The Beano 80th Anniversary

[Silver Nemesis]

Happy birthday to The Beano! July 30th 2018 marks its 80th anniversary, making it by far the longest running title in the history of British comics, as well as one of the longest running comics globally. DC Thomson has published almost four thousand issues since 1938 and the comic is still going strong today.

Here's Mark Hamill reading an issue with his son around the time he was filming The Empire Strikes Back.

And more recently while filming the Sequel Trilogy.

He even wrote a fan letter to the editors back in 1979.

Here's to 80 more years of Dennis the Menace and the Bash Street Kids.

[thecolorsblend]

Not familiar with Beano. Sorry, UK folks.

It never ceases to amaze me to discover that it's not an act; Hamill really is one of us. Always a surprise... for some reason.

[The Dark Knight]

On an unrelated topic to Beano, I did start an analysis of Luke Skywalker's arc in TLJ after seeing the film. I haven't added anything to it since, but feel like I covered some interesting ground. If anyone here expresses any interest, I'll move to finish it off and post it here.

[Silver Nemesis]

The Beano is a comic every British person will have read at some point. It used to be very, very politically incorrect, which was part of what made it so funny. But apparently they've toned it down in recent years. The original Dennis the Menace was a vicious, unhygienic miscreant who went around bullying 'softies' and committing acts of vandalism. His dog, Gnasher, was a violent, flee-ridden canine that regularly bit innocent people and aided Dennis on his nefarious escapades. Many stories would end with Dennis' father beating him with a slipper.

But now they've changed all that.

Even so, I've read some recent issues and it still looks like a fun comic for children. My favourite Beano characters would have to be Bananaman, the Man of Peel (the UK's answer to Shazam/Captain Marvel)...

...and the Bash Street Kids.

It never ceases to amaze me to discover that it's not an act; Hamill really is one of us. Always a surprise... for some reason.

I was looking over Hamill's Comic Vine page recently and was surprised to see he has more comic writing credits than I thought. His most famous work as a writer was on The Black Pearl for Dark Horse Comics, which he later unsuccessfully attempted to adapt into a film. I picked up a second-hand copy of The Black Pearl back when I was a student and have read it maybe two or three times since. It's basically a late nineties version of Kick-Ass, but with the satirical emphasis on trash TV rather than online media. The success of Kick-Ass has arguably made The Black Pearl redundant to modern readers, which makes me doubt the film will ever get made at this point. But it might have worked as a movie if they'd done it ten or fifteen years ago.

In addition to The Black Pearl, Hamill also wrote supplementary material for several DC Comics trade paperbacks in the nineties, including Batman: Son of the Demon. Apparently he's also written for The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror comic. I wonder if he'll ever return to comic writing when the furore surrounding the recent Star Wars films has died down.