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The Beano
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The Beano comic is a British children's comic, published by D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd.
The comic first appeared on 26 July 1938 and was published weekly. During the Second World War, The Beano and The Dandy were published on alternating weeks due to paper and ink rationing. D.C. Thomson's other publications also suffered with the Oor Wullie and The Broons annuals falling victim to paper and ink shortages. Paper and ink supplies were fully restored shortly after the end of hostilities and weekly publication of The Beano and The Dandy soon followed.
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The Beano comic is a British children's comic, published by D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd.
The comic first appeared on 26 July 1938 and was published weekly. During the Second World War, The Beano and The Dandy were published on alternating weeks due to paper and ink rationing. D.C. Thomson's other publications also suffered with the Oor Wullie and The Broons annuals falling victim to paper and ink shortages. Paper and ink supplies were fully restored shortly after the end of hostilities and weekly publication of The Beano and The Dandy soon followed. As of 2007, over 3000 issues have been published. The Beano is currently edited by Alan Digby, who replaced Euan Kerr in summer 2006. Euan Kerr now edits the BeanoMAX, a version of the Beano for older readers.
Its iconic characters such as Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, and The Bash Street Kids have become known to generations of British children. Earlier generations will remember other notable characters which have been phased out, such as Biffo the Bear. Some old characters have made a return like Lord Snooty.
The comics were distributed in some of the British colonies or former colonies as well. Because they were sent by sea mail, they would go on sale some weeks after the date shown on the cover. The comic holds the record for being the world's longest running weekly comic.
Strips
A number of strips in the comic have run for a very long time. The top five longest running Beano comic strips are, in ascending order, Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Bash Street Kids, Roger the Dodger and, the last holder of the title before Dennis, Lord Snooty.
Dennis the Menace's famous 'red and black' jersey had formed the colours of a few of the Beano characters' clothes (Minnie the Minx had the exact same top, Ball Boy's strip was a vertical red and black, Roger the Dodger has a chessboard design top and Danny (from the Bash Street Kids) has a similar cap) but the colours have changed for Minnie and Ball Boy (Minnie at one point had a red and yellow top and Ball Boy's strip now being black and blue).
There are frequent fictional crossovers between The Beano and Dennis and Gnasher, with most of the characters living in the fictional Beanotown. Many of the comic strips in The Dandy are drawn by the same artists, and crossovers between the two comics and The Beano also occur occasionally. Quite often, one comic will make a tongue-in-cheek jibe at the other (e.g. a character meeting an elderly lady, and stating that she's 'older than the jokes in The Dandy). In the strips, it is expressed that the two towns are rivals with each other and before The Dandy did a drastic format change they had an embassy in Beanotown which many of the town's citizens attempted to overrun, but failed (the embassy had no existence in The Beano).
The Bash Street Kids Adventures written and drawn by Kev F Sutherland since 2004 have featured parodies of famous comic strip images, including Amazing Fantasy's first Spider-Man cover, Action Comics' first Superman cover, and most recently the cover of X Men #100. Sutherland created the rival schools to Bash Street, St Posho's and St Asbo's. He also revived old characters from the archives including Biffo the Bear, Keyhole Kate, Pansy Potter The Strongman's Daughter, and Desert Island Dick.
History
The Beano comic takes its name from the English word beano which can be loosely interpreted as a good time.
The first edition of The Beano was dated 30 July 1938, and the 3000th issue was published in January 2000. It continues , and so far ( January 2009 ) there have been 3467 issues published. There are only 12 known copies of the first issue in existence, and only 5 known copies of the second issue (not including facsimiles).
A copy of this first issue sold for £12,100 on 16 March 2004, which was at the time thought to be the highest price ever paid for a British comic at an auction. The current highest price is £20,350 which was paid for the first issue of The Dandy on 7 September 2004. The Beano is also the second longest running comic, the first being The Dandy, which is also published by the same publisher.
The Beano is so popular that it has its own theme park, Beanoland, at Chessington World of Adventures. This opened in 2000, but is under threat of closure as the contract will expire at the end of 2008.
Editors
The original editor was George Moonie, from 1938-1959, followed by Harold Cramond, 1959-84. Euan Kerr was editor from 1984 until he handed over to Alan Digby in early 2006. Alan had been Beano Chief Sub Editor when Euan first became editor, and later edited The Beezer. Euan has returned to edit BeanoMAX as of issue 2 (see below).
Other comics
Comic Libraries
Since 1982 the comic, along with The Dandy, has also run "Comic Library" titles. Released monthly, these titles are a feature length (usually about 64 page) adventure, featuring a character from the comic itself. They are available in A5 size only. In 1998, these were replaced by the Fun Size Beano, which still runs today, although they became reprints in 2006.
