips, The Beezer and The Topper ceased to be. And then Buster went too.
So, ultimately (and I know I'm oversimplifying here) we were left with just The Dandy and The Beano.
Both survived several redesigns and relaunches but eventually The Dandy went on its 75th birthday in 2012.
So that leaves us with just The Beano as the last British comic.
All right the last comic for children.
Toxic is a magazine with comic strips.
All right, The Phoenix is not as widely available as it should be like The Beano. And it calls itself a story comic.
Right, so The Beano is the last remaining humour comic for children.
So why The Beano? Why is that the last comic standing? What kept it going when all around fell? It's not just surviving, either, it's thriving.
Let's go back to the start.
The children's publishing industry was booming in the 1930s. The "boys' papers" of the earlier decades were being superseded by the new American-style way of story-telling. Comics.
Before this the papers were composed entirely of prose stories with occasional illustrations, which then evolved into a series of illustrated panels arranged to tell a sequential story, with prose beneath them. Sometimes in rhyme. Think Rupert the Bear.
Then came the new innovation: The speech bubble.
This might seem like an unnecessary history lesson but the point is that DC Thomson were exploiting this new format more than any of its competitors. The Dandy Comic (as it was originally) was also in a smaller "half tabloid" format than the other children's papers and had more colour, making it stand out. It would be some time before they went full comic but The Dandy and The Beano were big hits straight away, along with sister paper The Magic.
Then came World War II. Many of the comics that flourished in the 30s vanished. There weren't as many people (men) around to make them and paper rationing made them harder to print in the numbers the publishers wanted. Weekly comics then became fortnightly. But our Big Two survived.
In 1946 The Beano's circulation reached one million.
Then in the early 1950s came the next thing that marked out The Beano as special. The hiring of three bona-fide comics geniuses.
The great Dudley D Watkins had been working for the Big Two from issue one (creating Desperate Dan and Lord Snooty among others) but now we got a new generation with a new, anarchic style.
Artists like Ronald Searle had been pushing boundaries of taste in cartoons and the great animation geniuses like Tex Avery were using comedic violence to great purpose. In 1952 Harvey Kurtzman creates Mad Magazine which has a seismic effect on comics.
All this means there was a zeitgeist for this kind of rebellious storytelling. And The Beano hires:
Davy Law, who gives them Dennis the Menace (and gives The Topper Beryl the Peril).
Davy Law, who gives them Dennis the Menace (and gives The Topper Beryl the Peril).
Ken Reid who gives them Roger the Dodger and Jonah.
And Leo Baxendale who gives them Minnie the Minx, The Bash Street Kids and Little Plum (among others)
Now, I'm not going sing the praises of these three here (look 'em up if you don't know about them, they're great), suffice to say the combined effort meant that The Beano had a distinct tone now, as the current Summer Reading Challenge has it: Mischief Makers!
Now, I'm not going sing the praises of these three here (look 'em up if you don't know about them, they're great), suffice to say the combined effort meant that The Beano had a distinct tone now, as the current Summer Reading Challenge has it: Mischief Makers!
It's those characters that define British comics. Apart from Jonah (who disappeared many years ago) all those characters still appear regularly in The Beano today. They still work for today's kids exactly as they did 65 years ago.
An argument over creative rights and pay lead to Baxendale and Reid (and others) jumping ship and creating many awesome strips for comics published by Odhams from the 60s on, which makes them Britain's equivalent of Image Comics in the 90s.
However, because their DC Thomson contracts were "work for hire" this meant The Beano could carry on publishing new stories with these characters with new writers and artists taking over. And the creators wouldn't get a penny. The history of comics is full of stories like this. The current League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest #1 that came out this month tells the full story of what happened to Leo Baxendale in particular (written by Alan Moore who has had similar problems).
Luckily, they'd hired brilliant new artists like John Sutherland (who is still drawing The Bash Street Kids every week) and Jim Petrie to carry on their work.
By the 1980s DC Thomson started to follow a trend set by IPC (the company that took over the Oddhams titles and later became Fleetway), absorbing failing comics into successful ones. That way popular characters could live on after the death of their parent title.
And because The Beano had too many popular characters to unseat, these strays went to The Dandy.
So when Nutty failed, The Dandy got Bananaman. When Hoot ceased to be, The Dandy got Cuddles (who was teamed up with Dimples and eventually ret-conned as twins, but that's a story for another time). They got The Topper's Beryl the Peril too.
