| 1 | [[quoteright:202:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/beanoresize_1146.png]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:202: The 68th Beano Annual with a few of the longer running characters appearing on the front.]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ''The Beano'' is a long-running [[BritishComics British children's comic]] that's been in circulation for over 80 years, having entertained several generations of kids since 1938, making this one hell of a [[PrintLongRunners long runner.]] Published weekly, for over 80 years and with over 4,000 issues, it's famous for iconic strips such as ''ComicStrip/{{Dennis the Menace|UK}},'' ''[[DistaffCounterpart Minnie the Minx,]]'' ''[[WackyHomeroom The Bash Street Kids,]]'' and is a huge influence in (and a reflection of) British culture. Other iconic strips include ''[[HighSchoolHustler Roger the Dodger,]]'' ''[[SuperSpeed Billy Whizz,]]'' ''[[FunnyAnimal Biffo the Bear, Big Eggo,]]'' ''[[RichKids Lord Snooty,]]'' ''[[UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball Ball Boy,]]'' ''[[SinkingShipScenario Jonah,]]'' ''[[TheKidWithTheRemoteControl General Jumbo,]]'' ''[[EnfantTerrible Ivy the Terrible,]]'' ''[[InjunCountry Little Plum,]]'' ''[[BornUnlucky Calamity]] [[CosmicPlaything James,]]'' and ''[[BigEater The Three Bears.]]'' |
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| 6 | A number of SpinOff comics have been released as well, including: The Beano Annual (which is released every Christmas and continues to sell 100,000+ every year); the monthly [=BeanoMAX=]; The Beano Summer Special, a yearly reprint Annual featuring content from both ComicBook/TheBeano and ''ComicBook/TheDandy''; Plug comic, a weekly comic which ran from 1977-1979 featuring as its main star one of ''The Bash Street Kids;'' and the Beano Comic Libraries, which evolved into the Fun Size Beano. Other spin-offs include a few animated series (some of which were DirectToVideo) and video games. |
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| 8 | The comic is easily the most well-known British Humour Comic and is also the longest-running comic of its genre. It has outlived numerous generations of competitor comics, such as ''ComicBook/WhizzerAndChips,'' ''ComicBook/FilmFun,'' ''Smash,'' and ''ComicBook/{{Buster}},'' and continues to introduce new characters and innovate. |
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| 10 | Its readership peaked in 1950 before the introduction of its most iconic characters, and some consider it to have JumpedTheShark in the mid-'60s when the artists Creator/LeoBaxendale and Creator/KenReid left to draw for Creator/DCThomson's (The Beano's publisher) rivals. However, the comic continued for long after these artists stopped drawing altogether, though the pair were a big influence on the comic. |
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| 12 | In its long run it has had no official cases of a ComicsMerger, but it has absorbed a number of characters from defunct comics such as ''[[MobileSuitHuman The Numskulls]]'' and ''[[TimeTravel Fred's Bed]]'' from ''ComicBook/TheBeezer'' and ''ComicStrip/{{Bananaman}}'' from ''Nutty'' and ''ComicBook/TheDandy.'' |
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| 14 | Two Beano home videos have been released, [[WesternAnimation/TheBeanoVideo the first]] in 1993 and a follow-up: ''WesternAnimation/BeanoVideostars'' in 1994. Also, an interactive DVD in 2006, which focuses on the characters' attempts to save Bash Street School from closure after TV stars Mr. Cheekychops and Sir Stinksalot's underhand underground scheme. |
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| 16 | In the 2020s, a series of books called [[Literature/BeanoBoomics Boomics]] (Book + Comic) was released. These were written by former editors Mike Stirling and Craig Graham, though the third name credited with them for the first six books, I P Freely, is actually just a pseudonym, as she's really a character the comic introduced to promote the Boomics. The first six stories focus on Dennis and Gnasher, and so have illustrations by his artist Nigel Parkinson. The seventh book is about Minnie the Minx, so the art is by Laura Howell. The eighth is a choose your own adventure format with a manga art style not seen in the comic before. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | Not to be confused with ''Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton'', often referred to as ''The Beano Album'' due to the fact that Clapton can be seen reading an issue of the comic book on the cover. |
| 19 | ---- |
| 20 | !!This comic (and its strips) provide examples of: |
| 21 | * AbandonShip: Whenever the sailors on a ship realise Jonah is aboard they would often shout 'Aaagh it's im' and attempt to leave the ship before its inevitable sinking (Jonah would manage to sink the ship everytime). |
| 22 | * AbhorrentAdmirer: |
| 23 | ** Calamity James occasionally fell victim to one of these - usually either "Sweaty Betty" or her sister (depending on the issue) "Smelly Nelly", who were combinations of {{Gonk}} and ThePigPen. |
| 24 | ** Daisy also considers Ernest to be one of these in the 'Crazy for Daisy' strips. |
| 25 | ** In more recent issues, James is himself one for Minnie the Minx. He loves her, but the feeling isn't mutual and she sees him as a pest. |
| 26 | * AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: The Ratz appear to live in a sewer large enough for a number of things and the sewer enables them to easily get into the houses of humans. However the sewers have never been shown to be large enough to fit humans down them. |
| 27 | * AbusiveParents: Downplayed, but Roger the Dodger's parents pretty much use him as a chore combine harvester. Often times, he has to do several chores at once (such as hoovering with one hand, polishing vases with the other, wiping the floor with a cloth on his foot, serving food with a tray on his head) while [[LazyBum his parents do nothing to help and simply sit around eating biscuits and drinking tea.]] And they wonder how he got so good at dodging. |
| 28 | ** Quite often, that is dodging - he is trying to get multiple tasks done at once if he can't dodge them entirely. |
| 29 | ** Abusive parents were a common theme in early Beano strips, the most prominent example being Dennis the Menace's father, who would often punish his son with 'the slipper' at the end of almost every strip. Fortunately, this has been phased out, (though it's still occassionally lampshaded in more recent issues through Dennis Sr.) |
| 30 | * AccidentalBid: A staple of the comic in the 1990s. |
| 31 | * AchievementsInIgnorance: Smiffy. |
| 32 | * AdaptedOut: The live action short film adaptation of Calamity James leaves out James' pet Alexander Lemming. |
| 33 | * AdultsAreUseless: The adults and teachers never seem to be able to prevent their kids from misbehaving. In older strips they would whack their kids with slippers or a cane but now it seems the kids never seem to get much in the way of a punishment apart from making their parents really angry. |
| 34 | * AffectionateParody: |
| 35 | ** The comic frequently parodies things such as ''Series/DoctorWho''. |
| 36 | ** 2018 issues would occasionally base a comic strip on an upcoming movie. A great example was Roger's outing ''[[Film/SoloAStarWarsStory Dodge Solo]]''. |
| 37 | * AffirmativeActionGirl: During ''Super School'''s first run there were originally four super kids, three male one female, and then Bananagirl was added to the cast balancing the sexes quite a bit. |
| 38 | ** As of June 2021, two new girls, Harsha and Mandi, have joined the Bash Street Kids. They were soon followed by two more, Mahira (basically a female version of Ball Boy), and Khadija (who's obsessed with art). That evened the gender balance a bit as now instead of Toots being the [[TheSmurfettePrinciple only girl]] in a class of 10, there's five girls in a class of fifteen. |
| 39 | * AirVentPassageway: Used in a Bash Street Kids strip which saw Fatty, Plug and Smiffy crawl into a vent in an attempt to steal a key off Teacher. |
| 40 | * AllThereInTheManual: |
| 41 | ** The Bash Street Kids' full names are very rarely used. A strip in January 2015 had Danny call himself Danny "Deathshead" Morgan, probably for the first time since it was first revealed in a text story in boys story paper The Wizard in the 1950s. Plug's name wasn't revealed in those text stories, and was instead revealed in his own comic in the 1970s. His name, Percival Proudfoot Plugsley, is the only one used often enough for most readers to know it. Cuthbert Cringeworthy is an exception to this. His is the only full name actually revealed in The Beano itself. |
| 42 | ** As of the 2016 revamp, other characters started having their real names revealed too, on the new look website. For example, Roger the Dodger is Roger Dawson. The comic revealed this by referring to his Dad as Mr Dawson. Minnie the Minx's name was revealed to be Hermione Makepeace, but only the surname has actually been used in the comic. Pie-Face's name was actually Keith. |
