The Beano
The Beano is a British anthology comic magazine created by Scottish publishing company DC Thomson. Its first issue was published on 30 July 1938, and it published its 4000th issue in August 2019. Popular and well-known comic strips and characters include Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, The Bash Street Kids, Roger the Dodger, Billy Whizz, Lord Snooty and His Pals, Ivy the Terrible, General Jumbo, Jonah, and Biffo the Bear.
The Beano was planned as a pioneering children's magazine that contained mostly comic strips, in the style of American newspaper gag-a-days, as opposed to the more text-based story papers that were immensely popular before the Second World War. In the present, its legacy is its misbehaving characters, escapist tales and anarchic humour with an audience of all ages. Beano is a multimedia franchise with spin-off books and Christmas annuals, a website, theme park rides, games, cartoon adaptations, and a production company.
The Beano is the best-selling comic magazine outside Japan, having sold over 2 billion copies since its inception, and is the world's longest-running comic magazine and has been published weekly since 1938, alongside its sister comic The Dandy until 2012.
It has had three characters as the mascot throughout the years: Big Eggo, Biffo the Bear, and the current, Dennis the Menace and Gnasher.
History
Creation (1920s–1939)
Throughout the 1920s, DC Thomson dominated the British comics industry. Dubbed "the big five", the publisher's most successful comics were Adventure, The Rover and The Wizard, The Skipper and The Hotspur. These were weekly issued boys' magazines for preteen males, containing anthologies by DC Thomson's creator staff designed in various formats and genres. They became popular throughout the United Kingdom, notably in English industrial cities, helped through the company's ability to view sales and promotions in the areas much more easily than the rival publishers in London. Although many were about "super men" the young readers could idolise, the rest of the stories would be comic strips inspired by the gag-a-day strips in American newspapers full of stylised characters, slapstick and puns.Overseeing the magazines was the Managing Editor of Children's Publications, R. D. Low, who first joined the company in 1913. Almost a decade into the big five's success, the stories shifted to comedic and included more comic strips, which gave Low an idea of creating a new "big five" which focused on the funnies more than drama. The suggestion was approved; editors Bill Blain and Albert Barnes of The Wizard and The Hotspur, respectively, joined Low's project. The new team placed a newspaper advertisement into The Daily Telegraph asking for artists and/or comic ideas. With the help of the advertisement responses and employed artists at DC Thomson, The Dandy was published in 1937, the New Big Five's first member. For The Beano, Low received comic strip suggestions by Reg Carter, an English illustrator in Sussex who had created funnies for several British comics and designed humorous postcards. After an in-person interview, Low and Carter planned the front cover for The Beano first issue, eventually creating the character Big Eggo. It would be in colour whilst the inside of the magazine would be black and white, a tactic used for The Dandy first issue. Joining the Big Eggo strip would be many funnies, such as Hugh McNeill's Ping the Elastic Man, James Jewell's Wee Peem, Allan Morley's Big Fat Joe, Eric Roberts' Rip Van Wink, Dudley D. Watkins' Lord Snooty and His Pals, and Roland Davies' Contrary Mary. Despite the aim to make a new comic series full of American-inspired comic strips, The Beano also contained short stories, serial fiction and adventure stories similar to the Big Five's magazines; Morgyn the Mighty was previously in The Rover. Tin-Can Tommy and Brave Captain Kipper were reprints, co-produced by the Italian art agency Torelli Bros.
Worth 2d with a free prize of a "whoopee mask", issue 1 of The Beano was released on 26 July 1938 for the 30th, selling roughly 443,000 copies. Like The Dandy, its name is from a Low-led DC Thomson office party called The DB Club. DC Thomson had several office party clubs that hosted different types of staff gatherings to choose from, but Low's DB Club preferred playing golf and dining throughout Dundee. The two magazines also followed the one-word titles of other comics by rival companies, such as Amalgamated Press' Crackers, Sparkler, Puck and some books from its Union Jack series ; and Target Publications' Chuckler, Rattler and Dazzler. Beano editor-in-chief was George Moonie, former sub-editor of The Wizard, who would be editor until the summer of 1959. He later explained DC Thomson was a competitive company that wanted to make the best children's literature in the United Kingdom, but there was also competition within itself as Beano offices was determined to beat The Dandy popularity.
