The Beano

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
The 68th Beano Annual with a few of the longer running characters appearing on the front.

The Beano is a long running British children's comic published by D. C. Tomson. It's been in circulation for over 80 years, having entertained generations of kids since 1938, making this one hell of a long runner. It's famous for iconic strips such as Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx and The Bash Street Kids, and is a huge influence in (and a reflection of) British culture.

The comic is easily the most well known British Humour Comic. Published weekly for most of its history,[1] it passed 4000 issues in 2019, more than even its longer-running friendly rival The Dandy (from the same publisher) has managed. The Beano has outlived numerous generations of competitor comics, such as Whizzer and Chips, Film Fun, Smash and Buster, and has absorbed a number of characters from other D.C. Thompson comics such as The Numskulls and Fred's Bed from The Beezer and Banana Man from Nutty and The Dandy.

As well as the weeklies there are The Beano Annual (which continues to sell 100,000+ every Christmas), the monthly Beano Max, the yearly Summer Special (featuring reprinted content from both The Beano and The Dandy), and the Beano Comic Libraries which evolved into the Fun Size Beano before going defunct. Dennis the Menace and The Bash Street Kids had their own annuals for a while, and one of the Bash Street Kids, Plug, even got his own weekly comic from 1977-79. Other spinoffs include a few animated series (some of which were Direct to Video) and video games.

Its readership peaked in 1950 before the introduction of its most iconic characters and some consider it to have Jumped the Shark in the mid 60s when artists Leo Baxendale and Ken Reid left to draw for DC Thomson's rivals. Your Mileage May Vary on this as the comic continued to innovate long after these artists stopped drawing altogether, but there's no denying the pair were a big influence on the comic.


Tropes used in The Beano include:
  • Abhorrent Admirer: Calamity James occasionally fell victim to one of these.
    • Daisy also considers Ernest to be one of these in the 'Crazy for Daisy' strips.
  • A Boy and His X: Many characters in the strips have more or less strange pets.
    • Roger the Dodger has Joe the crow.
    • Smudge has a pet... something... called Spludge, which is covered completely in mud.
    • Stanley Livingstone has a crocodile named Carruthers.
    • All the Bash Street Kids have dogs and cats, but pets don't go to school so they've rarely if ever been seen outside of Pup Parade.
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The Ratz appear to live in quite a large sewer large enough for anthropomorphic ratz.
  • Accidental Bid: A staple of the comic in the 1990s.
  • Achievements in Ignorance: Smiffy.
  • Adult Child: Grandpa, the eponymous character from the strip "Grandpa", is often seen acting like a child and playing with a children. He also has a dad who spanks him the same way characters like Dennis the Menace got spanked back in that era.
  • Adults Are Useless: They can't really control their kids, now, can they?
  • Adventurer Outfit: Stanley Livingstone, Dennis the Menace's neighbour in the early '90s, wore a Safari Outfit.
  • Affectionate Parody: The comic frequently parodies things such as Doctor Who.
  • Always Someone Better: When characters are focused around a single aspect, a fairly common plot is for a new character to show up who's The Same but More, such as an even cleverer pupil than Cuthbert joining Bash St School. Of course, they get wiped out in the Reset Button by the end of the strip.
  • Ambiguously Gay: Walter and the Softies are sometimes considered this. It was averted when he got a girlfriend, called Matilda who looks eerily similiar to Walter, in the cartoon series.
  • Amusing Injuries: Just how many times has Calamity James had his ears reversed?
  • Anthology Comic
  • Animal Jingoism: The old strip Kat and Kanary and the much newer strip entitled Meebo and Zuky (which involves a cat and dog being violently cruel to each other in a similiar vein to an earlier DC Thomson strip from the Sparky entitled Puss n Boots).
  • Animated Adaptation: Dennis the Menace received his own animated series. There have also been a few Direct to Video animated specials for the entire comic (featuring shorts with each of the characters).
  • Anvil on Head: Used numerous times, most recently in a Meebo and Zuky strip.
