Okay, so this week is that week that there's some wedding going on in London which has made a lot of publicity. Anyway, this week's Beano has made the Royal Wedding Special for this week (As have the Dandy) but luckily it's only £1.50!
Anyway, if I'm right, this week saw the switch of editors from Alan Digby to Mike Stirling, now, I'm not impressed. The Beano have fallen into a trap here and it's not looking good. Usually along with new editors comes new characters, however this time, Mike hasn't added any new characters, instead, more magazine-based stuff. Not a good move. Look how it went for the Dandy Xtreme.
So anyway, there are lots of new things this week which I doubt anyone really gives one about. We have:
- Fred's Foul Facts
(Basically Horrible Histories with Fred telling us facts about the place he went this week, boring!)
- Roger's Dodge Diary
(So boring. Why not have Dodge Clinic there instead?!)
- B.S.K Pull Out
(Comprises of front cover (Fact File), BSK story and Jokes. That's it.)
- Year of the Menace
(Seems to of replaced Beano V.I.P. (Thank goodness!) but still it's bad.)
- Jokes at the bottom of Dennis and Gnasher
(That's right. Dennis and Gnasher has been made smaller in order to add rubbish jokes. Great.)
- Roger's in reprints
(Once again Roger is back to reprints, not looking good. And annoyingly, it's one I've already read. It's quite old by the look of it, definitely by Rob Nixon and around the 1980's as the story is a page and a half (The other used to be Dodge Clinic but is now Roger's Dodge Diary)
But bar all this, something good has come out of it! New borders and page number pictures!
Okay so they're not really that exciting to most people but to me, this is brilliant!
Dennis has a tomato, The Numskulls has a signpost (?), Billy Whizz has himself running, Minnie has a red and black striped border and a beret, Meebo and Zuky have a bomb, Ball Boy has a grassy border and a football, Retro Beano has a mushroom, Fred's Bed has a time vortex border and tentacles , Roger has a red and black checked border and Gnasher's Bite has a dog bowl.
It's brilliant, it looks amazing and I love how each page has it's own picture! It's these little details that make comics fantastic!
Also another great thing is that BFG (Britain's Funniest Gag has seemed to disappear! Instead replaced with Playground Pleasers (BSK Pull Out) most likely.
Anyway. Onto the contents.
PG 1: Front Cover: Dennis and Gnasher with Will and Kate - Barrie Appleby
PG 2: Contents
PG 3: Dennis and Gnasher - Barrie Appleby
PG 6: Year of the Menace NEW!
PG 7: Beano Subscription Page
PG 8: The Numskulls - Barry Glennard
PG 10: Billy Whizz - Nick Brennan
PG 11: Advert: Beano Summer Annual (I really want it!!)
PG 12: Minnie the Minx - Ken Harrison
PG 14: Meebo and Zuky - Laura Howell
B.S.K PULL OUT
PG 15: Fact File: Fatty
PG 16: The Bash Street Kids - David Sutherland
PG 18: Playground Pleasers
PG 19: Ball Boy - Dave Eastbury
PG 20: Advert: Fantastic Pets
PG 22: Fred's Bed - Tom Paterson
PG 24: Fred's Foul Facts
PG 25: Gimme, Gimme!
PG 26: Retro Beano: Dennis the Menace - Davey Law
PG 28: Roger the Dodger - Robert Nixon REPRINT ALERT!
PG 29: Roger's Dodge Diary
PG 30: Advert: The Dandy: Kid Cops - Lew Stringer
PG 31: Next Week
PG 32: Back Page: Gnasher's Bite - Jimmy Hansen
What a fantastic issue for stories, Gnasher's Bite was great, love that strip. Minnie the Minx was brilliant, very funny! Also loved Ball Boy, Meebo and Zuky and The Numskulls, Roger was also very good despite being a reprint. Billy Whizz and Dennis were both very good as well. The worst story this week was The Bash Street Kids without a doubt. Fred's Bed was also okay but the pun was terrible.
RATINGS!
DENNIS AND GNASHER - 10/10
A nice story with some brilliant artwork, quite a bit of menacing, Panel 9 being brilliant!
THE NUMSKULLS - 9/10
This is more like it! A great strip which is also backed up by Barry's brilliant artwork!
BILLY WHIZZ - 9/10
I liked it, a nice idea which seemed original enough. Also some good artwork by Nick as well.
MINNIE THE MINX - 10/10
Brilliant, just brilliant. Seemed like a classic. The story is well-written plus Ken once again amazes me with his beautiful artwork.
MEEBO AND ZUKY - 9/10
I only had one problem with this weeks... I swear on the 'Next Time' from the previous issue, Zuky is falling from a biplane yet there's no biplane in this one.
BASH STREET KIDS - 7/10
What's happened? Where's the menacing, the naughtiest thing they do this week is a cartwheel.
BALL BOY - 10/10
We've had a story like this before where Ball Boy is being bullied by some rough kids, then the netball girls help him then he goes into the wrong changing room. It's basically the same but I liked it.
FRED'S BED - 9/10
It was all good, until the end, a brilliant piece of work with amazing artwork once again by Tom, yet the ending ruined it.
ROGER THE DODGER - 8/10
Removed 1 whole mark for it being a reprint. As much as I love Rob's artwork and rather have new stuff by Barrie.
GNASHER'S BITE - 10/10
I loved it. Very good. A great strip.
The Beano - Issue 3583, the Royal Wedding Special, on sale now for only £1.50.
The naughtiest thing in this week's BSK was Wilfred's cheating in the Glee contest.
ReplyDeleteI've seen the Roger story before too. It could be from the 90s though, as even after Dodge Clinic finished, it remained a page and a half for a while, the half page often being used for adverts.
For some reason, I can't find that Summer Annual (or any, and there were a number of TV based ones last year) in the shops yet, even though it's supposed to be out already.
Ah yes, forgot about that.
ReplyDeleteAh, could be, I forgot about that. Thanks. :D
The Summer Annual is NOWHERE!! I've been to 10 Waterstones, 5 WHSmiths as well as other bookshops and it's nowhere! Where on earth is it?!
You can buy them for 3.99 over on amazon! heres a link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beano-Summer-Annual-2011/dp/184535446X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1304153965&sr=8-1
ReplyDeletei cant find them anywhere else!
Roger was narrowed down to 1986-88 on Comics UK. It lacked the telltale tall border we've had on recent reprints, and they only went to the wider paper size in 1988. Also, Robert Nixon's signature was absent - that's highly unusual, it was either airbrushed out when they coloured the originally monochrome strip, it was on the Dodge Clinic, or it's so early artists were still banned from signing their work.
ReplyDeleteRetro Beano's mushroom page number is from a Dennis masthead. So they might use something else next week.
Thanks for the info James, very odd isn't it, when were artists allowed to sign their strips?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I saw that, to be honest, it looks good as a mushroom, for some reason mushrooms look retro (don't ask why!) :P