| 43 | * AllWomenLoveShoes: In a few early strips, Daisy exchanged her high heels for platform shoes. In 1999, she started wearing platform shoes full-time. |
| 44 | * AlwaysSomeoneBetter: When characters are focused around a single aspect, a fairly common plot is for a new character to show up who's stronger, such as an even cleverer pupil than Cuthbert joining Bash St School. Of course, they get wiped out in the ResetButton by the end of the strip. |
| 45 | * AmazingTechnicolorPopulation: Hayley Comet, an alien, has blue skin. |
| 46 | * AmbiguousSituation: The central conceit of ''Pup Parade'' is that the dogs are the pets of the Bash Street Kids they resemble, but they're also portrayed as living in a dustbin (although it might just be a clubhouse). This gets weirder with the fact files on the website, since Danny, Wilfrid, and Toots mention Bones, Manfrid and Peeps, but 'Erbert, Scotty, Freddy, and Smiffy don't mention 'Enry, Blotty, Tubby and Sniffy. Plug says his dog is named Napoleon (not Pug) and Sidney mentions Peeps (since he and Toots share a home) as well as his many other pets, but not Wiggy. |
| 47 | * AmbiguousSyntax: Sometimes used as one of Roger the Dodger's scams, such as selling tickets to see the "Man Eating Fish"...which turns out to be a man, eating fish (and chips). |
| 48 | * AmbiguouslyBrown: Miss Mistry. In [[https://twitter.com/BeanoOfficial/status/1321089272980660225 a Black History Month post]] she was identified as black, but her voice actor in ''Dennis & Gnasher Unleashed!'' is Indian, so that may have been a mistake. |
| 49 | * AmbiguouslyGay: Walter and the Softies are sometimes considered this. It was averted when he got a girlfriend, called Matilda who looks eerily similar to Walter, in the cartoon series. |
| 50 | * AmusingInjuries: Just ''how'' many times has Calamity James had his ears reversed? |
| 51 | * AnimalJingoism: 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 similar vein to an earlier DC Thomson strip from the Sparky entitled Puss n Boots). |
| 52 | * AnimalLover: Sidney of the Bash Street Kids loves animals and has a wide variety of pets, from elephants to mice. He wants to be a vet when he grows up. |
| 53 | * AnimalThemedSuperbeing: Billy is a teenage superhero who wears a cat themed outfit and is very acrobatic. But doesn't really seem to have the powers of a cat. |
| 54 | * AnimatedAdaptation: ''ComicStrip/{{Dennis the Menace|UK}}'' received his own animated series. There have also been a few [[DirectToVideo straight-to-video]] animated specials for the entire comic (featuring shorts with each of the characters). |
| 55 | * AnthologyComic: One of the most well-known. |
| 56 | * AnvilOnHead: Used numerous times, most recently in a Meebo and Zuky strip. |
| 57 | * ArtEvolution: For example, [[https://www.scottishfield.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/101/2018/07/Menace-artwork-978x624.jpg 1950s' Dennis]] looks nothing like present-day Dennis. |
| 58 | * AsYouKnow: For a long time Smiffy's appearances would be accompanied with a caption explaining he's the dimmest kid at Bash Street School. |
| 59 | * AudienceParticipation: The comic has always allowed readers to participate in changes. |
| 60 | ** In the mid-2010s, the front and back page star a young reader who sends in a photograph and stars in a short comic strip with the characters of the comic. (For example, if Lewis had sent in a photo, he could star in a strip called ''Loud Lewis'' and it would be about how loud and annoying he is to adults.) |
| 61 | ** A few instances had three or more new series introduced and run in rotation, with readers voting on what series they wanted to continue permanently. The ones that lost were discontinued. |
| 62 | ** Sometimes, the audience would do whatever they liked. Whenever the writers wanted to do a RatingsStunt, it often panicked their readers, such as the story arc in ''The Bash Street Kids'' in which the cast, setting, and plot were drastically changed. The audience sent angry letters and signed petitions to protest the change; fortunately, there wasn't gonna be a change to begin with! |
| 63 | ** In 1988, a hundred kids and their teachers helped the comic become the biggest ever in the Literature/GuinnessWorldRecords by drawing a 60-foot high front page across a beach. |
| 64 | * BadlyBatteredBabysitter: Danny's Nanny, which is about a dog who winds up becoming this to a bratty, rambunctious toddler called Danny. |
| 65 | * BalloonBelly: In one Bash Street Kids strip, the already balloon-bellied Fatty is forced to play football (soccer), but as his name indicates he is not the fittest of characters. He solves this problem by playing in goal, and eating so much that he is fat enough to fill the entire goal-mouth! |
| 66 | * BanisterSlide: 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. |
| 67 | * BarbieDollAnatomy: Averted in the Minnie the Minx strip from issue 3338, where you can [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids see Minnie's bare chest and she actually has visible nipples.]] |
| 68 | * BeefBandage: 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. |
| 69 | * BerserkButton: Vic Volcano who starts off nice and calm, but would go berserk after the slightest insult. Uh Oh Si Co also has an example, in the form of a boy called Simon Coe, who is obviously called [[PunnyName Si Co]] by his peers. Three guesses why. |
| 70 | * BestYearsOfYourLife: Used in "Tim Traveller" just after Tim sees how bad they're going to get. |
| 71 | * BigBad: Baby Face Finlayson in the longer strips by Kev F Sutherland. |
| 72 | * BigBallOfViolence: Used frequently almost whenever there is violence. For a long period the [[https://static4.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/12/124613/3981495-the+beano+2107+%281982%29+pagecover.jpg title panel]] of Dennis the Menace was a Big Ball of Violence. |
| 73 | * BigBrotherInstinct: Even before his MenaceDecay, Dennis has been very protective of his sister, as seen [[http://eclectique-rdf.livejournal.com/3669.html here]]. |
| 74 | * BigEater: |
| 75 | ** Fatty from ''The Bash Street Kids'', as well as Minnie the Minx's FriendlyEnemy Fatty Fudge. Both boys are unfortunate to now be associated by this name, both being later changed to Freddy and Frederick respectively by 2021. |
| 76 | ** Former characters The Three Bears, and Chiefy from ''Little Plum'' could pack away the comestibles too. |
| 77 | ** It's not just fat characters. Minnie the Minx can also get greedy with food at times. |
| 78 | ** When it comes to pies, Dennis' friend Pie-face wins, he beat all the other big eater characters in a pie eating contest then went home for more pie for tea. |
| 79 | ** The original Beano fatty, Big Fat Joe. |
| 80 | * BlindMistake: This is 'Erbert from the Bash Street Kids' main trait, even though he wears glasses, but he's blind ''with'' them as well as BlindWithoutEm. |
| 81 | * BlindWithoutEm: 'Erbert of the Bash St. Kids is blind without 'em - as is his canine counterpart 'Enry. |
| 82 | * BookDumb: 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. |
| 83 | * BoringButPractical: At the end of the "Zombeano" storyline where the zombie apocalypse has been reversed, Cuthbert angrily marches up to his Rejuvenation machine which caused the mess in the first place...[[{{Anticlimax}} and calmly dismantles it]] since he can use the parts in a different project. |
| 84 | * BoringVacationSlideshow: |
| 85 | ** One ''Bash Street Kids'' strip has the entire class and their teacher relocate to a HauntedHouse rather than stick around for their Headmaster's boring slideshow of his time in Australia. [[spoiler:Unfortunately for them, said Headmaster had taken that into account and had them all captured so that he can show his slides to them uninterrupted. Fortunately for them, the Janitor shows up dressed as a BedsheetGhost and scares the Head away before he can start the slideshow.]] |
| 86 | * BornUnlucky: Calamity James has this as his gimmick. It's sufficiently bad to sabotage any attempt to make his luck better. |
| 87 | * BratsWithSlingshots: Most characters used them at one time or another. Dennis the Menace and Minnie the Minx certainly did, and so did the Bash Street Kids. |
| 88 | * BreakingTheFourthWall: Word boxes full of the [[NoteFromEd comic editor]]'s SelfDeprecation are common in some strips to be a DeadpanSnarker or critique what the characters decide to do. |
| 89 | * BrilliantButLazy: 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. He can also be genuinely helpful at times, as one strip did feature him helping out a charity shop by modifying and rebranding the low-key donations into appealing and creative products such as an old action figure into a flower bed scarecrow, a vase as a 3D jigsaw and using an exercise ball and the handles from a skipping rope into a space hopper. |
