Beano Comic Libraries

Curious things, Beano Comic Libraries. Launched in 1982 as a series of digest-sized comics by DC Thomson, the Comic Libraries were essentially star vehicles for their most popular characters, in which the likes of Dennis the Menace, Lord Snooty, Minnie the Minx, Smudge, Baby Face Finlayson and the Bash Street Kids would have over sixty pages to themselves in which to strut their stuff, create havoc, get into scrapes and (hopefully) provide lots of laughs. Two Comic Libraries were released every month, and judging by how easily found they are on Ebay, they must have sold shedloads - either that, or a lot of schoolkids were stealing the things, which - let's face it - was pretty easy to do, because they were around half the size of a 'normal' comic. Fifteen years (and over three hundred Comic Libraries later), DC Thomson pulled the plug. There are Comic Library collectors, and they're fondly remembered in certain circles, but they don't have anything like the cult cachet of the 'regular' Beano. In fact, they're not even held in the same regard as the comparatively obscure likes of Cheeky, Krazy and Oink! - all from the slightly hipper, slightly less conservative IPC stable.

The reasons for this are unclear, though most of the time it boils down to personal taste. To begin with, perhaps sixty-odd pages of Dennis, Minnie, Billy Whizz or the Bash Street Kids was a little too much for the casual fan - brevity, after all, is the soul of wit, and nobody could ever accuse the one- or two-page strips in the Beano of outstaying their welcome. Perhaps the reason the Bash Street Kids annuals - which regularly clocked in at a whopping 96 pages - were successful, despite their singleness of purpose, was because they didn't concentrate on telling one continuous story; indeed, much of the material in these annuals consisted of reprints of the weekly strip, albeit blessed with an almost indecent amount of bubbling, vibrant colour. Like most children's annuals of the time, they were ideal for dipping into on a rainy afternoon or whilst lying in bed on a Saturday morning. You didn't have to read the whole book in one go, and I'm guessing very few children did.

The Comic Libraries, though - they were a different matter. If the central premise of the story was strong, and the writer on duty had mined a particularly fruitful seam, all well and good. It was always fun, for example, when the Bash Street Kids tried their hand at producing a school magazine, stumbled across some potty scientist (alvays mit zer Teutonic accent, naturally) who'd invented a time machine, attempted to redecorate the school or went on a class trip with the long-suffering teacher in tow. Equally good for laughs were the gloriously idiosyncratic dips into the characters' respective histories or their pre-Beano stardom childhoods - Walter the Softy as a toddler, for example, waddling across a carpet with a thick layer of cotton wool with a crash helmet on his head, protective padding on his knees and elbows and a big gummy beam on his face, under the watchful eye of his favourite nanny, the wonderfully named Molly Coddles, is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Stories of Minnie the Minx landing a weekend job at a holiday camp or department store practically wrote themselves, the Pup Parade crew could get away with anything because they were so bloody lovable, and there was even a decent solo outing for Dennis's disgustingly bristly pet pig, Rasher, where he ran away from home and went on a perilous odyssey through a none-too-porker-friendly world.

When the Comic Libraries were good, they were very, very good - but when they were bad, they were just painful, and one duff installment was enough to put a fickle child off the idea of buying any more. Probably the worst offender was a particularly tedious extended romp with Baby Face Finlayson, where the 'cutest bandit in the West' apparently did bugger all but stuff his face (the old post-war comic obsession with groaning tables piled high with steaming plates of glorious food rearing its head again), which was amusing for the first ten pages or so, but by the time you'd reached the end you felt more irritated than amused. Another iffy issue concerned itself with the scratchily-drawn antics of the woefully unimaginative (and thankfully short-lived) cat-hates-dog double act Ruff and Freddy - Puss 'n' Boots they most assuredly were not. It was a bold attempt at recreating the mutually destructive manic anarchy of Tex Avery and Roadrunner cartoons on the printed page, but it quickly fell into repetition and wore out its welcome long before the halfway mark.

Another reason for the comparative lack of esteem in which the Comic Libraries are held comes down to something often referred to as the 'uncanny valley' effect - although the reality was slightly more prosaic. The Comic Libraries were seldom drawn by the same artists who drew the characters' weekly strips, and since these 'different artists' didn't feel compelled to try and replicate the style of the regular illustrators, even the least astute of children were able to discern that something was amiss. In the alternative universe of the Comic Libraries, the regular Beano draughtsmen might turn up occasionally - Dennis the Menace's usual artist, Dave Sutherland, did a wonderful job on the extended 'Nervous Rex' story, for example, whilst Minnie the Minx's Jim Petrie brought some much needed manic flair to her 'Min-ishing School' (groan) yarn - but these were an exception, rather than the rule. Most of the heavy lifting work on the Comic Libraries fell to grafters like John Geering, Tom Williams, Keith Reynolds, Barry Glennard, Bob Dewar and Robert Nixon. Fine cartoonists they may have been, but it still didn't feel quite right seeing your favourite characters drawn in these occasionally quite radically different styles.

Then there's the thorny subject of personal experience and context. I've known a couple of people who were unable to work up even the smallest amount of rose-tinted nostalgia, even with the benefit of decades of hindsight, for the Comic Libraries, simply because 'they remind me of being on holiday'. More specifically, they reminded these poor buggers of the worst kind of bleak, joyless, distinctively British seaside holiday, a nightmare of crummy weather, indifferent food, accommodation that was barely a rung above Colditz, moaning relatives, nylon bedding and Cannon and Ball in seemingly permanent residence on the pier theatre. The kind of holiday where you'd spent all your money on Pac-Man or Mr. Do! by the second day. The seaside newsagent's shops I remember from my own childhood were invariably a treasure trove of summer specials, holiday numbers and Comic Libraries - some of them dating back years. Great for a comics fan like me, but perhaps not so joyous if you were rotting away in a dreary B&B, listening to granny moaning about her numerous ailments and watching the freezing rain lashing against the windows. 

Enough of the negativity, though. I'm here to praise the Comic Libraries, not to bury them, so let me hold my head up high and tell you loud and proud that the Beano Comic Libraries were bloody ace. And if you don't believe me, take a gander at this insanely comprehensive gallery of covers and try not to laugh at least once. Seriously, if you don't raise a smile at this one, there really is no hope for you.