Beano Specials
The comic also ran A4-sized Beano Specials in the early 1990s, which later were renamed Beano Superstars. These were similar to the Comic Library series. The last few issues were printed versions of episodes from the 1996-1998 Dennis and Gnasher animated TV series.
A Beano Poster Comic series was also printed in the early 1990s.
The Beano Specials returned in 2003, and were now published seasonally. The issues were numbered, and the first one was a Dennis and Friends special, the last a Christmas reprint special. These were replaced by BeanoMAX in early 2007.
BeanoMAX
On 15 February 2007, the first issue of a monthly comic entitled BeanoMAX was published. The sister comic features many of the same characters, however the stories in BeanoMAX are written in a longer format aimed for 10-13 year olds. The first issue was a Comic Relief special featuring assorted celebrity guests.
Revamps
The Beano's first major revamp was in the 50th birthday issue of 1988, when the page number was increased, the comic had a wider paper style, and more colour was used throughout.
Another occurred in 1993, when the whole comic was now printed in full colour, along with some new strips such as the Numskulls, which had been moved from The Beezer.
No major revamps happened from then until 1998, when Dennis' baby sister Bea was born. The logo was rounded and embossed (but later flattened in February 1999), and there were 8 extra pages. Computers were starting to be used for articles and speech bubbles, rather than the usual hand drawn ones.
Since April 2007, the Beano has had four revamps to help it keep up to date.
The first occurred on April 7 2007. The logo was made to seem it was jumping out, and was embossed using Photoshop. The website address was looped inside the "O". This logo had been used in the Beano Club for one issue in 2006.
Also in this issue, there was a record number of uncredited reprints, with the likes of Ivy the Terrible, Calamity James, Les Pretend, Riot Squad and Fred's Bed now being reprinted. In certain areas of the UK, such as Lancashire, the price was increased to 99p, while elsewhere it remained as 85p.
The second happened on October 27. The logo was still Photoshop embossed, but was now back to the rounded style which it had from 1999-2006. It was quite similar to the original rounded logo from 1998, which was flattened the following year.
The number of reprint pages was cut from 4 to 2, but more started to appear after about a month. Two new strips were also added, Johnny Bean and London B412. The price increased to 99p across the whole UK.
The third was the least major revamp. The background was changed from one colour behind the logo and another behind the Dennis strip to one single colour or a pattern, such as red and black stripes. New fonts were being used on the front cover, and the "Pocket money price" logo had been changed to a large "WOW! 99p" which was usually placed in the top corners. No new strips were added this time, but the amount of reprints went up to 5, sometimes lowering back to 4 per week, and an extra Dennis strip was added on the inside back two pages.
However, the fourth revamp, which happened with the issue dated 18 October 2008 was the most major revamp of all. There was a return of Billy the Cat inside, as well as a new Super School strip by Lew Stringer. The price was risen to £1.25 per issue. The font was also changed to Cloudsplitter by Blambot. But the main change was the paper style, which had changed from newsprint to a gloss, much in the style of the inside pages of companion papers Dandy Xtreme and BeanoMAX. The only difference between these paper styles is the front cover, which is thicker on the Dandy and BeanoMAX, but the same as the pages throughout in the weekly Beano.
Gnashional Menace Day and the 70th Birthday
The 70th anniversary issue of the Beano will have a cover date of August 2nd 2008. As a celebration, in partnership with the CLIC Sargent charity, August 2nd will be Gnashional Menace Day, where children are sponsored to behave like Dennis. The anniversary will also be celebrated with a 40 page issue (instead of 32 pages; the 60th birthday issue also had extra pages, 48 instead of 24) guest edited by Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park, price £1.50 (not 99p, this has also happened to The Dandy on one occasion, see here) and an issue of Classics from the Comics devoted to the Beano. There is also a special 64 page book available, The Beano Special Collectors Edition: 70 Years of Fun, telling a brief history of the comic. In the Beano's home city of Dundee, a special exhibition is being held at the University of Dundee featuring original artwork and other memorabilia loaned from D C Thomson - it runs until 20 September 2008. In London the Cartoon Museum will be showing the exhibition Beano and Dandy Birthday Bash! from 30 July to 2 November 2008. It will show original artwork from all eight decades of both 'The Beano' and 'The Dandy' including work by Dudley D Watkins, David Law, Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid as well as David Sutherland and many contemporary artists. There will be events for children throughout August.
See also
External links
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