| 90 | * BroadStrokes: The ''Wizard'''s "Bash Street School" text stories are sort of canon unless they're not. The full names they gave the kids are now offical, the names they gave Teacher (Sleepy Sam Snorer or Weary Willie Watson) aren't, and the portrayal of the Janitor as a terrifying ex-Sergeant-Major was never adopted by the strip. The text stories also locate Bash Street in the fictional town of Northport. |
| 91 | * TheBully: Cruncher Kerr from Roger the Dodger. |
| 92 | * BullyHunter: |
| 93 | ** The short-lived comic strip from the late 90s Even Steven involved a boy called Steven who got even with bullies. |
| 94 | ** Pansy Potter has her moments, too. |
| 95 | * TheBusCameBack: |
| 96 | ** The Nibblers, who originally [[PutOnABus left the comic in 1984]] have their own story in the 2012 Annual. |
| 97 | *** Which proved popular enough that they got a full return in the weekly comic in 2014! |
| 98 | ** Tricky Dicky also returned in 2014. |
| 99 | ** There were a few comic strips that disappeared from the issues for good but would appear frequently in the Annuals. Billy the Cat, for example, hadn't been in the comic since the 1970s but would cameo in Annual stories. |
| 100 | ** Pansy Potter famously disappeared after the death of her comic strip artist, and then returned as a SoftReboot in which she'd emigrated to Wonderland to live with the Fairy Tales' characters. She did make reappearances in more recent years. |
| 101 | * ButtMonkey: Walter The Softy and Cuthbert Cringeworthy have to undergo torment, harassment and bullying that would destroy any normal boy their age. |
| 102 | ** To say nothing of Calamity James! |
| 103 | * CanineCompanion: The Bash Street Kids have the Bash Street Dogs. Dennis has Gnasher. |
| 104 | * CantGetInTroubleForNuthin: Both forms of this trope are a fairly common plot, such as Dennis the Menace disguising himself as Walter and pulling pranks to try and get him into trouble, or Roger the Dodger trying to get himself grounded in order to escape revenge from the last set of people he's pranked. |
| 105 | * CatchingSomeZs: In one Bash Street Kids strip, Teacher ends up falling asleep and the kids (whom he's spent the entire story bringing into class) complain he's not teaching them anything but the last letter of the alphabet. |
| 106 | * CatsAreMean: The cat (the dog is equally as mean) in Meebo and Zuky. Also Kat in Kat and Kanary and the cat in the Nibblers. |
| 107 | * CharacterizationMarchesOn: |
| 108 | ** From 2012 onwards, the Dennis the Menace strips have been about the son of the original Dennis the Menace. |
| 109 | ** Lord Snooty had existed as a kid for the entirety of his comic strip appearance. In the 2000s, his series technically returned, but through his grandson, Lord Snooty III. |
| 110 | * CharlieBrownBaldness: Billy Whizz, his brother Alfie, and their Dad. They all have two long hairs and the rest of the head is bald. There are little dots on Billy and Dad indicating that theirs are buzzcuts, but Alfie, being a toddler, lacks this, and so plays the trope straight. |
| 111 | * ChasteToons: {{Averted|Trope}}. 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. |
| 112 | * TheChewToy: Calamity James. The entire point of the comic strip is that the universe has it in for him, and the humour comes from the never-ending stream of horrible luck he goes through. |
| 113 | * TheChristmasAnnual: Referred to traditionally as ''The Beano Book'' rather than an annual, although this changed in the 2000s. |
| 114 | * ChristmasEpisode: There was often a bumper issue for Christmas usually being on sale for two or three weeks rather than the usual week. The Christmas issue would also often feature long stories involving all the current characters. Which is unusual seeing as this is an AnthologyComic. |
| 115 | * ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: |
| 116 | ** Wayne's in Pain, a new Bash Street Kid who was chosen as a new Bash Street Kid after a competition on ''Series/BluePeter'' to create a new Kid, appeared in The Bash Street Kids strips for a while in the late 2000s until he was dropped for no reason and without warning, with his last appearance being him falling down an open manhole. |
| 117 | ** Curly, one of Dennis's best friends, vanished when ''WesternAnimation/DennisAndGnasherUnleashed'' launched; he was replaced by sporty black girl JJ and disabled inventor Rubi. |
| 118 | * CityOfEverywhere: A [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII wartime issue]] had Lord Snooty concoct a plan to confuse the Luftwaffe pilots bombing his hometown 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. |
| 119 | * ClassClown: Harsha, one of the new Bash Street Kids and part of the Har Har family, is a prankster. |
| 120 | * {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: |
| 121 | ** Smiffy from The Bash Street Kids, Dimmy from Ball Boy. Sometimes paired up for scenarios demanding two particularly stupid characters for some reason. |
| 122 | ** Calamity James' happy-go-lucky mood rarely seems to dim whenever he's going through his bad luck. |
| 123 | ** Freddie Fear's mother is also a bit of a dingbat. |
| 124 | ** Dennis' mother came across this way in the '90s Dennis The Menace TV series, but not in the comic itself. |
| 125 | ** And Smiffy's canine counterpart, Sniffy, in Pup Parade. |
| 126 | ** Les Pretend. He's round the bend. |
| 127 | * ComedicSociopathy: Calamity James is the world's unluckiest boy, and gets chewed up by life in every strip; sometimes the punishment comes from his pet lemming or even his mother. This trope makes it funny, though the poor boy wouldn't see it that way. |
| 128 | * ComicBookFantasyCasting: The short-lived Robbie Rebel was modeled on Music/RobbieWilliams. |
| 129 | * ComicBookLimbo: Lord Snooty disappeared for almost 20 years - then his grandson, Lord Snooty the Third, appeared, heavily implying that the original Snooty was dead (he'd need to be for the younger Snooty to inherit the Lordship[[note]]except that if Snooty ''pere'' is an Earl possessing one or more junior titles, he would bestow one upon his eldest son who could then style himself "Lord" even while not yet being the Earl. See the ''Ramage'' naval series for an example of this[[/note]]), an unusually dark scenario for ''The Beano''. Occasionally, characters brought back are heavily redesigned or openly mocked for appearing odd to a modern audience (see Keyhole Kate and Pansy Potter's treatment in one of Kev F Sutherland's strips. |
| 130 | * ComicBooksAreReal: In one Calamity James strip, James buys a huge stack of Mega-Man (nothing to do with [[Franchise/MegaMan the video game character comics]]) and promptly has them fall on top of him. Fortunately, the real Mega-Man suddenly swoops in and saves him... but then James offers him a jelly baby in thanks, forgetting that jelly babies are [[KryptoniteFactor the one substance that can defeat his Mega-powers]]. |
| 131 | * ComicsMerger: |
| 132 | ** Merged with ''Magic Comic'' for just 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 ''ComicBook/TheBeezer''. |
| 133 | ** The Dandy's demise resulted in Bananaman moving over as well, though they'd already been running reprints as a way to promote his merchandise. After the end of the digital Dandy, these reprints were replaced with new stories. |
| 134 | ** Also, the end of [=BeanoMAX=] when it was replaced with a dedicated Dennis and Gnasher magazine saw WesternAnimation/WallaceAndGromit and VideoGame/FightMyMonster move to the weekly comic, though still only appearing every month or so. Fight My Monster, an advert strip for an online game, was quickly dropped, however. |
| 135 | * CompanionCube: Smiffy from The Bash Street Kids has a pet pebble named Kevin, and Pie-Face has a potato called Paul. |
| 136 | * CompositeCharacter: Tricky Dicky is a combination of ComicBook/TheTopper character with the same name, and an old Beano character called Gordon Bennett. |
| 137 | * ContinuityNod: |
| 138 | ** In Beano Annual 2009 the Ratz briefly meet the Nibblers (a group of mice from a 1970s/1980s Beano comic strip). |
| 139 | ** One Tim Traveller strip from the late 2010s involves Tim going back in time to visit [[GenderFlip her]] ancestors, one of which is the original Tim Traveller from the 1990s, CoolBike and all. |
| 140 | * CoolAndUnusualPunishment: Used in one Bash Street Kids story from a 1980s annual when Teacher discovered it was the way to get perfect discipline: dishing out such punishments as "marry a potato", "stand in the corner and don't think about an orange penguin" and "go to the moon without any supper" (which Fatty objected to strongly, he didn't mind going to the moon, just missing his supper). Unfortunately, in his rush to tell Mrs Teacher how well this worked, he tracked mud throughout the house leading to his own punishment (standing the middle of the pond dressed as a fairy) which put an end to the {{Cool and Unusual Punishment}}s. |
