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[[File:beanoresize_1146.png|frame|The 68th Beano Annual with a few of the longer running characters appearing on the front.]]
'''''The Beano''''' is a long running [[British Comics|British children's comic]]
The comic is easily the most well known British Humour Comic. Published weekly for most of its history,<ref>It switched to fortnightly, alternating with The Dandy, during [[WW2]]</ref> it passed 4000 issues in 2019, more than even its longer-running [[Friendly Enemy|friendly rival]] ''[[The Dandy (comics)|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 [[Comics Merger|absorbed]] a number of characters from other D.C. Thompson comics such as ''[[Mobile Suit Human|The Numskulls]]'' and ''Fred's Bed'' from ''[[The Beezer]]'' and ''[[Banana Man]]'' from ''Nutty'' and ''[[The Dandy (comics)|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 (comics)|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.
▲The comic is easily the most well known British Humour Comic and is also one of the longest running comics of it's genre only ''[[The Dandy (comics)|The Dandy]]'' from the same publisher has run longer. It has outlived numerous generations of competitor comics, such as ''[[Whizzer and Chips]]'', ''[[Film Fun]]'', ''Smash'' and ''Buster'', and continues to introduce new characters and innovate. It's readership peaked in 1950 before the introduction of it's most iconic characters and some consider it to have [[Jumped the Shark]] in the mid 60s when the artists [[Leo Baxendale]] and [[Ken Reid]] left to draw for DC Thomson's (The Beano's publisher) rivals. However [[Your Mileage May Vary/Quotes|Your Mileage May Vary]] on this as the comic continued for long after these artists stop drawing altogether, however the pair were a big influence on the comic.
{{tropelist}}
* [[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
** 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.
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* [[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.
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* [[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 (UK comic strip)|Dennis the Menace]]''
* [[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 [[Batman Gambit|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.
** Also the basis for a particuarly memorable full comic-length story in honour of the [[The World Cup|1998 World Cup]], featuring a [[Crowning Moment of Funny|match between The Bash Street Kids and the rest of the Beano]].
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* [[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]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20220615014119/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/35-Super-Smash-Bros-Brawl
** 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 [http://eclectique-rdf.livejournal.com/3669.html 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.
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* [[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
* [[The Bus Came Back]] The Nibblers, who originally [[Put on a Bus|left the comic in 1984]] have their own story in the 2012 annual.
* [[Butt Monkey]]: Calamity James
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** 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
** Kat in Kat and Kanary
** The cat in the Nibblers.
** The Bash Street Cats occasionally turned up to [[Curb Stomp Battle|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 Trope|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.
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* [[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.
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* [[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 Millionaire|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]]
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* [[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. {{quote|'''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
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* [[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
* [[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 Impersonator]]s.
* [[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.
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* [[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
* [[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.
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* [[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 (
** Lord Snooty (1938–49;
** Biffo the Bear (1948-1986, 1989–99)
** [[Dennis the Menace (UK comic strip)|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 (
** Ivy the Terrible (1985-2011)
* [[Prophetic Names]]: Something of a [[Running Gag]].
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* [[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
* [[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 [[Thrifty Scot|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]]' [[Shazam|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 [[The Cowl|cowling pose]] on a rooftop.
*** Played with in one of Rasher's comic strips when he imagines himself as [[Ant-Man|Ham-Man]].
* [[Sixth Ranger]]: Bananagirl who joined Super School a few weeks after it started.
* [[Slogans|Slogan]]: The Beano used to have the slogan "Never be without a Beano".
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* [[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
* [[Take That]]: ''The Beano'' and ''[[The Dandy (comics)|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.
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* [[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 [[Rule of Funny|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
* [[Wholesome Crossdresser]]: In the first issue from 1938
* [[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
{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]▼
[[Category:British Comics]]
[[Category:Print Long Runners]]
[[Category:The Great Depression]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beano, The}}
▲[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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