Off we go then with our gradual real time read through of the eight issues of Beano inside the special 80th anniversary box set, put together by DC Thomson in 2018 for their young readers. It’s important to emphasise the target audience here. The bookazine was a light-hearted look back at the comic’s history and its characters and that’s the whole point here too, for the modern audience of children to celebrate their comic’s birthday with an interesting and gigglesome look back at where it came from.
Hence why a certain mascot is missing from the title banner of this, the quality reproduction of the very first edition that was originally edited by Robert D. Low. This set wasn’t the place for a serious discussion about racist stereotypes and why they were deemed acceptable in 1938. Thankfully, DCT has since realised it should never have been on the cover of a children’s publication in the first place. I think it looks miles better without it and I welcome this change. Reg Carter’s Big Eggo can now shine in his well known first appearance.
The biggest surprise I had upon reading this was just how much of it is text heavy. Only 50% of the 24 pages is made up of comic strips, the rest are prose stories or picture-panel tales such as Morgyn the Mighty. Created by Dudley D. Watkins, it’s just one example of the comic describing regular animals as monsters for the sake of some excitement. Of course children can be better informed today about our world thanks to easier access to a myriad of sources across different media.
It’s all very quaint and we must remember it was released in 1938, 87 years before this review. While I always review comics from my own modern perspective, some latitude can be given to such a classic, one that really is from a different era. Morgyn would disappear from The Beano before the end of its first year, before going on to star in various other DCT comics.
There’s only one character I recognised in the whole issue. Lord Snooty made his debut right back at the very beginning and looks pretty much the same as I remember him from friends’ Beano annuals in the 80s. Overall, as you’d expect the humour strips feel dated but that’s not a criticism. I found it fascinating to see what the children of the day would’ve found funny and how much children’s humour comics have evolved, especially since this particular one is still going strong and I occasionally buy it.
Smiler the Sweeper by Steve Perkins would also disappear within the first year but it’s a good example of the few mini-strip pages. Back when I was a kid it was OiNK that introduced me to comics and the strips would all be of various lengths, but all the other humour comics on the shelves (including The Beano when I was growing up) were pretty much full-page or double-page strips throughout, each character appearing on the exact same page from week to week.
Brave Captain Kipper kills the harmless whale and is portrayed as the hero by a bunch of random strangers. What a git
Of course, today’s Beano is much more varied and it’s interesting to see it started out that way too. Originally #1 contained 28 pages of variety entertainment for kids, four more than this reproduction. There’s a small warning on the bottom of a page stating, “Some pages may contain references which are of their time, but would not be considered suitable today”, although one inclusion was too much, namely the mascot edited off the front cover. Called Peanut, he featured on a page inside and, given how any stapled publication is put together in sets of four pages, once one page is taken out DCT would’ve had to trim further for it to physically work. (Thanks to Lew Stinger for the information on what was on one of those pages.)
Some of the contents which could fall under that warning banner includes child character Wee Peem seen smoking a cigar, a genie in a bottle describing himself as a slave happy to serve, Tom Thumb being captured and treated as a slave for entertainment but we’re meant to think it’s okay because Tom plays pranks on his captors, and one strip is simply called Big Fat Joe! Then there’s Brave Captain Kipper, who’s stupid enough to think he’s on an island when it’s actually a giant, peaceful whale. When it harmlessly blows water over him he kills it and is portrayed as the hero by a bunch of random strangers. What a git.
The Wangles of Granny Green by Charles Gordon is the only humour prose story and startlingly tells the tale of a very young boy whose mother has died and whose father goes on long business trips, leaving him behind to fend for himself. Fed up of the local children thinking he’s weird and of adults trying to look after him, he pretends to be his own grandma (the rhyme along the top reminding me of a particularly funny Muppets song) so that people will just leave him alone.
It’s a fun story and reminds me of the kind of comic strips we’d get years later in the likes of Whizzer and Chips etc. I wish I had access to more of these. The story is imaginative and has the potential to have a lot of heart given the set up, and it has such a quaint bit of hype at the end for the next issue that it’s endearing. It’d run for just over a year, returning for a reprint run in the mid-40s before coming back briefly in 1951. Ironically, the same people who’d complain loudly about what’s not on the cover would most likely also complain if Granny Green appeared today in strip form.
Eric Roberts’ Rip Van Wink wears its influence on its sleeve. A little old man falls asleep in his cave only to wake up 700 years later, the humour coming from his reaction to the modern world and the things kids would’ve taken for granted. It’s a bit of a hybrid with regular comic strip-style speech balloons and captions written in a charming rhyming style, even if some of those rhymes are rather forced. Hey, it just adds to that classic comic feel.
I’m sure this must’ve plucked at the heartstrings of the children reading
Elsewhere, Whoopee Hank the Slap-Dash Sheriff doesn’t provide any clues as to the naming of the original free gift (see the cover), the Shipwrecked Kidds is another lost island tale similar to Morgyn with two spoilt brats and two of their staff, and in a far cry from the modern Beano the only character from any minority is a Tarzan-like child who, even though he has an actual name (Derek) is referred to solely as ‘The Wild Boy’.
My last highlight is My Dog Sandy by Jack Glass, another short-lived series that’s rather brutal at times in its description of what the poor pup goes through with his cruel owner. He may be starting a better life by the end of the page but I’m sure this must’ve plucked at the heartstrings of the children reading. It certain did with me.
I thought this read through would be fascinating and it’s proved to be right from the off. I’d read about the first issue in the Dandy/Beano The First Fifty Years Book back in 1987 but to read the full issue has been fun and really insightful. To experience it in its almost complete state is something I’d recommend to any humour comics fan as a really entertaining retrospective, an origin story in this case. So what’s next?
Join me next time as we skip forward seven years to the end of World War II, the reduction in food rations, the launch of BBC Light Programme radio which would eventually become Radio 1 and Radio 2, the publication of Animal Farm, the movie Brief Encounter, the Nobel Prize for the discovery of penicillin, the birth of Helen Mirren and the first time we’d meet three steam engines by the names of Edward, Henry and Gordon! Join me on Wednesday 26th November 2025 for The Beano #272, the first issue to sell over one million copies!
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