| 141 | * CoolBike: Tim Traveller has one that can travel through time. |
| 142 | * CoolCar: Dennis has one whenever it'll [[RuleOfFunny make things funnier]]. |
| 143 | ** For a while several of the characters from both ''The Beano'' and ''The Dandy'' sported some rather nifty vehicles, in order to tie in with the game ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beanotown_Racing Beanotown Racing]]''. |
| 144 | * CoolGate: 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. |
| 145 | * CoolOldLady: Dennis's Granny, who is just a mischievous as her grandson, much to the dismay of her son and daughter-in-law. |
| 146 | * CoolTeacher: Miss Mistry is the more modern teacher at Bash Street School, and much more fun and open-minded than the other teachers, but still knows when to rein in her pupils. |
| 147 | * CordonBleughChef: The Bash Street Kids' cook, Olive, is notorious for having terrible cooking, including custard so thick you have to cut it with a knife. |
| 148 | * CorporalPunishment: The standard punishment for Dennis the Menace up until the 1980s was getting "slippered" (spanked with a slipper), and the teachers in The Bash Street Kids once wielded canes against their rebellious students. |
| 149 | * CosmicPlaything: Calamity James' main trait is his extreme unluckiness. James knows how unlucky he is but is unable to stop it, and whatever he does is doomed to end in disaster. |
| 150 | * CountryCousin: A strip from the 1960's 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. |
| 151 | * CoversAlwaysLie: Roger appears on the VHS cover of ''The Beano Videostars'', but he isn't on the video itself. Possibly justified because his checkered jersey would have made him hard to animate. |
| 152 | * CrackFic: In-universe. The 1968 annual had a story where the Bash Street Kids decide to go and work at the Beano offices. Upon their arrival, the staff all make a run for it, so the kids have to produce that week's ''Beano''. Smiffy is appointed as editor, and the results...[[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xab7vCycZY4/UJUJm2rdB-I/AAAAAAAACLg/GH0y4DxeUVQ/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+(1).jpg well]], [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZKC9knyEjCw/UJUJTfv31GI/AAAAAAAACKw/sYTwZOqTkf8/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+%25282%2529.jpg just]] [[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ji2UeprS9M0/UJUJU8FHqXI/AAAAAAAACK4/TS-jXnR4AJw/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+%25283%2529.jpg take]] [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GJ1f8_q-MAY/UJUJW8Tta9I/AAAAAAAACLA/RbWaG9OqG7M/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+%25284%2529.jpg a]] [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xBlTl9XXTEA/UJUJX2qm3lI/AAAAAAAACLI/SBs7G4FIpA0/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+%25285%2529.jpg look]] [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CplivhhiT18/UJUJZZInKjI/AAAAAAAACLQ/4BhnbzykK54/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+%25286%2529.jpg and]] [[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/XPXUzA6rq10/UJUJanWh8wI/AAAAAAAACLY/tAOdhhpqGgU/s1600/The+Bash+Street+Beano+%25287%2529.jpg see]]. |
| 153 | * CreatorProvincialism: The comic is created by DC Thomson who are based in Dundee, Scotland, and their Scottish origins are often clear most notably in strips based around Scotland such as the [=McTickles=], Wee Ben Nevis and Red Rory of the Eagles. |
| 154 | * CreatorsCultureCarryover: Even though the Three Bears are American they use a lot of British terms. |
| 155 | * CrocodileTears: 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. |
| 156 | * {{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. |
| 157 | ** This is explained as all the characters living in "Beanotown" which is incidentally next to Dandytown, leading to at least one crossover there. |
| 158 | *** In one storyline involving a crossover between the comics, the Bash Street Kids and Dennis compete with Korky and other Dandy Characters over solving a mystery. |
| 159 | ** WesternAnimation/WallaceAndGromit showed up in the 70th Anniversary issue. They're also regulars in [=BeanoMAX=] and, for some reason, appeared in the 2012 Christmas issue of the weekly Beano rather than the corresponding issue of MAX. |
| 160 | *** A switch which became semi-permanent with MAX's demise a few months later. |
| 161 | ** In issue 3185, for the comic's 65th birthday, the current characters crossed over with old characters that had long been retired. |
| 162 | * CuteBruiser: Pansy Potter. |
| 163 | * CutShort: Happened to several stories in the 1940s owing to paper rationing forcing sudden reductions in the number of pages in the comic. Decades later, Dean's Dino suddenly ended when the artist died. |
| 164 | * DarkerAndEdgier: |
| 165 | ** One {{Crossover}} comic in the 2008 annual had Billy the Cat face off against General Jumbo, who plots to ''kill'' Billy and start a conquest. [[spoiler:It turns out that Jumbo was BrainwashedAndCrazy thanks to an experimental toy soldier named Private Pike who had a prototype "learning chip" installed in him who modified Jumbo's arm brace with electrodes to control his mind and act as a puppet for Pike's conquest. [[HoistByHisOwnPetard He's destroyed by his creation]] after Billy suggested that due to the amount of electricity needed for this, it would fry anything smaller. In the end, Jumbo's back to normal and Pike is destroyed...[[TheEndOrIsIt or is he?]]]] |
| 166 | ** The live-action short film adaptation of Calamity James explores how a boy afflicted with disastrous luck might try to cope in real life. In this version, his predicament is the result of a medical condition - acute misfortune syndrome - that can temporarily be passed on to anyone who makes physical contact with him. Like in the comics, James survives horrendous injuries (including being struck by lightning twice in quick succession) without any longterm physical results, but that’s about the only cartoonish holdover from the comics. James is otherwise presented as a realistic boy having to go through life with no friends and a resentful mother as a result of (and in addition to) constant suffering over which he has next to no control. There’s also a lot of bad language that could never be used in ''The Beano'' proper. |
| 167 | ** [=BeanoMAX=], which featured (very slightly) more adult storylines and was marketed at a "young adult" audience rather than preteens. |
| 168 | * DeliberateValuesDissonance / AnachronismStew: 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 had more of a tendency to jump on modernising bandwagons). |
| 169 | * DependingOnTheArtist: 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. |
| 170 | ** 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. |
| 171 | * DependingOnTheWriter: |
| 172 | ** Most ''Crazy for Daisy'' strips portrayed Ernest as a creep that readers were clearly not meant to feel sorry for, but sometimes he would be portrayed sympathetically. |
| 173 | ** Cuthbert's portrayal can vary from story to story with only his intelligence being the consistent factor. Sometimes he's a [[GoGetterGirl sleazy suck-up]], sometimes he's just socially awkward, and other times he's fairly well adjusted and practical. |
| 174 | ** Mike Pearse's take on the Bash Street Kids gives some of them more individual qualities - Sidney's the ButtMonkey, Spotty's the DeadpanSnarker with a NapoleonComplex, Smiffy's stupidity is up to eleven, etc. He also portrayed the The Three Bears as a DysfunctionalFamily, with Pa Bear being dumber, Ma being tempermental and downright abusive at times and Ted being the sarcastic OnlySaneMan. |
| 175 | ** Later writers portray Sidney as the gang's animal lover, with a wide range of exotic pets, and Spotty/Scotty as the most argumentative. |
| 176 | ** In ''Tricky Dicky'', Mr. Throbb is almost universally portrayed as a SadistTeacher who actively enjoys making life miserable for students (in one strip, he not only confiscates Dicky's phone for using it in the hallway, but he then ''repeatedly stomps on it'' while repeatedly asking if he's learned his lesson yet, which would undoubtably get him fired in real life). Some other strips like ''Bananaman'' many have him written as a more normal teacher who is just exasperated by his students not paying attention. To put it into perspective, he doesn't even confiscate Eric's manga when he's openly reading it in class. |
| 177 | * DesertedIsland: Frequently used in old adventure strips such as The Shipwrecked Circus. |
| 178 | * DidIJustSayThatOutLoud: As an example of [[TookALevelInJerkass just how much of a level in jerkass]] Walter took post-millenium, he gets carried away during a monologue and lets slip his desire to someday become Prime Minister and outlaw fun. |
