Chipis by Laura H

[Peter Gray]

Chipis very computer gamey...I like the mood colours..orange and blue...
will be interesting...

Plug v's Harley Granny's pet pig..

Desert Island RICK v's Fred from Fred's Bed

p.s I like the different painting in Johnny Bean..the 70's rabbit painting...also nice story..

[Jonny Whizz]

Is this a new strip in the Beano? I'm assuming it's in the Beano because you've put it in this section. I'm sorry, but I've never heard of this before. Should I have heard of it?

[Digifiend]

You see those manga-style Beano characters on the website? It's them.

Ivy the Terrible tries out some alternative forms of transport and the little manga men, the Beano Chipis, get into a fight! Roger the Dodger goes ape and we've got a brand new short, sharp, shock story in Sixty Second Dennis!

[Jonny Whizz]

Thank you. I'd just hadn't read the name before - I'd done little more than a skim read of the preview. The one thing that does really irritate me on the Beano website at the moment is that Bea and Ivy are still shown together when in the comic itself they've been split up.

[Digifiend]

Maybe their Chipis versions are staying together? That would explain it.

[AndyB]

This week's Chipis is very good. Did you write them yourself, Laura?

[Jonny Whizz]

Yes, I thought it was good too, and I'm no manga fan. Nice twist at the end.

[PaulTwist]

I had a look at Chipis while flipping through the new Beano in WH Smith. Very impressed - "modern" yet still very "Beano", if that makes any sense.

[LauraH]

Thanks to everyone who likes the Chipis, and to any of you who don't, please give it a few weeks - there's some good ones coming up, and you'll get to see some unlikely pairings and characters who haven't been in the comic for a while!

Andy, I'm not writing them, but I am colouring as well as drawing (since the colouring style is integral to the overall look of the strip).

Jonny, I drew those images for the website before I knew that Bea and Ivy were being split up. But I'm kind of surprised myself they've used that one as it is, since it would have been very simple to separate the two characters into two images. Oh well, you get more characters on the website this way, so don't worry about it

[Peter Gray]

love it.see the updates on Lauras website..

nice to see new ideas in The Beano.with Johnny Bean and Super School....and new stories of Fred's Bed...The Beano is getting good..

[Digifiend]

Is that supposed to be Jigglypuff, the singing Pokemon?

[LauraH]

Wash your mouth out, Digi - I would *never* draw a Pokemon! It's supposed to just be a floating pink kitten, 'cos that seemed like something Dennis wouldn't want to collide with. Incidentally, this is the second of the unused early ones, the first being a kind of origin story that showed Dennis and Walter to be the designers of the little characters. I haven't put that up on the site, though.

[Peter Gray]

I'm loving your colouring of the strip..seen the Danny one today..



One of the pirates says drip symbol when he sees the Danny monster.....does that mean hes wet his pants!?

[Digifiend]

Yeah, very apt to use Danny in a dinosaur/pirate combo, considering his previous link to Pirates of the Caribeano with it's dinosaur captain.

[felneymike]

Pedanticity: It's Chibi's, "chibi" being Japanese for "small"

I used to be a crazed fanatic for Japanese cartoons and comics (an "otaku", which is roughly Japanese for "nerd") and we'd draw chibi characters all the time.

"Beano Manga" would be nice though, a while back Lew Stringer said on here that in Japan weekly comics were "phone book sized", i thought they were 40 pages or so and he was exaggerating, well i went to Japan recently and they actually are phone book sized!

Far less panels to a page though, four is about the average and 2-3 is fairly common. Also the art is black and white and often rather simplistic (face close-ups with no backgrounds, etc), though when it's detailed it's very detailed!