  • Art Evolution
  • Badass Moustache: Pretty much every authority figure in older strips has a moustache, often a Hitler-esque one. Your Mileage May Vary to how badass these moustaches are. Also Roger's dad is one of the few characters whose moustache isn't a toothbrush moustache.
  • Banister Slide: Dennis has done this many times, notably once in a 1980s comic, where Mum had sewn a sandpaper patch on to his shorts, leading him to sand down the banister for her. It was one of many nice things he inadvertently did - Mum was taking advantage of his usual behaviour - and thus he was surprised when he was rewarded at the end.
  • The Beautiful Game: The basis of Ball Boy's strip, containing any number of references to great footballers at the time, and any ongoing tournaments at the time of publication.
  • Beef Bandage: Was standard treatment for a black eye, in the good old days when children's comic characters regularly beat each other up to that extent.
  • Berserk Button: Vic Volcano who starts off nice and calm, but would go beserk after the slightest insult.
  • Best Years of Your Life: Used in "Tim Traveller" just after Tim sees how bad they're going to get.
  • Big Bad: Baby Face Finlayson in the longer strips by Kev F Sutherland.
  • Big Ball of Violence: Used frequently almost whenever there is violence. The Beano's use of this trope was even referenced on Zero Punctuation [1].
    • One formed the title graphic for Dennis the Menace for about a decade.
  • Big Brother Instinct: Even before his Menace Decay, Dennis has been very protective of his sister, as seen here.
  • Big Eater: Fatty from The Bash Street Kids, as well as Minnie the Minx's friendly enemy Fatty Fudge. Former characters The Three Bears and Chiefy from Little Plum could pack away the comestibles too.
  • Blind Mistake: This is 'erbert from the Bash Street Kid's main trait.
  • Bonnie Scotland: The Mctickles (a strip from the 1970s) features a load of scots in an over the top exaggerated parody of scotland complete with anthropomorphised haggises called Mchaggis which the Mctickles hunt. Slightly weird considering the Beano is published in Dundee. There's also Ben Nevis, named after the mountains. Not only that but there's references to cheese rolling, which take place in Dundee where the "Beano" Offices are and even the word "Softie" is a Scots expression.
  • Book Dumb: Most of the main characters are this way. Roger the Dodger seems to be able to make up for it with a cunning nature, though.
  • Born Unlucky: Calamity James
  • Brats with Slingshots
  • Brilliant but Lazy: Roger the Dodger. He's often coming up with schemes to get out of doing work and, ironically, these schemes take much more effort than the work he's trying to get out of doing.
  • The Bully: Cruncher Kerr from Roger the Dodger.
  • Bully Hunter: The short lived comic strip from the late 90s Even Steven involved a boy called Steven who got even with bullies.
  • The Bus Came Back The Nibblers, who originally left the comic in 1984 have their own story in the 2012 annual.
  • Butt Monkey: Calamity James
  • Canine Companion: The Bash Street Kids have the Bash Street Dogs. Dennis has Gnasher.
  • Canon Immigrant: In 2007 the comic started running reprints of Fred's Bed, formerly a strip in the defunct Beezer and Topper comic, as a cost-saving measure. Then for the 70th Anniversary special edition of the comic the following year they ran an all-new Fred's Bed strip, as the strip's setup made it a convenient way of exploring the comic's history. This led to a full revival of the strip in the following months.
    • This is not a new thing—many characters from defunct comics, most famously the Beezer and Topper, have migrated to the Beano or its sister comic the Dandy over the years.
    • Following the cancellation of the 2011 Dennis & Gnasher animated series and its own seperate comic adaptation, characters such as Mrs. Creecher and Athena have been moved to the main Dennis & Gnasher strip.
  • Can't Get Away with Nuthin'
  • Cats Are Mean: The cat (the dog is equally mean) in Meebo and Zuky.
    • Kat in Kat and Kanary
    • The cat in the Nibblers.
    • The Bash Street Cats occasionally turned up to curb-stomp the pups in Pup Parade. They were always shown as the kids' cats and never included Winston, the Bash Street school cat, who was an aversion.