| 179 | * DidntSeeThatComing: A strip of ''The Numskulls'' had Brainy decide to teach the other Numskulls of his importance by leaving and [[ItMakesSenseInContext get Edd's pet parrot to remind his mother about his homework]]. The remaining Numskulls are initially freaked out...until Snitch realises that it's about Biology, specifically, ''the human body''. Since they've worked their lives maintaining one, they manage to complete the homework in time before Brainy comes back so they can diss him. |
| 180 | * DidntThinkThisThrough: One ''Roger the Dodger'' strip had his father set up a "Dodge Box" scheme where Roger owes it one pound every time he performs a dodge. He finds a serious flaw in that system and exploits it by deliberately performing dodges all day until he's racked up around £11. When his father comes to collect the money, Roger reminds him that he only gets £3.50 for pocket money, meaning that his father has to owe the Dodge Box the offset. |
| 181 | %%* DinnerDeformation |
| 182 | * DistaffCounterpart: A favorite trope. |
| 183 | ** ''The Belles of St. Lemon's'', which was a gender-flipped (and upper-class) version of the Bash Street Kids. |
| 184 | ** Some versions of Billy the Cat had his cousin Kathleen partner up with him as Katie the Cat. It would be renamed "Billy the Cat and Katie". |
| 185 | ** Dennis the Menace and Minnie the Minx. |
| 186 | ** Billy Whizz's cousin Billie Whizz, the other fastest kid in Beanotown. |
| 187 | * TheDitz: Smiffy's exploits are frequently greeted with, "He's got it wrong ''again''!" |
| 188 | * [[DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength Does Not Know Her Own Strength]]: Pansy Potter. |
| 189 | * DontMakeMeTakeMyBeltOff: Any issue in days gone by would have included at least two instances of this.[[note]]Corporal punishment in the Beano lasted long after its abolition in schools and was [[OurLawyersAdvisedThisTrope only really confronted]] when Scotland, home of the comic, passed laws to make physical punishment of children into illegal child abuse. It was well into the 1990s when the father of ComicStrip/{{Dennis the Menace|UK}} kept his slippers exclusively for wear on his feet, and the long-suffering teacher of the Bash Street Kids hung up his cane for the last time.[[/note]] |
| 190 | * DoppelgangerDating: In one of the ''Crazy For Daisy'' strips, Daisy dates a guy who looked almost identical to Ernest apart from different coloured clothing (right down to an extra toe and a mole on his bum). In the end he dumps Daisy for a similarly identical version of her to both Ernest and Daisy's confusion. |
| 191 | * DoubleStandardAbuseFemaleOnMale: Mike Pearse's take on ''The Three Bears'' features a worrying amount of this PlayedForLaughs. |
| 192 | * DownerEnding: One infamous Calamity James strip ended with his mum abandoning him at an orphanage. |
| 193 | * DudeNotFunny: In one of the annuals, Roger the Dodger reacts this way when a pair of newsreaders reveal that a meteor they claimed would hit Earth is actually going to miss the planet entirely. |
| 194 | * DustbinSchool: ''The Bash Street Kids'' seem to be the only pupils at Bash Street School. Aside from Cuthbert Cringeworthy they are all about as academically minded as a sloth. |
| 195 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: In early issues, pretty much all the comic's most iconic characters had yet to appear. The only strip in the first issue to survive into TheFifties was Lord Snooty. Early issues also included text stories and adventure strips unlike later ones which only featured humourous comic strips. |
| 196 | ** When Dennis the Menace first appeared in 1951 he lacked his red and black stripey jumper and instead wore a tie. Plus, Gnasher didn't debut until 1968 and then he looked very [[https://www.beano.com/posts/when-dennis-met-gnasher different]]. |
| 197 | ** The Bash Street Kids started life as a strip called ''When the Bell Rings'' and, aside from Danny and Toots, featured none of the recognisable characters. It would take a few years for the main nine to set in place. |
| 198 | ** Minnie the Minx wore a skirt with suspenders in her first appearance, while Roger the Dodger wore shorts in his. |
| 199 | * EekAMouse: Used in the Ratz strip but with rats instead of mice. |
| 200 | * {{Elseworld}}: A one-off of ''Billy the Cat'' was a {{Steampunk}}-themed "William the Cat" in Victorian London, which culminates in him fighting a giant mech. [[spoiler:[[AllJustADream In reality, it was a hallucination]] of the modern William, who was on a school trip to a Victorian exhibit and got knocked out by a falling sign. Curiously, [[ButYouWereThereAndYouAndYou several people from his dream are either his friends or strangers in real-life]].]] |
| 201 | * ElvisImpersonator: Les Pretend's dad and Butch Butcher (who often appears in the Gnasher and Gnipper strip) both have Elvis Impersonation as a hobby. |
| 202 | * EraSpecificPersonality: Older readers will point to the Golden Age of some of the long-running characters being the 1960s and 1970s, when Leo Baxendale drew and scripted the long-runners such as The Bash Street Kids. Baxendale's combination of lunatic surreal humour and way-above-average artwork is still reverenced today. |
| 203 | * EverybodyHatesMathematics: Everyone except [[TeachersPet Cuthbert Cringeworthy]], who lives for sums textbooks. The rest of the Bash Street Kids happily throw masses of textbooks in fires. |
| 204 | * EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: Teacher, Mrs Teacher, Headmaster, Dennis' Dad, Ivy's Mum... The list goes on. |
| 205 | ** But subverted in that it's sometimes stated that those are their ''[[PropheticNames actual names]]'' (Dennis' Dad was christened "Dennis' Dad", and Teacher's full name is Algernon Teacher). |
| 206 | ** Not any more for Headmaster, as he got demoted to PE teacher. As such his real surname got revealed: Headington. |
| 207 | ** Averted for most other characters, except for Teacher and Janitor, from the 2010s onwards. Dennis's Dad is now Dennis Menace Sr, Dennis's Mum is now Sandra Menace, Minnie's Dad is called Darren Makepeace, Roger's Dad is Les Dawson, etc. |
| 208 | * EveryoneHasStandards: |
| 209 | ** Dennis and Gnasher didn't like Walter's dog Foo-Foo, but they were still disgusted at Walter callously firing and replacing his pet just because he lost a contest. They spend some time trying to find Foo-Foo a new job until he settles for sheep herding. |
| 210 | ** Minnie seems to have a distinct hatred for snob-like behaviour and spoilt children. |
| 211 | * ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: Alexander Lemming is a Lemming. Also Roger the Dodger likes to Dodge things. |
| 212 | * ExactWords: One very old strip had Dennis challenge some other kids to a tug-of-war and states that he'll beat them with only Walter as his teammate. They think it's Walter the Softy. At the challenge, Dennis shows up with ''a circus elephant'' named Walter. |
| 213 | * {{Expy}}: |
| 214 | ** Number 13, a strip about a supernatural family of monsters, was pretty much Series/TheMunsters. |
| 215 | ** Kat and Kanary is pretty much Sylvester and Tweety from WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes. |
| 216 | ** The character of Joe Jitsu seems to be an expy of an earlier character entitled Karate Sid from the 80s. |
| 217 | ** Meebo and Zuky are this for [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Itchy and Scratchy]]. |
| 218 | ** Harsha Chandra is basically a female Tricky Dicky, but with a twist - she doesn't have to buy the tricks because her Dad owns the joke shop! Their strip, Har-Har's Joke Shop, replaced Dicky's. |
| 219 | * ExtremeOmniGoat: |
| 220 | ** Fatty from the Bash Street Kids and whenever a goat is featured in a strip. |
| 221 | ** A Les Pretend strip features this where he pretends to be a policeman and tries making a goat his subordinate. During this they manage to scare a pizza delivery guy and the goat eats the pizza, angering Les because he is eating the "evidence". |
| 222 | * FailedASpotCheck: Calamity James is constantly surrounded by fortunes, from gold bars lying in the street to {{eccentric millionaire}}s throwing around fistfuls of money in the background, but he never notices. |
| 223 | * FailureIsTheOnlyOption: Calamity James will never, ever have good luck, but it has been subverted on a few occasions, such as landing on some train tracks with a train about to hit him, until the driver immediately stops since two leaves landed on the track. |
| 224 | * FormulaBreakingEpisode: Occasionally in the late nineties and early noughties, for special events the comic would be taken up by one big story by Mike Pearse featuring all of the current characters, usually with the Bash Street Kids (who had noticeably more fleshed-out personalities thanks to the longer-form stories) in the main role with the other strips in supporting roles (the exception being his ''Dennis the Menace'' story to mark the strip's 50th anniversary). |
