Favourite/Least favourite Beano strips

[Jonny Whizz]

Just had an idea for a new topic. Who are your favourite Beano characters and strips, both from the current comic and from the past (all the way back to 1938!)? Also, which is your least favourite?

As my username suggests, Billy Whizz is my favourite (even as a reprint), though I've always liked Roger the Dodger as well. There's a lot of really good stuff in the Beano at the moment though - Laura H on Ratz and Johnny Bean, Ken H on Minnie, Lew on Super School, Hunt E on Fred's Bed, Tom P, NP...
My favourite old strip (as in not current) is probably Calamity James. I think I'm not alone in having Lord Snooty The Third is my least favourite character in it at the moment (NP is a great artist, but I think the strip is a rip-off of a classic character that completely misses the point of the original). That said, most of the strips I didn't like got dropped!

[AndyB]

I actually like Lord Snooty III, because it's deliberately completely different. Two generations on, and the young Snooty is nothing like his grandfather.

The ones I never got into included Gordon Gnome. There simply wasn't enough to the character.

[Digifiend]

I've always hated Crazy for Daisy. Calamity James was never a favourite of mine either, which is unfortunate, since James is my real first name! I also don't like Jonah - it's not the artwork I don't like, it's the character. Admittedly, I did see Dandy's version before Beano's.

My favourites are Dennis and Roger. Of the more recently introduced strips, Super School is good, and I do think Barrie Appleby's Billy the Cat should be two pages, like it was when drawn by any other artist in the past.

[Steve Henderson]

My all time fav would have to be Dennis although my tastes have changed since I have 'grown up' now I LOVE Calamity James and the much older stuff such as Jonah but when I was younger (8 or so) I could take him or leave him, Tom Patersons artwork has a massive appeal though as 'Lunar Tikks' was one of my childhood favorites. Cuddles and Dimples and Bananaman were keen childhood favs too

Least favourite? Old Lord Snooty and Ballboy, not that I hated them, just didn't like them. Not a fan of new Ballboy either does Dave Eastbury use flash to make comics or something?

Favourite story of all time comes from the 1993 Beano Annual when Dennis puts one of his Menace jumnpers on his Dad, which turns him into a Menace! Classic!

[Digifiend]

I take it you're happy that Ball Boy is now reprints? I'm not. They look dated to me, and sometimes badly coloured, due to originally being designed without colour - in fact Titch was brown skinned in last week's strip (Benji was absent).

[Steve Henderson]

Haven't got the most recent Beano, Last one I got was the one with the BSK clone storyline, I don't get it every week. When I was a kid I hated football so I never got into the character Ballboy, Which old ones are they re-printing?

[Digifiend]

John Dallas is the artist, early 90s, originally black and white. Absent this week.

[Peter Gray]

How can anyone not like this...its just amazing!!

I bet when you are older you'll love Jonah and Calamity James...

[Jonny Whizz]

I agree Peter...Calamity James and Jonah were brilliant. There is so much detail to see in every frame. (Great to see a classic strip as well!) I'd suggest that maybe these strips appeal more to adults than children - who don't really appreciate all the side details and clever little jokes. Both those strips were quite extreme too.

If they must have reprints in the Beano, why not use great artwork like Tam's Calamity James strips from the 1980s and early 1990s, eh?

[Steve Henderson]

Calamity James always splits the crowd, Euan Kerr Loves him (helped create him so perhaps a smidge biased ha ha ) where as Alan Digby is not so keen on him. Im 24 and when I was a kid (8ish)I wasn't that bothered about him but as I got older say 10-11 the detail and the humour and everything became more attractive to me.

Cheers for posting that old one Peter its a work of genius! I like the slight Jonah homage in the title!

[Digifiend]

"Aargh! It's im!" was spoken in nearly every Jonah strip - yeah, that is a nice touch.

I've nothing against Tom Paterson, but that strip is much earlier than most of the ones I've read, and the later ones just weren't that funny (the writers' fault, not Tom's). I like most of Tom's other work for The Beano (can't really judge on other comics when I've probably seen maybe half a dozen strips - i.e. only those from the annuals).

Hmm, I spy Little Larry - another strip Tom was drawing for the Beano in the 80s. Tom advertising his other work, eh? I understand that strip wasn't too popular - it didn't last very long...

[Peter Gray]

Beano Max issue 4 coloured up really well a classic Calamity James
see it large here..
http://petergraycartoonsandcomics.blogs ... dandy.html



more please:)

I've done a new blog post on Tom Paterson on Feeddy the fearless fly The Dandy 1998.

[Jonny Whizz]

I think that the best years for Calamity James were from 1986 (when he started) to 1993, when the Beano went full colour. I think it lost some of its wackiness after that, but it remained funny for the rest of the 1990s (In an old one I picked up several years ago, there was a very good 4-pager where James and Alexander Lemming had to find a very rare duck-billed squelchy thingy). I also feel that there was less black humour after then, which set it apart somewhat from other, 'more conventional' Beano strips. The strips from earlier this decade seem little different from the other strips, whereas the earliest ones were very black and extreme.

Actually, I have a friend called James, and he HATES Calamity James! (Mind you, he doesn't strike me as the sort of person you'd want to share your name with)

I would love it if he could return to the Beano, even though the editor doesn't like him. I drew a Calamity James strip some time ago. I used a couple of Beanos to reference Tom Paterson's art style and tried to add some funny little side jokes. I tend to draw Billy Whizz more though (an easier character to draw).

[Digifiend]

As we can see from your newly uploaded avatar.

[Old Freddy]

It would be almost impossible to say just one favourite, so I'll say why I like or dislike a particular character:

*Roger the Dodger; liked it especially during the robert nixon era when most of my Beanos (1992-5) were being sold He was still drawing it when I first started readin Beanos (about 2001) and enjoyed te strip then too.

*Dennis the menace; I liked the strip from the 1950s onwards, but I didn't really like Jimmy Hansen drawing the strip (Not that i dislike hansen, he's a great artist)

*Billy Whizz; I enjoyed it when Vic Neill drew the strip, I found a lot of the episodes rather funny, like the one from... November 11 1993?

*Calamity James; Tom paterson was one of my fave artists back then, and enjoyed looking at all the little things in the background.

*The 3 Bears; It was a good idea to hae it in the Beano video and videostars, albeit a bit random when you think about it.

*Number 13; Well what can I say? Geering's probably my fave DC Thomson artist.

Ones I don't like

*Minder Bird: Basically, It was just as boring as hell. No offence to either the scriptwriter or the artist, just didn't like it. Hope it came last in the 1995 vote, but then it returns in the 1996 annual!

*Billy the cat. Everyone's going to KILL me for this, but I always skipped the adventure stories or the strips that looked 'too real' for my liking.

*Biffo the Bear; I didn't hate it, but if I was a kid in the 1940's 1950's 1960's or early 1970's, I'd have probably skipped Biffo and went straight to whatever was inside the comic. However, I enjoyed Sid Burgon's revival of the strip.