  • Celebrity Toons: Robbie Rebel, based on Robbie Williams.
  • Chaste Toons: Averted. Gnasher the dog is the proud father of six puppies. Also, before Dennis' sister Bea was born, there was a long-running storyline which featured his mother's pregnancy.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Wayne's in Pain, a new Bash Street Kid who was chosen as a new Bash Street Kid after a competition on Blue Peter, appeared in The Bash Street Kids strips for a while until he was dropped for no apparent reason and without warning.
  • City of Everywhere: A wartime issue had Lord Snooty concoct a plan to confuse the Luftwaffe pilots bombing his home town by surrounding it with landmarks "borrowed" by the RAF from all around the world. These included the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Taj Mahal, and Table Mountain.
  • Chew Toy: Calamity James.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Smiffy from The Bash Street Kids, Dimmy from Ball Boy. Sometimes paired up for scenarios demanding two particuarly stupid characters for some reason.
    • Freddie Fear's mother is also a bit of a dingbat.
  • Comics Merger: Merged with Magic Comic for just in the annuals back in the 40s. Had unofficial mergers in the 90s which saw the comic absorbing characters from recently defunct comics most notably The Numskulls from The Beezer.
  • Commedia Dell Arte Troupe: Most commonly done in the annuals. For example, the 1990 annual had the cast star in a version of Alice in Wonderland with Dennis instead of Alice.
  • Companion Cube: Smiffy from The Bash Street Kids has a pet pebble named Kevin.
  • Continuity Nod: In Beano Annual 2009 the Ratz briefly meet the Nibblers (a group of mice from a 1970s/1980s Beano comic strip).
  • Cool Bike: Tim Traveller
  • Cool Car: Dennis has one whenever it'll make things funnier
  • Cool Gate: Fred's Bed in the appropriately titled strip Fred's Bed which allows him to go anywhere, but his control over where he goes seems to vary strip by strip.
  • Cool Old Lady: Dennis's Granny, oh so much.
  • Country Cousin: A strip from the 1960s was actually entitled Country Cuzzins, but instead of being this trope involved a group of cousins who lived on a farm. This trope is also used more traditionally in other strips which have sometimes have the characters visiting relatives who live on farms.
  • Crocodile Tears: In one strip Minnie the Minx used these to convince her dad's boss that her dad has been driven insane from work-related stress so her dad could take time off work and take her to the fun fair.
    • In another, she used them to get various people into trouble after learning to cry on demand at a stage school.
  • Crossover: The strips will from time to time will feature characters from elsewhere in the comic walking in and having a role. These can range from cameos to advancing the plot.
    • This is explained as all the characters living in or near "Beanotown" which is incidentally next to Dandytown, leading to at least one crossover there.
    • Wallace and Gromit showed up in the 70th Anniversary issue.
  • Creator Provincialism: Occasionally the comic's Scottish origins are clear.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance / Anachronism Stew: The comic's editorial position seems to be to essentially create a mild version of this by not shifting the settings more than they absolutely have to be (as opposed to sister comic The Dandy, which has more of a tendency to jump on modernising bandwagons).
  • Depending on the Artist: Just about all the characters in the comic have outlived their original artists by some time, and succeeding artists have often made major changes to the character designs.
    • Subverted with Minnie the Minx in the 2000s. Long-serving artist Jim Petrie retired in 2001, and over the next few years a succession of artists all tried their hands at the strip, sometimes radically changing Minnie and/or her family. Then, when the editors finally settled on Ken Harrison as regular artist later in the decade, he undid not only the previous artists' changes but even those of Jim Petrie, taking Minnie all the way back to how her original artist, Leo Baxendale had drawn her in the 1960s.
  • Deserted Island: Frequently used in old adventure strips such as The Shipwrecked Circus.
  • Dinner Deformation
  • Distaff Counterpart: A favourite trope. One example was the short-lived strip The Belles of St. Lemon's, which was a gender-flipped (and upper-class) version of the Bash Street Kids.
  • The Ditz: Smiffy's exploits are frequently greeted with, "He's got it wrong again!"
  • Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off: Any issue in days gone by would have included at least two instances of this.
  • Doppelganger Dating: in one of the Crazy For Daisy strips.
  • Eek! A Mouse!: Used in the Ratz strip but with rats instead of mice.
  • Elvis Impersonator: Les Pretend's dad has Elvis Impersonation as a hobby.
  • Everybody Hates Mathematics: Everyone except Cuthbert Cringeworthy, who lives for sums textbooks. The rest of the Bash Street Kids happily throw masses of textbooks in fires.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Teacher, Mrs Teacher, Headmaster, Dennis' Dad, Ivy's Mum... The list goes on.
    • But subverted in that it's sometimes stated that those are their actual names (Dennis' Dad was christened "Dennis' Dad", and Teacher's full name is Algernon Teacher).
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Alexander Lemming is a Lemming. Also Roger the Dodger likes to Dodge things.
  • Expy: Number 13, a strip about a supernatural family of monsters was pretty much The Munsters. Also Kat and Kanary is pretty much Sylvester and Tweety from Looney Tunes. The character Joe Jitsu from the 00s seems to be an expy of an earlier chracter entitled Karate Sid from the 80s. Meebo and Zuky are this for Itchy And Scratchy.
  • Extreme Omni Goat Fatty from the Bash Street Kids and whenever a goat is featured in a strip.
  • Failed a Spot Check: Calamity James is constantly surrounded by fortunes, from gold bars lying in the street to eccentric millionaires throwing around fistfuls of money in the background, but he never notices.
    • Lampshaded when a reader wrote in and told him to look down more. So he spent a strip walking around looking at the ground while fortunes in paper money blew over his head.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: Calamity James will never, ever have good luck.
  • Five-Bad Band
  • Five-Man Band
  • Four-Fingered Hands: Played straight or averted Depending on the Artist.
  • Frame Break: Used occasionally especially in The Beano Video where among other things Gnasher is used to break a frame.
  • Friend to All Living Things: Sidney from the Bash Street Kids' defining quality. Some writers tended to forget this, leaving him as the only Kid without a 'hat', and essentially becoming The Generic Guy.
  • Funny Animal: Biffo the Bear, Big Eggo, The Three Bears and numerous other strips.
  • Funny Background Event: The source of much of the humour in Calamity James' strip.
    • Little Larry started his three-year run as a background character in a Calamity James strip. Both were drawn by Tom Paterson.
    • Little Squelchy Thingies doing various activities became a regular feature and fan favourite.
  • Generation Xerox: Turns out that Deathshead Danny I is an ancestor of Danny from Bash Street.
    • One episode of Dennis the Menace (maybe in one of the 1970s annuals) revealed that Dennis's Dad was exactly the same as Dennis when he was younger. This was taken to its logical conclusion in 2015 when Dennis was told his Dad was, in fact, the Dennis the Menace of the 1980s.

Dennis: What happened to you? You used to look awesome!

    • Grandpa was basically his grandson in a older body.
  • Gentle Giant: some older strips featured these. Examples include the strips The Singing Giant and The Invisible Giant.
  • Gentleman Adventurer: Stanley Livingstone.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: One strip is entitled 'Freddie Fear - Son of a Witch'
  • Ghost in the Machine and Mobile Suit Human: The Numskulls.
  • Girlish Pigtails: Minnie
  • Girls Have Cooties: Dennis. In the final segment of The Beano Videostars, Dennis was kissed by a girl, so he stopped the film and jumped out of it so he could go to the projector and cut that part out so it never happened.
    • He also described a "doting girl" as the "most feared of creatures" in a 90s strip.
    • He doesn't seem to mind averting it to team up with Minne the Minx from time to time - as long as she doesn't try anything dangerous like kissing him (which she's only ever used as a threat, see Tsundere below).
  • Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: The Nibblers - this is made fun of in Beano Annual 2009 when the Nibblers briefly meet the Ratz.
