Rip Van Wink

''The Beano'' is a British anthology comic magazine created by Scottish publishing company DC Thomson. ''The Beano'' has featured comedic strips, adventure strips, and prose stories. Prose stories were, however, phased out in 1955 and adventure strips were phased out in 1975 – the last one being ''General Jumbo''. The longest-running strip in ''The Beano'', originally titled '' Dennis the Menace'' (currently titled ''Dennis and Gnasher''), first appeared in 1951. Other long-running characters and series include ''Biffo the Bear'', ''Minnie the Minx'', ''Roger the Dodger'', ''The Bash Street Kids'', ''Little Plum'' and ''Billy Whizz''. As of 2015, ''The Beano'' had been home to 371 different strips (with a further 17 strips appearing in Comic Idol competitions, but not in any later comics).

This list only features strips in the weekly comic, and does not list strips that only appeared once. It also includes the Comic Idol winners from 1995 to 2010.

Comic strips

Source:

Funsize Funnies

In 2012, ''The Beano'' began printing a new section called the ''Funsize Funnies''. This section featured short three to four-panel comic strips. It originally featured old and existing ''Beano'' characters in its stories, but as time went on, the section began to feature celebrity parodies and wholly new characters.

Adventure strips

From the first issue of ''The Beano'' up until 1975, there were adventure strips. After 1975, they only continued in the Annuals, but attempts were made to revive them in the regular issues in the 2000s. This included three new series of Billy the Cat and the release of ''The Beano'' Action Special.Beano Special no. 13 dated 12 May 2005. Some of these strips started off being adapted from earlier prose stories. The longest running adventure strips are Tom Thumb (1938–1958), Jack Flash (1949–1958), Jimmy and his Magic Patch (1944–1959), The Iron Fish (1949–1967), Red Rory of the Eagles (1951–1962), General Jumbo (1953–1975), and Billy the Cat (1967–1974, 2003–2009). Of these 7 long-running adventure strips, 3 began as Prose stories: Tom Thumb, The Iron Fish, and Red Rory. During adventure strips' run in the regular issue, there were 85 different adventure strips.

Prose stories

From ''The Beano'' first issue up until 1955, it contained prose stories. These were similar to other text stories found in older story papers and featured a prose story, usually of one or two pages (longer in the annuals), often featuring an illustration at the top of the page with the title of the prose story. A number of these prose stories went on to become adventure strips, and some adventure strips even had prose story versions.

During their lifetime in ''The Beano,'' there were 79 different prose stories, of which 15 also appeared as adventure strips: Jack of Clubs, Tom Thumb, Little Noah's Ark, The Iron Fish, Red Rory of the Eagles, Sinbad the Sailor, Little Master of the Mighty Chang, The Bird Boy, The Wily Ways of Simple Simon, The Invisible Giant, The Hungry Goodwins, Tick Tock Timothy, Smarty Smokey, Prince on the Flying Horse, and Follow the Secret Hand.

The issue following the 75th Anniversary Special in 2013 introduced a new text story called ''Diary of an Ugly Kid'', but it disappeared later that year. In 2014, yet another new text story appeared titled ''Diary of a Bash Street Kid''.

Comic Idol runners-up

The following is a list of comic strips which appeared in ''The Beano'' during a Comic Idol or similar competition, but did not win. Many of these strips appeared in annuals. Even though these strips did not win a Comic Idol competition, many of them lasted longer than a number of other Beano comic strips such as Alf Wit, which only lasted two issues. In 2014, Comic Idol was called ''Beanotown's Got Talent''.

Gordon Bennet went on to appear in ''The Beano'' a few years after coming runner-up in a Comic Idol competition. Phone-a-Fiend and Space Kidette are the only two strips on this list that appeared as one-offs.

See also

*''The Beano''
* List of ''Beano'' comic strips by annual
*''The Dandy''
* List of ''Dandy'' comic strips
*''The Beezer''
* List of ''Beezer'' comic strips
* List of ''Beezer and Topper'' comic strips

References

External links

An outdated and incomplete list of ''The Beano'' comic strips
Paul Morris' blog

A list of the 100 longest-running ''The Beano'' comic strips
Comics UK

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beano comic strips
Comics anthologies
The Beano
British comics
Beano