World War Two, reaching million sales (1939–1945)
Drastic changes occurred behind the scenes of The Beano during the Second World War: George Moonie and editing partner Ron Fraser left to join the Royal Marines and Air Force respectively, both not returning until c. 1946. Stuart Gilchrist became sole editor-in-chief after Moonie's other sub-editor Freddie Simpson became ill and resigned. Contact was also lost with Torelli Bros. so in-house creations of Tin-Can Tommy began from issue 69 by Sam Fair. Paper rationing caused the rest of Low's New Big Five to be cancelled, and The Beano to fluctuate its page count instead of its usual 28. Eventually, The Beano became a fortnightly magazine until 23 July 1949.Comic strips would encourage readers to help their parents and other adults with the war effort, and to be optimistic about the war's outcome. New comic strips mocked Mussolini and propagandist William Joyce, Lord Snooty and His Pals stories would be about the protagonists outsmarting the Axis leaders, and other stories would be about characters recycling paper. Big Eggo front covers were often about Eggo pranking servicemen during the Blitz, and Pansy Potter received a medal for single-handedly capturing a Nazi U-boat. Issue 192 would debut a 16-part prose story about a boy and his mother being evacuated to the United States and becoming the enemy of a Chicago gangster's widow.
Issues published weekly every Tuesday in 1938, and when the magazine changed distribution to every two weeks, the day remained unchanged. From issue 366, the day changed to Friday until issue 375 which began the Thursday publication day schedule.
Post-war changes (1945–1988)
December 1945 marked a milestone: issue 272 became the first Beano issue to sell over a million copies. The end of the war also ushered in a new era for the comic, debuting superhero Jack Flash, the debut of Biffo the Bear as new cover star and a new generation of trouble-making kids: Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, The Bash Street Kids, and Roger the Dodger. DC Thomson also introduced new comic magazines like The Beezer and The Topper that a few Beano artists also created characters and stories for.After the war saw a drift away from text stories and adventure comics, with the last text story published in 1955; adventure comics lasted longer with 1975 being the last year to feature them as General Jumbo eighth series drew to a close in issue 1734.
George Moonie resigned as editor-in-chief in 1959 to develop comics for girls. Sub-editor of The Beezer Harry Cramond succeeded Moonie until retiring in 1984, described as the most influential editor in The Beano history. He oversaw new merchandising, high sales, and the thousandth and two thousandth issues. DC Thomson's Beano offices featured on documentary television and Cramond's successor Euan Kerr guest-starred on television for the magazine's 50th anniversary.
Move to full colour (1988–present)
The Beano began to advertise outside of DC Thomson's products in 1988 in order to keep both it and The Dandy "pocket money" cheap, beginning with issue 2407. Issue 2674 in 1993 was the first issue to feature every page in colour.A notable revamp was the 50th birthday issue, which had an abnormally larger page count with more coloured sections and printed on wider sheets. A decade later, issues gained eight extra pages with computer-based art. In the 21st century, there were seven changes within a five-year span: logo updates, fonts assigned for certain design roles, and the magazine started using glossy paper.
From issue 3442 in 2008, the day the comic was released was changed to Wednesday.
Outside of the magazine, Beanos brand expanded into a multimedia franchise. Theme park tie-ins, a website, spin-off magazines, and animated television programmes starring the popular comic characters became common, keeping The Beano in popular culture. The turn of the millennium began a sales decline and led to friendly rival The Dandy being discontinued in 2012. Eventually, The Beano recovered after the creation of its magazine subscription service, which also shipped internationally.