| 225 | * FoulCafeteriaFood: Stretched all the way to ''Dennis and Gnasher Unleashed'', everyone hates Olive's school dinners. The Olive from the Dennis cartoon is actually a different character than the one from the Bash Street Kids strip in the Beano comic - the comic nowadays uses both Olives, and both are as bad as each other. |
| 226 | * FountainOfExpies: InUniverse: Billy Whizz has been challenged to a race by several similar characters such as Lightning Luigi and Jackie Flash. Then he faced off against his cousin, [[DistaffCounterpart Billie Whizz]] for the former's slot in the comic. |
| 227 | * FourFingeredHands: Played straight or averted DependingOnTheArtist. |
| 228 | * FourthWallMailSlot: For several years, ''Roger the Dodger'' had a spin-off called ''Roger's Dodge Clinic'', where readers wrote to Roger with their problems and he would suggest a dodge for them. |
| 229 | * FrameBreak: Used occasionally especially in WesternAnimation/TheBeanoVideo where among other things Gnasher is used to break a frame. |
| 230 | * FriendlessBackground: Calamity James is fervently avoided by other people due to his danger magnetism. His only companion is his anthropomorphic pet lemming, who, despite treating James's many injuries from time-to-time, is usually amused by his master's predicaments. |
| 231 | * FriendToAllLivingThings: 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 TheGenericGuy. |
| 232 | * FunnyAnimal: Biffo the Bear, Big Eggo, The Three Bears and numerous other strips. |
| 233 | * FunnyBackgroundEvent: The source of much of the humour in Calamity James' strips, which often capture when James is inches away from stepping on a BananaPeel. |
| 234 | * GenerationXerox: Turns out that Deathshead Danny I is an ancestor of Danny from Bash Street. |
| 235 | ** 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. |
| 236 | ** Following the redesign of Dennis' parents, it was later retconned that [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WVz9EtkXfdQ/UQDLVayp2XI/AAAAAAAAJ9Q/whgu-vZ4NGw/s1600/dennis-ception.jpg the current Dennis is actually the son of the original]]. |
| 237 | * GentleGiant: Some older strips featured these. Examples include the strips The Singing Giant and The Invisible Giant. |
| 238 | * GhostInTheMachine and MobileSuitHuman: The Numskulls. |
| 239 | * GirlishPigtails: Ivy the Terrible had her hair in bunches, which generally followed her motion-lines to emphasise how active she was. Minnie the Minx has more constrained pigtails (which may actually be plaits, DependingOnTheArtist) with bows at the end. |
| 240 | ** Tim Traveller also gains braids in her 2019 series, after a time travel portal accident [[GenderBender turns him into a girl]] (something that was done in homage to ''Series/DoctorWho''). |
| 241 | * GodwinsLawOfFacialHair: Many characters with authority are depicted with toothbrush mustaches; such as the Teacher from Bash Street Kids, [[ComicStrip/DennisTheMenaceUk Dennis the Menace's]] Dad and Minnie the Minx's Dad. At the time, these characters were drawn with the mustaches in the 1950s and they were redesigned in 2010. Denis's dad and Minnie the Minx's dad lose their mustaches in the redesign to avoid comparisons to Hitler. With the teacher being the only one to keep the Toothbrush Mustache. |
| 242 | * GoldDigger: Daisy won't let her lack of attraction to Ernest stop her from accepting expensive gifts from him or getting him to buy her dinner. |
| 243 | * GreenSkinnedSpaceBabe: Hayley Comet, though she's ''blue''-skinned. |
| 244 | * HairReboot: One issue has a Minnie the Minx strip in which, not liking a perm her Mum had made her get, she cuts off all her hair. Of course, she has her pigtails again next issue. A much later issue introduces a new strip, Gwyneth's Book of Records. Her first record attempt? Longest hair. Her hair grows so long (many times her own height, thanks to a hair restorer) it has to be cut off, but the next issue her usual ponytail is back. |
| 245 | * HalfDressedCartoonAnimal: The Nibblers - this is made fun of in Beano Annual 2009 when the Nibblers briefly meet the Ratz. |
| 246 | * HalfIdenticalTwins: Sidney & Toots. |
| 247 | * HavingAGayOldTime: |
| 248 | ** There are old Beano comic strips called Little Dead-Eye Dick and Cocky Dick (Cock and Dick both being contemporary 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...). |
| 249 | ** ComicBook/TheTopper's Tricky Dicky has returned twice in the Beano. |
| 250 | ** Minnie the Minx. In the old days, 'minx' meant any kind of impertinent female, but nowadays it's more associated with [[ReallyGetsAround promiscuous]] females. |
| 251 | * HereWeGoAgain: A three-part Calamity James story arc about him trying to ditch a [[ThePigPen Pig Pen]] AbhorrentAdmirer ends with [[spoiler: [[http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lf2gCDuEGkE/TTCu5E-_VUI/AAAAAAAABDU/PJCMr4XECCk/s1600/scan0005.jpg James being accosted by her near-identical sister.]]]] |
| 252 | * HighSchoolHustler: Roger the Dodger. |
| 253 | * HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood: Calamity James's mother openly despised her son for being BornUnlucky and [[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_lf2gCDuEGkE/TTCuRYxmzbI/AAAAAAAABDM/G9WckPz72pA/s1600/scan0003.jpg in one strip]] even has a hypnotist regress him to infancy so that she can [[ParentalAbandonment abandon him at an orphanage.]] |
| 254 | * HostileShowTakeover: 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. |
| 255 | * HotTeacher: Minnie the Minx's teacher ... and the small knickers that hang on her washing line when Minnie terrorises her at home... |
| 256 | * HufflepuffHouse: |
| 257 | ** Any class other than Class 2B in pre-75th anniversary issue ''Bash Street Kids'' strips. |
| 258 | ** Any department other than the Brain, Eye, Ear, Nose and Mouth departments in ''The Numskulls''. |
| 259 | * HypocriticalHumor: One ''Les Pretend'' strip 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. |
| 260 | * IconicSequelCharacter: Dennis The Menace did not appear until almost thirteen years into the run of the Beano comic. Other mainstream strips such as Minnie The Minx and The Bash Street Kids appeared even later. |
| 261 | * IllnessBlanket: At the end of one ''Bash Street Kids'' comic, Teacher catches a cold and is wrapped in a blanket while giving himself a FootBathTreatment. |
| 262 | * ImprovisedImprisonment: One special for the Bash Street Kids involves them discovering an ancient proclamation that declares Beano Town independent of England and whoever finds it the new monarch. This leads to [[{{Tomboy}} Toots]] becoming Queen and turning the school into her palace. Naturally [[DrunkOnPower power almost immediately goes to her head]] and she starts ordering anyone who opposes her (or annoys her) sent to the Tower. As attempts to explain to her Bash Street School doesn't have a Tower just makes her angry, they eventually resort to locking the prisoners in the school's water tower. By the end of the story, Toots has imprisoned everyone in the tower (even her friends for suggesting she might be going to far). However, due to it not being designed to hold them, their combined weight makes the water tower collapse. Once freed, the masses immediately depose her and destroy the proclamation. The story ends with them locking her in an equally makeshift prison to teach her a lesson. |
| 263 | * InNameOnly: The BBC's live action Calamity James short has nothing in common with the comic strip apart from the title character and his extraordinary bad luck. |
| 264 | * IntergenerationalFriendship: Dennis' Grandma is the only adult who Dennis respects rather than his parents and is his best adult friend. An episode of the animated series even revealed she's something of a GenerationXerox to him. |
| 265 | * InventionalWisdom: The "Zombeano" story starts because Cuthbert invented a machine to rejuvenate his old ageing comic books, but standing on the opposite end shaped like a giant exhaust turns you into a zombie. Even worse, it instigates a zombie apocalypse because of the radio waves it emits being able to essentially send zombie bites through answering your phone. |
| 266 | -->'''Cuthbert:''' I should really have that bit cordoned off. |
| 267 | * InvisibleAnatomy: Minnie ''sometimes'' has large muscles that can only be seen when she rolls up her sleeves. |
| 268 | * InexplicablyIdenticalIndividuals: Many characters have occasionally glimpsed international counterparts who look identical except for wearing stereotypical national costume. |
| 269 | * InsultToRocks: In one "Crazy for Daisy", Daisy compares Ernest to a warthog. After this, she's incredibly shocked at herself for being so insensitive and immediately apologizes — to any warthogs who happen to be reading. |
| 270 | * JerkWithAHeartOfGold: A lot of the characters, although they'd rarely show their kinder side. The bad behaviour would be reserved for adults and their enemies on the playground whereas the kindness would be reserved for their friends or animals. |
