THE BEANO
Does this bring back memories? The Beano, the no. 1 comic in the United Kingdom. The first copy appeared in 1938, this year it’s celebrating it’s 70th birthday. Its iconic characters such as Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, and The Bash Street Kids have become known to generations of British children. A number of strips in the comic have run for a very long time. The longest-running strip in the comic as of 2006 is Dennis the Menace. 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 inThe Beano).
Some of you might be wondering what does The Beano mean? The Beano comic takes its name from the English word beano which can be loosely interpreted as a good time.
FACTS OF INTEREST
The first edition of The Beano was dated 30th July 1938 and the 3000th issue was published in January 2000. It continues as of 2008. 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. Because the Dandy is now fortnightly, in terms of number of issues, The Beano will overtake the Dandy in January 2009.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beano
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