EDitorial ± 8-Jun-2010

Hill Of Beanos

4p. Four of your Earth pence. That, dear reader, was the heir-to-the-throne sum you'd have had to cough up for a copy of The Beano in 1975. Not a figure I remember, since my kindly ma & pa took care of that each week with the Ulster Avenue newsagents, but easily look-up-able on ebay. Emblazoned on the front cover was that naughty young fella, Dennis The Menace -- yes, ADHD was there during the Life On Mars era -- with canine sidekick Gnasher, gnaturally. What are they up to? Making life hell for Walter The Softy, to this day a mess and a mire of anxiety issues: he never stood a chance.

Wasn't all flashily be-costumed superheroes in my youth. Older brother had The Dandy, which could account for his Desperate Dan eating habits, and I had The Beano, both fine products from the DC Thomson stable in Scotland (also remain a big fan of AG Barr's equally fine and fizzy products.)

All of those 35 years ago, you'd have found the Bash Street Kids, Roger The Dodger, and Minnie The Minx, the girlpower equivalent of DtM. Flash forward to issue 3537 dated June 5th 2010 and they're all still there, much as they were. That poor, poor teacher dons his mortar board and continues to take abuse from Danny, malformed Plug and, erm, Fatty. This week's strip even features a tuck van selling "delicious ices". Have they not heard of exclusion? No sign of Billy Whizz: maybe he's raced ahead to next week's comic?

Me and The Boy had a fine time reading aloud The Numskulls, with its fantastic range of Batman-like cartoon noises, such as:

  • parp!
  • wheee!
  • snap!
  • donk!
  • klunk!

Should fess up that I bought last week's for the "3 Mega Gifts", namely a Lego Mini Figure (worth £1.99!) plus poster plus stickers. Had no idea what the cover price might be. Care to guess? It's now up to £2.25, over 50 times what it used to be -- Vince Cable could tell us if that's just simple inflation. Imagine if petrol prices had gone up in the same way. Ah.