| 271 | * TheJinx: |
| 272 | ** People who spend significant time with Calamity James often befall some sort of mishap themselves, and he is [[FriendlessBackground avoided by the locals]] as a result. |
| 273 | ** Jonah was an example with a very specific form of bad luck. If he was anywhere near a ship, it sunk. (Sometimes this was directly his fault, so doesn't count as this trope, but sometimes it just happened all on its own.) He remained perpetually oblivious to this, and couldn't understand why it was so hard for him to get a job as a sailor. (PhraseCatcher, from every ship's captain who encountered him: "Aargh! It's 'im!") |
| 274 | * KarmaHoudini: Both Minnie and Roger were most likely to get away with mischief more than Dennis, who'd receive the [[CorporalPunishment slipper frequently]]. However, they've also received their comeuppance on many occasions. |
| 275 | * TheKidWithTheRemoteControl: General Jumbo was in command of a sizeable army (and occasionally navy and air force) built by his friend Professor Carter. A low-achieving hero by modern standards, he mainly foiled minor nuisances and petty criminals, but since even this entailed independently controlling dozens of models using a wrist controller with only a few buttons, it would be churlish to deride his efforts. |
| 276 | ** Jumbo still frequently shows up in the annuals. In a {{crossover}} with Billy the Cat in the 2008 annual, one of his toy soldiers (Private Pike) becomes both self-aware and malevolent, and tries to take control of ''him''. |
| 277 | * KiddyCoveralls: Ivy the Terrible is notably younger than most ''Beano'' characters (a toddler rather than a pre-teen) but just as much of a troublemaker (in her initial strip she challenges ComicStrip/DennisTheMenaceUK for the title of "toughest kid in Beanotown"). She's always shown wearing a sweater under overalls. |
| 278 | * KlatchianCoffee: 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 was ended by Olive the dinner lady insisting that she did know how to make tea. The lie detector exploded. |
| 279 | * KnightOfCerebus: The Billy the Cat and General Jumbo crossover in the 2008 annual has Private Pike; one of Jumbo's toy soldiers who was given an experimental "[[AIIsACrapshoot learning chip]]" which gave him free will, and questioned why Jumbo only used his army for [[MundaneUtility menial tasks]] when he could just TakeOverTheWorld and proceeded to brainwash him into trying to kill Billy. |
| 280 | * LaboriousLaziness: Some recent comics in particular have accused Roger the Dodger of this, his parents and teachers observing that it would actually be easier for him to just do what they're asking him to do than expend all that effort trying to dodge it. |
| 281 | * LampshadeHanging: Common feature, especially in the Annuals. |
| 282 | * LastOfHisKind: Meta example. ComicBook/TheDandy's demise as a print title leaves The Beano as the last weekly humour anthology comic in the United Kingdom. |
| 283 | * LethalChef: Olive the School Dinner Lady. Apparently [[WriteWhoYouKnow based on the publisher's tea lady]]. |
| 284 | * LimitedSocialCircle: |
| 285 | ** The Bash Street Kids tend to hang around together most of the time. |
| 286 | ** Dennis usually hangs out with Curly and Pie-Face, and less often Minnie and Roger. |
| 287 | *** At least, he used to. When ''WesternAnimation/DennisAndGnasherUnleashed'' launched, Curly, who isn't in the cartoon, vanished, and athlete JJ and wheelchair-using inventor Rubi replaced him. |
| 288 | * LimitedWardrobe: 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. |
| 289 | * LiveActionAdaptation: Calamity James received one in the form of a one-off short film in 2023, which can be viewed on BBC iPlayer. |
| 290 | * LongLostRelative: According to a story in issue 3244, Dennis and Walter are distant cousins. Dennis is horrified by this revelation. |
| 291 | * MagicSkirt: Averted for a second in the Beano Rap video when Minnie is dancing with Walter. |
| 292 | * MiddleNameBasis: Spotty's new name introduced in 2021, Scotty, is derived from his full name, James '''Scott''' Cameron. |
| 293 | * MirrorCrackingUgly: Plug (who used to be called "Pug" until Smiffy gave him an extra L he had left over from spelling a word). |
| 294 | * MisleadingPackageSize: In one strip, Roger the Dodger tries to convince his father to buy him a games console for Christmas and, despite all his efforts, his dad ends up buying what is very much shaped like a guitar, much to his chagrin. As it turns out, Dad simply placed the games console he wanted inside a guitar case as a BaitAndSwitch prank. |
| 295 | * TheMunchausen: Uncle Windbag. |
| 296 | * MyLittlePanzer: General Jumbo, a schoolboy who was given a fully-functional set of remote-control toy soldiers and military vehicles by his friendly neighbourhood MadScientist, and used them to fight crime. Notable as the last non-humour strip to have a regular place in the comic, and still turns up occasionally in annuals. The source of a number of [[{{Expy}} Expies]] in more recent comics by British creators. |
| 297 | * NapoleonComplex: Spotty/Scotty of the Bash Street Kids is sarcastic, conceited and protective about his masculinity and height. |
| 298 | * NaughtyIsGood: Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx and The Bash Street Kids, who routinely use catapults (slingshots) on passers-by, charge through the town in carties knocking over pedestrians, and so on. An early Minnie strip had her mother encourage her to take up a "ladylike" hobby such as scrapbooking. After using the scrapbook as an ImprovisedWeapon, she told her mum "I won three scraps with it!" Villainous "good kids" include Walter and Cuthbert Cringeworthy, both of whom are tell-tales whose main interest is getting the main characters into trouble. In Walter's case, recent stories have stretched the concept of "goody-goody" a bit, as he's been shown as quite happy to frame Dennis. |
| 299 | ** Also Roger the Dodger, though he's more of a schemer. |
| 300 | * NegativeContinuity: 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. |
| 301 | ** The two Snootys also appear '''together''' in the end plate of the 2014 annual. |
| 302 | * {{Nephewism}}: Biffo the Bear had a couple of nephews also he had a human aunt. |
| 303 | * NerdsLoveToughSchoolwork: Cuthbert especially. In one comic from the 1990s, he kept getting the Bash Street kids in trouble so he could steal all their punishment homework. |
| 304 | * NiceGuy: Billy Whizz is known not to be quite as mischievous as the other Beano characters and often does not go out of his way to harm or annoy others. Any trouble he causes is usually by accident, though this happens quite often due to Billy's whizzspeed. His kind nature and good heart is occasionally taken advantage of by other characters, especially that of Roger the Dodger and Dennis the Menace, as for example in one strip he agreed to carry Roger's dodge books so he could slow down. |
| 305 | * NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Zig-zagged, as some celebrities have appeared as themselves and others have pun names. |
| 306 | * NoFourthWall: 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 SeriousBusiness of getting a special issue. |
| 307 | * NoNameGiven: |
| 308 | ** First generation Dennis' parents' real names were [[PropheticNames apparently]] "Dennis' Dad" and "Dennis' Mum". |
| 309 | ** Some issues gave the parents names as "Mr. Menace" or "Mrs. Minx". In one comic, Minnie's father was named Victor. |
| 310 | ** AvertedTrope nowadays. Dennis's father is called Dennis Menace (he's supposed to be the Dennis of the 1980s), and his wife is called Sandra. |
| 311 | * NonHumanSidekick: Calamity James has Alexander Lemming and Dennis the Menace has Gnasher. |
| 312 | * NotAllowedToGrowUp: Practically everyone. Weirdly enough, Dennis celebrated his 50th birthday in a special issue, even though he's still physically 10. |
| 313 | ** Averted and then played straight with Dennis. Originally the character looked quite young but as the years progressed Dennis got taller and ganglier so much so that by the 70s he resembled more of a teenager than a 10 year old boy. However after this the original artist stopped drawing the character and Dennis did not age for much of the 80s until the 90s when he got younger in part to make the character easier to animate. |
| 314 | *** [[http://the-slipper.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/we-need-to-talk-about-dennis.html One theory]] has it that the current Dennis is the son of the original, the main "clues" to this being that Dennis's dad was redesigned from a pinstriped authoritarian in 2011 to look something like a grown up Dennis, and occasional flashbacks showing the new Dennis' granddad looking exactly like the old pinstriped dad. |
