From Friendly Ghosts To Gamma Rays, No. 155
This week marked the 75th anniversary of The Beano coming out onto stands to entertain readers for generation after generation. Since 1938, this weekly comic has been entertaining generations of British readers, and most recently thanks to a digital push, American readers here in the States as well! Last week’s issue of The Beano celebrated this 75th milestone with its solid Beano-style.
The 75th issue was packed full of hysterical humor, and featured numerous guests such as Will-I-Am, Simon Cowell, and a ton more. Of course the real charm doesn’t lie in the guest stars as much as it does in our favorite weekly characters poking fun, pranking, and having a laugh at them. All the regular Beano stars are here, from Dennis, Gnasher, the Bash Street Kids, Roger the Dodger, Minnie the Minx, and others. Other characters made cameos in the background or on the side lines as well (only ones I believe were missing were the recent characters Big Time Charlie and the reboot of Tricky Dicky, both whose one page comics just started a few weeks back).
While the magic of it all may not hit readers here in the States as much, since the comic digitally has only been available for over a year and finding a physical copy is hard because so few shops import it, there is still a ton to go on of just plain good humor (and if you like celeb-cameos there are enough folks here known on both sides of the pond). Older readers, like myself, will still be familiar with characters like Bananaman whose animated version use to show here in the late-1980s/early-1990s on Nickelodeon after Danger Mouse, where as younger readers who are new to it will know Dennis and Gnasher from the recent cartoon run on the Hub.
No matter where in the globe, humor transcends, from slap stick to fart jokes they are funny, be it in Britain, U.S., Japan, etc., and this comic is certainly packed with laughs. BBC recently ran this great story on the world’s oldest Beano fan, at 91 years old, still reading the comic since day one, click here.
The Beano is 75 years and still going, expanding from Britain to the U.S. and hopefully beyond, and is a fantastic all-ages title that has lasted this long because it is good fun to read. If you haven’t read it, I wold recommend it highly. If your shop cannot import it for you, there is a really affordable option to subscribe digitally, and it looks great on the iPad.
——————————–
That’s it for this week readers! Come back next week when we’ll have a Q ‘n A with Scott Gross, one of the artist/writers behind DC Comics titles Scooby-Doo! Where Are You? and Looney Tunes!
Drew McCabe
drew@comicattack.net