I remember thinking as a child that this was DC Thomson admitting defeat. The Beano was the superior comic, because The Dandy needed help. The Beano did eventually get The Beezer's Numskulls and the unassailable Bananaman, however.
The Beano also was the comic that was most successful in other media.
Of all British comics characters there are few that made the leap to film or TV. I count Colonel Blimp and the girls of St Trinians. There have been attempts to market Dan Dare, Jane and Andy Capp. There was a pretty good Perishers cartoon when I was young and a few Viz characters have transitioned.
But The Beano....
The first DC Thomson property to leave the medium was Bananaman, in a great TV series voiced by The Goodies which I grew up with (or, for pedants, up with which I grew).
But there have been three (THREE) different animated series based on Dennis the Menace, a Beano Video from 1993 (featuring various characters) and there is currently a live-action Minnie the Minx in production.
Take THAT Whizzer and Chips!
They were also early in adopting the internet as a way to reach fans (beanotown.com launched in the early noughties to entice new readers, no longer extant) and has a popular Mario Kart-style racing game.
There are a series of Dennis books by popular author Steven Butler, aping the style of the Wimpy Kid/Tom Gates books that the target audience love.
And this Summer the theme of the government-sponsored library-awareness scheme Summer Reading Challenge is built around Beano characters (yeah, I've plugged that twice, I like libraries).
So that is why I love The Beano. And why it survives.
Everybody we know loves to read The Beano.
Coming next: a series of reviews based on significant issues through Beano history. I've read some extraordinary stuff and I want to share it with you!
An argument over creative rights and pay lead to Baxendale and Reid (and others) jumping ship and creating many awesome strips for comics published by Odhams from the 60s on, which makes them Britain's equivalent of Image Comics in the 90s.
However, because their DC Thomson contracts were "work for hire" this meant The Beano could carry on publishing new stories with these characters with new writers and artists taking over. And the creators wouldn't get a penny. The history of comics is full of stories like this. The current League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Tempest #1 that came out this month tells the full story of what happened to Leo Baxendale in particular (written by Alan Moore who has had similar problems).
Luckily, they'd hired brilliant new artists like John Sutherland (who is still drawing The Bash Street Kids every week) and Jim Petrie to carry on their work.
By the 1980s DC Thomson started to follow a trend set by IPC (the company that took over the Oddhams titles and later became Fleetway), absorbing failing comics into successful ones. That way popular characters could live on after the death of their parent title.
And because The Beano had too many popular characters to unseat, these strays went to The Dandy.
So when Nutty failed, The Dandy got Bananaman. When Hoot ceased to be, The Dandy got Cuddles (who was teamed up with Dimples and eventually ret-conned as twins, but that's a story for another time). They got The Topper's Beryl the Peril too.
I remember thinking as a child that this was DC Thomson admitting defeat. The Beano was the superior comic, because The Dandy needed help. The Beano did eventually get The Beezer's Numskulls and the unassailable Bananaman, however.
The Beano also was the comic that was most successful in other media.
Of all British comics characters there are few that made the leap to film or TV. I count Colonel Blimp and the girls of St Trinians. There have been attempts to market Dan Dare, Jane and Andy Capp. There was a pretty good Perishers cartoon when I was young and a few Viz characters have transitioned.
But The Beano....
The first DC Thomson property to leave the medium was Bananaman, in a great TV series voiced by The Goodies which I grew up with (or, for pedants, up with which I grew).
But there have been three (THREE) different animated series based on Dennis the Menace, a Beano Video from 1993 (featuring various characters) and there is currently a live-action Minnie the Minx in production.
Take THAT Whizzer and Chips!
They were also early in adopting the internet as a way to reach fans (beanotown.com launched in the early noughties to entice new readers, no longer extant) and has a popular Mario Kart-style racing game.
There are a series of Dennis books by popular author Steven Butler, aping the style of the Wimpy Kid/Tom Gates books that the target audience love.
And this Summer the theme of the government-sponsored library-awareness scheme Summer Reading Challenge is built around Beano characters (yeah, I've plugged that twice, I like libraries).
So that is why I love The Beano. And why it survives.
Everybody we know loves to read The Beano.
Coming next: a series of reviews based on significant issues through Beano history. I've read some extraordinary stuff and I want to share it with you!
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