  • Half-Identical Twins: Sidney & Toots
  • Having a Gay Old Time: There are old Beano comic strips called Little Dead-Eye Dick and Cocky Dick (Cock and Dick both being contemperary british slang for penis) . Also in an old Bash Street Kids strip Smiffy points at a stuffed lion which Danny has stuffed his head into and says "What a big pussy!" (Pussy is slang for vagina, but can be used to describe a coward. It is also a common UK term for cat, which is the more likely meaning here...).
    • Minnie the Minx. In the old days, 'minx' meant any kind of impertinent female, but nowadays it's more associated with promiscuous females.
  • Heroes Want Redheads: Dennis has often been hinted to fancy Minnie, though he won't admit it.
  • High School Hustler: Roger the Dodger
  • Horsing Around: Pepper the Pony
  • Hostile Show Takeover: During the lead-up to Bea's arrival, Dennis got so fed up with the mystery he announced that he wouldn't be appearing in the next issue. Cue several other characters trying to take over his strip.
    • "Gnasher's Tale" was replaced by "Foo-foo's Fairy Story" when the former character was missing. (Foo-Foo was Walter the Softy's miniature poodle, and Gnasher's default enemy.)
  • Hot Teacher: Minnie the Minx's teacher.
    • One of them, anyway.
    • Oh yes. And the small knickers that hang on her washing line when Minnie terrorises her at home...
  • Hypocritical Humor: One Les Pretend strip in The Beano had Les's dad discussing the daft things Les pretended to be with his friends, and them all laughing about it. It was at the end of this strip that we first learnt Les's dad and his friends are all Elvis Impersonators.
  • I Thought It Meant: One of the reasons why the series will probably never take root in the US (apart from how severely British it is) is that Bean-O is a well-known gas medication in the US.
    • The comic's name actually comes from an old-fashioned term for a large feast.
  • Inexplicably Identical Individuals: Many characters have occasionally glimpsed international counterparts who look identical except for wearing stereotypical national costume.
  • Insult to Rocks: Daisy apologising to warthogs everywhere for comparing Ernest to them.
  • Jerkass: A lot of the characters, all Played for Laughs.
  • Karma Houdini: Minnie the Minx.
    • Roger the Dodger surely counts, too.
    • Even Dennis the Menace had the odd bout of getting away with it, especially in the early 2000s when the slipper was no longer considered an acceptable punishment.
  • The Kid with the Remote Control: General Jumbo, intermittently featured from the 1950s onward and still a recent appearer in the Annual.
  • Klatchian Coffee: The tea served to staff at Bash Street School. Alternates between dissolving the spoon and not actually being a liquid. One storyline involving a wireless lie detector ended when the dinnerlady insisted that hers was the "best cup of tea in Britain". The lie detector exploded.
  • Lampshade Hanging: Especially in the annuals.
  • Lethal Chef: Olive the School Dinner Lady. Apparently based on the publisher's tea lady.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Nearly all the characters wear exactly the same outfit all the time. However occasionally their outfit changes - for example Ball Boy's football kit has gone from red and black to blue and black, and for a brief period in 2007/2008 Minnie wore a red and yellow jersey instead of a red and black one.
  • Magic Skirt: Averted for a second in the Beano Rap video when Minnie is dancing with Walter.
  • Mirror-Cracking Ugly: Plug (who used to be called "Pug" until Smiffy gave him an extra L he had left over from spelling a word).
  • The Munchausen: Uncle Windbag.
  • Name's the Same: The British Dennis the Menace and the American Dennis the Menace. Same name, different clothes, completely different publisher and strip, independently conceived at the same time to within a week. The two are often confused. The British Dennis is several years older than the American and is more of an intentional mischief maker than his American counterpart. Indeed, the British Dennis is rather more like Bart Simpson than he is like the American Dennis.
  • Naughty Is Good: Dennis The Menace, Minnie The Minx and The Bash Street Kids.
    • Also Roger the Dodger, though he's more of a schemer.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Quite a number of celebrities (mostly British) have been seen within the pages of the comic, normally treated with dignity (within reason, of course).
