The Beano

The Beano

What is the Beano?

The Beano is the longest-running British children’s comic magazine, published by DC Thomson, whose publishing house is based in Dundee, Scotland. The comic first appeared on 30 July 1938, has been published weekly since then and is currently edited by John Anderson.

The original editor was George Moonie, from 1938 to 1959, followed by Harold Cramond from 1959 to 1984. And from 1984 to 2006, Euan Kerr was the third editor.

Since the Dandy's cancellation, The Beano is now the last of the “traditional British juvenile humour comics[NN1] ”¹.

      There are five main characters : the first one is Dennis the Menace. He appeared in 1209 issues. His most features are his spiky black hair, his red and black striped jersey and his grey boots. He likes to cause trouble wherever he goes. Gnasher is an Abyssinian Wire-Haired Tripe Hound. He is never seen without Dennis (except when Dennis is at school). He appeared in 888 issues and has a son and 5 daughters. They got their own TV series on CBBC from 7 September 2009 and their own comic strip.

There is also Minnie The Minx who appeared in 534 issues. She is a tomboy and she has shoulder-lenght red hair tied in braids, a black beret, a top with red and black stripes like Dennis, a black scruffy shirt, black socks and grey trainers. The fourth one is Roger The Dodger, appeared in 688 issues. He always tries to avoid doing chores with the help of his dodge books, but his dodges usually go wrong. Roger wears a red and black chequered jumper with a white tie. The last one is Biffo The Bear. He appeared in 607 issues and he is a bear with a human-level intelligence.

The Beano has recently reached its 80 year-old anniversary, but it still has a lot of success and will strike 4000 issues in the summer of 2019. They sold almost 2 million copies weekly in the 1950s which is the number of kids who use the Beano’s website nowadays. That’s why they sold only 2 million copies in 2017.

 Very few first issues of the Beano remain in existence today, with one selling for more than £17,000 at auction in 2015.[NN2] 

      We can see the humour of the comic evolve throughout these eight decades. In fact, at the beginning, The Beano used an anarchic humour, meant to glorify some immoral behaviours, dishonesty and robbery. More recently, the humour of The Beano rather centres on gross bodily functions, especially flatulence. That kind of humour was really taboo in children’s comics before the 1990s.

      The Beano’s last set of ABC²  figures [NN3] recorded an almost 8 per cent rise in the last 5 years. In a falling market, these figures are somewhere in the region of miraculous, yet simple testimony to publishers DC Thomson’s knowledge of their market.³

      During the Second World War, The Beano and The Dandy (also an iconic comic strip) were published on alternative weeks instead of every week, because of paper and ink rationing. Therefore, they experienced a crisis. In 1949 success and weekly presentations resumed.

Where can I get one?

You can subscribe online at Beano.com. The website features characters, the all-new adventures, games, quizzes and more. You can also buy a comic on the Fnac or Amazone website.

*1 : https://britishcomics.fandom.com/wiki/Beano        

*2 : Audit Bureau of Circulations

*3 : https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/the-beano-anniversary-characters-dc-dennis-menace-minnie-minx-bash-street-kids-dandy-a8466581.html

Agissandre Leclercq, Viktoria Majda, and Hugo Michel

SOURCES List the websites and (if applicable) any other sources (books, magazines, tv series,…) you have consulted: - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/the-beano-anniversary-characters-dc-dennis-menace-minnie-minx-bash-street-kids-dandy-a8466581.html - https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6894246/how-old-beano-where-buy-still-running/ - https://www.beano.com/ - https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/scotland/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-beano-scotlands-beloved-comic/ - https://britishcomics.fandom.com/wiki/Beano - - - -

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The New Yorker cartoons

The New Yorker Cartoons 
First let’s say a few words about The New Yorker : It’s a magazine edited by David Remnick and created on 21 February 1925 by Harold Ross,who worked for The New York Times, and his wife,Jane Grant. Ross wanted to create this magazine because he wanted to create something humourous. He edited his magazine until his death in 1951. The magazine talks about politics and focuses on the cultural life of New-York and other subjects,always with a lot of irony. It is published by Condé Nast. The magazine started as a weekly and is now published forty-seven times annually.

The cartoons have been included in the magazine since the beginning adopting various styles and discussing varied subjects such as everyday life topics,politics,movies or series. The magazine is avalaible online or in print. There is also an encyclopedia written by David Remnick that you can buy.

Now let’s talk about some editors of the cartoons

The first cartoon editor was Lee Lorenz,a cartoonist who began his job in 1956 and became a New Yorker contract contributor in 1958. After his service as the magazaine’s arts editor from 1973 to 1993, when he was replaced by Francoise Mouly, he continued as cartoon editor until 1998. He has written a book called “The Art of The New Yorker” and received The national Cartoonist Society’s Gag cartoon award in 1995. The magazine has published more than 1600 of his drawings.

In 1993, Robert Mankoff became the new editor. He edited 14 collections and also contributed a short article to each book,describing some aspects of the cartooning process or the methods used to select cartoons for the magazine. He edited “The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker”, a book with more than six hundred pages ( 665 exactly ) representing two thousand and four of the best cartoons of the magazine. Robert Mankoff left the magazine in 2017 for another one called Esquire. 

The New Yorker has employed many other important talents such as Charles Adams, Peter Arno, Sam Cobean and more. Some artists choose to hire their own writers.

There is also a website, called “ The cartoon bank”, on which there is more than eighty thousand cartoons from The New Yorker. This includes some of the most popular cartoons, such as the most printed one by Peter Steiner in 1933 ; It is a drawing of two dogs at a computer speaking to each other with one of the two dogs saying: “ On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. Mankoff and Steiner said that the magazine had split more than one thousand dollars in fees paid for the licensing and reprinting of this single cartoon, with more than half going to Steiner. 

Finally, in April 2005, the magazine started to use its last page for “The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest” The regular cartoonists are printed each week, their work is submitted to readers and three finalists are chosen. Each contest winner receives a print of the cartoon signed by the artist who drew the cartoon. 

Séverine Penné 



"SOURCES

List the websites and (if applicable) any other sources (books, magazines, tv series,…) you have consulted:

 

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Yorker#Cartoons

- https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/bob-mankoff/the-story-of-how-about-never

- https://cartoonbank.com/about

- https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Mankoff

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Remnick

- https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/lee-lorenz

- Google image