Stories
Plots and dialogue are written into a script by an uncredited DC Thomson writer, a formerly common practice for DC Thomson magazines. Uncredited artists assigned to a strip will design all its stories into a "series" that the chief editor will arrange into an order to publish for each issue. Strips are sometimes ghostwritten by other artists who imitate the original designer's style, which is helpful if artists retire or die unexpectedly, otherwise the strip is discontinued. "When I started I was drawing two pages a week and thinking 'Phew, that's quite a lot'. Now I do 10 or 12 pages a week. You have to do more all the time to stay where you are," explained Nigel Parkinson. From March 2016, authors and illustrators are now credited in issues.There have been over a thousand stories throughout the magazine's history told through various ways. Since November 1975, the magazine has contained only comic strips in the style of American newspaper "funnies", but it began with other genres. The last genre to leave Beano was adventure stories: short tales eleven-pictures long in text comics format. The stories were either dramatic or dramedies, but heavily featured hobbies and interests young boys had. They also stood out because the illustrations of backgrounds, animals and human characters were photorealistic. Although artists like Dudley D. Watkins drew for a few series, the most prolific illustrator was Irish artist Paddy Brennan, who notably drew for The Daring Deeds of Sinbad the Sailor, Red Rory of the Eagles and General Jumbo in the 1950s. Comic adventure stories were a hybrid: adventure stories presented as a comic strip.
Prose stories were a page of text with an illustration at the top. Some stories were about animals with artwork by former Big Five illustrator Richard "Toby" Baines, but the longest-running prose character in the magazine's history was Prince Ivor, who first starred in Follow the Secret Hand. The last prose story to appear was Ace From Space in 1955.
Although comic strips have featured in The Beano since issue 1, their contents has changed throughout. Anthropomorphic animals were common stars that would partake in human activities, and the punchlines occurred from the failures to do so. Misbehaving children showed most popular with Lord Snooty and His Pals becoming the first longest-running strip when it concluded in 1991, but the most well known that continue to appear in issues are Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, The Bash Street Kids, and Roger the Dodger. Some adult-starring characters also misbehaved but they were usually portrayed as incompetent, notably Jonah. In the late 20th century, merging comic strip characters in the same vicinity became common in the franchise, such as the video game Beanotown Racing, but characters living together in "Beanotown" became a prominent feature of comic strips into the present.
Due to the initial target audience of The Beano being schoolboys, masculine interests, hobbies, and values dominated issues constantly. Aside from aforementioned adventure stories and comedic characters, there were cowboys, aliens, kings, the supernatural, fantasy creatures, and men whose lifestyle or jobs require physical strength. The Beano alternated between mocking or idolising these characters through story formats; wealthy characters causing mischief, caring about their families or being shown underprivileged lives made the working-class audience relate and sympathise with them. Female characters were usually supporting a male character, joint protagonist with a male character, or the antagonist. Prose stories starring girls and women were about the protagonist searching out the truth to a secret, usually over a friend's/family disappearance, or they were witches cursing or tormenting the male protagonists. Female comic characters were also in supporting roles with or join-protagonist with a male character, but the starring characters notably had binary stereotypical traits: drawn as tall and flowy, Swanky, Lanky Liz is obsessed with fashion and makeup and acts vain and snobbish, whereas Pansy Potter, Minnie the Minx and Toots from The Bash Street Kids share the round-faced and snub-nosed art style of the boys in their stories and are unruly tomboys. Non-White characters starred in their stories either set in Africa, Asia, or South America, or were about the character adapting to a new life in the United Kingdom.
Stories used to vary in length and layout, but in 2012, The Beano debuted a chapter called Funsize Funnies where shorter comic strips shared some pages. In some instances, these extremely short strips were brand new, but others were tiny reboots of older comic strips that the new audience could not recall reading before. Quiet reboots included Simply Smiffy, Rasher, Little Plum, Les Pretend, Baby Face Finlayson, Biffo the Bear, Pansy Potter, and Lord Snooty.