  • Negative Continuity: In Lord Snooty the Third it is implied that the original Lord Snooty (an old Beano character) is dead and was Lord Snooty the Third's grandfather. Whilst characters which are still children eg Dennis the Menace interacted with the original Lord Snooty whilst they were both still children and they also interacted with Lord Snooty the Third whilst they were both children as well.
  • Nephewism: Biffo the Bear had a couple of nephews also he had a human aunt.
  • No Fourth Wall: All the characters are avid fans of The Beano, and read about their own and each other's strips in the comic. Occasionally they'll go to the Beano offices to try and change or get advance warning of their adventures, or make Serious Business of getting a special issue.
  • No Name Given: Dennis' parents' real names are apparently 'Dennis' Dad' and 'Dennis' Mum'. Make of that what you will.
    • Some issues gave the parents names as "Mr. Menace" or "Mrs. Minx".
  • Non-Human Sidekick: Calamity James and Alexander Lemming also Dennis the Menace and Gnasher.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: Some of the Bash Street Kids are only known by their nickname such as Fatty, Smiffy and Plug. However some of their full names were revealed in a spinoff Bash Street Kids prose story in the comic entitled "The Wizard" and Plug's full name was revealed to be Percival Proudfoot Plugsley in the Plug comic.
  • Opposing Sports Team: Sports examples are actually rare, but the Bash Street Kids are often shown to have this relationship with rival schools Posh St and Blob St.
  • Outdated Outfit: The Bash Street Kids are the main offenders. There was at least one strip where this was lampshaded. Their teacher seems to be in on the act, and is frequently seen wearing a mortarboard.
  • Personal Raincloud: One of these hovers over Calamity James' head, and occasionally takes a proactive role in his bad luck, like firing lightning bolts at a woman selling lucky white heather.
  • The Pig Pen: Smudge
  • Political Cartoons: Numerous strips during World War 2 were political in nature such as Musso the Wop (which featured the italian dictator Benito Mussolini as an incompetent buffon) and other strips such as a Lord Snooty strip where Lord Snooty fought against Adolf Hitler.
    • It has been argued that the Beano was instrumental in changing Hermann Goering's reputation in the English-speaking world from potentially dangerous war hero to idiotic, overpromoted Fat Bastard.
  • Print Long Runners: The comic itself (80 years as of 2018) and the following strips:
    • Lord Snooty (1938–49; 1950–91, intermittently until 2000)
    • Biffo the Bear (1948-1986, 1989–99)
    • Dennis the Menace (1951–present)
    • Roger the Dodger (1953–present)
    • Minnie the Minx (1953–present)
    • The Bash Street Kids (1954–present)
    • Billy Whizz (1964–Present)
    • Ball Boy (1975–2014)
    • Ivy the Terrible (1985-2011)
  • Prophetic Names: Something of a Running Gag.
  • Pun-Based Title: The title of the strip Les Pretend. Also many other strips titles are puns on films such as The Bea Team, Karate Sid and Pirates of the Caribeano.
  • Punny Name: Les Pretend. More subtly, Alexander Lemming, Calamity James's sidekick (refers to Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin).
  • Rebel Prince: The original Thirties version of Lord Snooty was like this, secretly sneaking away from his aristocratic family to hang out with his commoner friends.
  • Relax-O-Vision: Used sometimes in Calamity James to obscure the pain inflicted upon Calamity James due to his unluckiness.
  • Roger Rabbit Effect: Some strips (especially in the annuals from the 90s and 00s) involve the Beano characters interacting with photographs of real people in a comic format.
  • Rubber Man: Played for Laughs in the stip Ping the Elastic Man. This strip is from 1938 and often ended with Ping being tied up in knots.
  • Rule 63: Minnie the Minx is often considered simply a female version of Dennis the Menace. However another example which even better fits this trope is Dennis the Menace's cousin Denise the Menace who appeared in a couple of Dennis the Menace strips in the autumn of 1967, and popped up occasionally in the following decades. She looked just like Dennis except for a bow in her hair and she wore a skirt.
  • School Is for Losers: The standard attitude of the characters.
  • The Scrooge: Many adult characters (parents and Teacher from the Bash St. Kids) often show signs of it, which may be a reference to the comic's Scottish origins.
  • She's Not My Girlfriend: Anyone who asks Dennis if he fancies Minnie is threatened with violence.
  • Ship Tease: In one 60s strip, Dennis was Minnie's date to a Valentine's Day dance.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Uh Oh, Si Co! was intended to be this to Yu-Gi-Oh!, but it apparently didn't work because The News of the World accusing the stories of encouraging bullying caused its cancellation.
    • Jonah the disastrous sailor is most likely named after the naval "Jonah the sailor" superstition.
    • Many of the superheroes that have passed through have confirmed or implied connections to popular American comic book heroes.
      • Jack Flash was designed as a Beano equivalent to DC Comics' Captain Marvel, despite having more parallels to Superman (i.e. Flash crash-lands on Earth after leaving his planet), and not having much powers apart from flight. But he also has similarities to the Roman god Mercury in his winged ankles.
      • Billy the Cat is an orphaned schoolboy who sneaks out his house disguised as a masked vigilante of a cat to fight crime when his elderly aunt is distracted. Too many similarities to Spider-Man to be a coincidence.
      • Later-newcomer Bananaman is more of a Shazam expy than Jack Flash, but is also DC Thomson's Batman. Issue 4000's Beano crossover even revealed his Bad Future counterpart is a gravel-voiced and Perma Stubble cynic perched in a cowling pose on a rooftop.
      • Played with in one of Rasher's comic strips when he imagines himself as Ham-Man.
  • Sixth Ranger: Bananagirl who joined Super School a few weeks after it started.
  • Slogan: The Beano used to have the slogan "Never be without a Beano".
    • Later they used the rhyming slogan "Everyone we know reads the Beano!"
  • The Smurfette Principle: Toots is the one girl in The Bash Street Kids and one strip showed her being asked out by all the boys in the gang (except of course Sidney).
  • Species Surname: Alexander Lemming.
  • Spin-Off: Often in the form of annuals for a specific comic strip, eg the Dennis the Menace Annual and the Bash Street Kids Annual. Also Plug from the Bash Street Kids had his own spinoff comic. Some Beano comic strips are spinoffs of other strips in the Beano eg Bea the Mini-Menace was a spinoff of Dennis the Menace, and The Three Bears was a spinoff of Little Plum.
  • Spinoff Babies: Bringing Up Dennis was a late 50's spinoff of Dennis the Menace with Dennis as a baby. This trope has also been used as a gag in some of the annuals.
  • Splash Panel: Used in older Bash Street Kids strips especially back when it was called When The Bell Rings. Used most recently in the strip The Riot Squad. This trope is also used quite a bit in the annuals.
  • Stalker with a Crush: Ernest Valentine of Crazy For Daisy.
  • Story Arc: Relatively rare, but there are some examples, usually involving a character going missing and the remaining ones either trying to replace him with a succession of stand-ins or going in search for him.
  • Sucky School: The school from the Bash Street Kids. One of the cartoon adaptations had the school shut down because of this (it was back by the end of the episode). No one learns, outdated books, falling apart building which I recall has no central heating[2] and (wasn't outdated then) teacher still wearing a mortar board.
    • Most of the pupils don't wear uniform, either (the only one who does is a snobby elitist), and all attempts to get them to do so are farcical.
      • The lack of uniforms was Lampshaded when the kids decided to dress as pirates to reverse global warming (Smiffy's dad's idea). Also of note, the school isn't completely hated. Baby Face Finlayson used the school as an abattoir. Of note, the spoiler is a good reason, it's a rare case of an actual Story Arc)
  • Super Dickery: Dennis the Menace, frequently inverted. If the cover shows him being kind, polite or 'soft' in any way, expect things to be back to normal by the last page.
    • Same with Daisy.
    • An extreme example was when the 'new, modernised' Bash Street Kids were unveiled: the old staff were sacked, Plug got plastic surgery, Fatty had muscles etc., etc. A tabloid (cannot remember which) ran an outraged story condemning the changes. When it was published, the conclusion of the two-part story undid all of the changes.
  • Super-Hero School: Super School, including a Distaff Counterpart of The Dandy's Banana Man.
  • Super Speed: Billy Whizz
  • Super Strength: Pansy Potter
  • Talking Animal: Biffo the Bear and The Three Bears are good examples of this. Also Gnasher can speak but always puts the letter G in front of N for example "Gno way".
  • Take That: The Beano and The Dandy have a friendly rivalry which often involves taking potshots at each other (e.g. characters being threatened with the possibility of getting sent to the other comic).
  • Theme Naming: All of the Bash Street Dogs are named similiar to their owners eg Sniffy and Smiffy, Enry and Erbert, Pug and Plug, Blotty and Spotty. Dennis the Menace's pets have this too with Gnasher, Rasher and Dasher. Gnasher's puppies are named Gnipper, Gnaomi, Gnatasha, Gnanette, Gnora and Gnancy.
  • Tomboy: Minnie the Minx, the world's wildest tomboy. Also Toots from the Bash Street Kids.
  • Trademark Favourite Food: Pie-face (from Dennis the Menace) and, well, pies.
  • The Professor: Lord Snooty had Professor Screwtop. Also the guy that built Tin Can Tommy.
  • Title Drop: Whenever someone says to Bea (Dennis the Menace's baby sister), Bea No!.
  • Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: Any attempt to give Plug plastic surgery ends with Plug's natural ugliness undoing it.
  • Tsundere: There have been hints of this between Dennis and Minnie. In one strip they were arm wrestling and Minnie threatened to kiss him if she lost.
  • Uncanny Family Resemblance: Dennis the Menace and his cousin Denise the Menace.
  • Uncatty Resemblance: Dennis and Gnasher, the Bash St Kids and the Bash St Pups, etc. etc.
  • Unnamed Parent True in almost all strips except Les Pretend where his dad is named Des.
  • Villain Protagonist: Is Baby Face Finlayson a hero in any strips outside of his own?
  • Visual Pun: From A few dollops more starring Fatty Fudge (See issue 3596), Outlaw cowboys say "we've got prices on our heads" and they literally have prices on their heads.
  • Wacky Homeroom: The Bash Street Kids all had distinct personalities. Of course, there were only 9 of them.
  • Wallet Moths: Used pretty much any time any character took out a wallet or otherwise searched for money. Unless their gimmick was being incredibly rich, of course. (On Calamity James this sometimes happened even for rich people, but the moths came out carrying diamond rings and wearing moth-sized fur coats).
  • Wheel-O-Feet: Billy Whizz. All the time.
  • White Gloves: Worn by original cover star Big Eggo mainly to make him more anthropomorphic - the gloves made it look more like he had hands than just wings.
  • Wholesome Crossdresser: In the first issue from 1938 the prose story The Wangles of Granny Green features a boy dressed up as his grandmother.
  • Who Would Be Stupid Enough...?: Smiffy from the Bash St. Kids and similar characters (other members of his family and Dimmy from Ball Boy for instance).
  • The Wonderland: The Pansy Potter in Wonderland strip is an example of this.
  • World's Strongest Man: Morgyn the Mighty, an old adventure strip appearing in the first issue of The Beano.
  • Xanatos Gambit: Roger the Dodger is known for pulling them, for example apparently letting his scheme fail and be banished to his room, only for his parents to find out that he wanted to have an excuse to be stuck there to avoid an angry mob, etc...
  • Xenofiction: Black Flash the Beaver a prose story about a Beaver from the very first issue.
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: Ratz
  • Zeerust: Any of the older strips which was either set in the fututre, space or involved robots. Examples include Jack Flash (about an alien boy who could fly and lives on Earth), The Clockwork Horse (Some of these were set in the past but they did involve robots) and Tin Can Tommy (a strip about a robot built by a professor).
  1. ↑ It switched to fortnightly, alternating with The Dandy, during WW2
  2. ↑ except when Rule of Funny demands it; the Janitor has been seen stoking an antiquated boiler before now
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