| 315 | *** [[LampshadeHanging Lampshades]] in the special 70th Anniversary issue, in which Dennis' friends can't tell whether his birthday banner reads 10 or 70, with one of them telling the other that it's obviously 10, since Dennis cannot possibly be 70. |
| 316 | ** The Lord Snooty from the 2000s is stated to be the grandson of the original, however, and Bunkerton Castle's portrait gallery has borne witness. Strangely, this became a {{retcon}} in 2013 when the original Snooty returned! |
| 317 | * NotThisOneThatOne: Inverted in a story in one annual. The characters have hired a boat to go to Australia and when they go to see it, they are shown a rather small battered wooden boat parked next to an ocean liner. They then use the small boat as to get the liner while the man giving them the boat shouts at them that it's the small one they're getting (he is ignored). |
| 318 | * OfficialCouple: A flash-forward in the 2006 Dennis the Menace Annual shows Dennis and Minnie as adults getting married and having a kid. As of the 2010's, this has been retconned and they are now cousins. |
| 319 | * OneOfTheKids: Grandpa, the eponymous character from the strip "Grandpa", is often seen acting like a child and playing with children. He also has a dad who spanks him the same way characters like Dennis the Menace got spanked back in that era. |
| 320 | * OneSteveLimit: Averted by two OnlyKnownByTheirNickname characters both being named "Fatty"; he of the Bash Street Kids, and Fatty Fudge from the ''Minnie the Minx''. This was tacitly acknowledged in one of the annuals when the two Fatties were cast as Tweedledum and Tweedledee in a parody of ''Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland'' (they fought over who was the "dum" one). |
| 321 | ** Bash Street School has two different dinner ladies named Olive; the original one from ''The Bash Street Kids'' and the one from ''Dennis and Gnasher Unleashed!''. |
| 322 | * OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: 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. |
| 323 | ** Fatty Fudge from Minnie the Minx. His real first name is Frederick. |
| 324 | *** Bash Street Fatty was [[SuddenNameChange also renamed]] Freddy in May 2021. They didn't want to teach kids it's OK to call a friend Fatty, so both Fattys were changed to Fredericks. Similarly, Spotty is now Scotty, although this is still sort of a nickname since "Scott" is his ''middle'' name. Plug remains known as Plug, presumably because the connection to the phrase "plug ugly" is less obvious. |
| 325 | *** Minnie's first name is really Hermione. |
| 326 | * OpposingSportsTeam: ''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. |
| 327 | * OutdatedOutfit: The Bash Street Kids are the main offenders, there was at least one strip where this was [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]]. Their teacher seems to be in on the act, and is frequently seen wearing a mortarboard. There was an attempt in UsefulNotes/TheNineties to give Dennis a new outfit comprising of jeans, t-shirt, denim jacket, sunglasses and headphones but it didn't stick (because it turned out to be a publicity stunt). |
| 328 | * ParentalBonus: One strip featured the Bash Street Kids meeting discontinued comic characters- cue them all bursting into laughter at the mention of Desert Island Dick. |
| 329 | * PersonalRaincloud: 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. |
| 330 | * PetTheDog: The Bash Street Kids may torment Teacher to avoid having to actually learn anything, but when he's in trouble they show genuine concern for him, ranging from easing off pranks for a time because they think he's working two jobs (actually he was just covering for his wife on her job as the night cleaner when the kids caught him) to making sure he got 'Teacher of the Year' when they learned that the award ceremony was being rigged to benefit someone else. |
| 331 | * ThePigPen: Smudge |
| 332 | * PoliticalCartoons: Numerous strips during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII were political in nature such as Musso the Wop (which featured the italian dictator UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini as an incompetent buffoon) and other strips such as a Lord Snooty strip where Lord Snooty fought against UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler. |
| 333 | ** 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 FatBastard. |
| 334 | * PoliticiansKissBabies: A ''The Bash Street Kids'' strip has the teacher tell the class that they will be electing a head boy by democratic vote. Plug references the trope saying that politicians get votes by kissing babies, so he goes to kiss some at a nursery. But because Plug's ugly, the babies scream and he gets thrown out without a kiss. |
| 335 | * PretenderDiss: One ''Billy Whizz'' strip had the titular character furious to find out that a brand of trainers claimed that he uses them personally. He publicly confronts them by taking their trainers for a run to America, and came back reporting that they fell apart midway. This led to a lot of angry customers. |
| 336 | * PrintLongRunners: The comic itself (80 years as of 2018) and the following strips: |
| 337 | ** Lord Snooty (1938-49; 1950-90, intermittently until 2000, 2013-present) |
| 338 | ** Biffo the Bear (1948-1986, 1989-99, 2013-2015, returned 2018 for 80th anniversary) |
| 339 | ** [[ComicStrip/DennisTheMenaceUK Dennis the Menace]] (1951-present) |
| 340 | ** Roger the Dodger (1953-present) |
| 341 | ** Minnie the Minx (1953-present) |
| 342 | ** The Bash Street Kids (1954-present) |
| 343 | ** Billy Whizz (1964-Present) |
| 344 | ** Ball Boy (1975-2014) |
| 345 | ** Ivy the Terrible (1985-2011, 2014) |
| 346 | * TheProfessor: |
| 347 | ** Lord Snooty had Professor Screwtop. |
| 348 | ** Also the guy that built Tin Can Tommy. |
| 349 | ** Rubi's father, Professor von Screwtop. |
| 350 | * PropheticNames: Something of a RunningGag. |
| 351 | * PunBasedTitle: 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. |
| 352 | * PunnyName: Les Pretend. More subtly, Alexander Lemming, Calamity James's sidekick (refers to Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin). |
| 353 | * TheQuietOne: Wilfrid and 'Ebert of the Bash Street Kids. |
| 354 | * RaceLift: When the strip Betty And The Yeti was re-introduced into the comic in 2015 after a long absence, Betty's ethnicity was changed to South Asian (quite possibly Indian). |
| 355 | * RatingsStunt: During Euan Kerr's time as editor of the comic, he was inspired by the publicity received by [[StoryArc Story Arcs]] on soap operas (such as Deirdre Barlow's imprisonment on ''Series/CoronationStreet'') to run similar storylines in the comics, such as the infamous "Gnasher goes missing" in 1986, the redesigned Bash Street Kids in 1994, and Dennis' mother's pregnancy and the subsequent birth of his little sister Bea in 1998. The storylines worked as desired, as they received national press coverage and a spike in the comic's sales. |
| 356 | * RealLifeWritesThePlot: "Uh Oh Si Co", a strip about a boy who went berserk at the slightest negative comment, was dropped after appearing in just three issues due to accusations of trivialising mental health. |
| 357 | * RebelPrince: The original Thirties version of Lord Snooty was like this, secretly sneaking away from his aristocratic family to hang out with his commoner friends. |
| 358 | * RelaxOVision: Used sometimes in Calamity James to obscure the pain inflicted upon Calamity James due to his unluckiness. |
| 359 | * {{Retcon}}: |
| 360 | ** In the past, Dennis and Minnie were sometimes shown in the future as a couple. Minnie's character profile on the 2016 version of Beano.com refers to her as Dennis's cousin... she also apparently has several brothers, who as of September 2016, have never been seen. The confusion worsened when it was revealed that the new Dennis was the son of the old Dennis, most likely leading to the character's information muddling with the new change. |
| 361 | ** Common when it came to character names. |
| 362 | *** Minnie's name was also changed from Minerva, to Hermione Makepeace. However, this can be blamed on GenerationXerox. |
| 363 | *** In the old Wizard story paper serial Bash Street School, Toots was called Kate Pye. The website in the 2010s now lists her as Sydney Kate Pie, to match her brother S'''i'''dney. |
| 364 | ** Reprints erase the Peanut character from the 1940s logo and the character Polly from 1950s Lord Snooty. Both characters were, unfortunately, [[OldShame black racist stereotypes]]. |
| 365 | * {{Retool}}: Has happened occasionally. For example, Lord Snooty started out as a posh kid who'd rather play with the poor kids from the local alley instead of the posh kids from his school, and he hid this from his Aunt Matilda. Later, the Ash Can Alley gang moved into the castle, Aunt Mat now being their guardian. And later still, several of the characters were dropped, with a few new ones who used to have their own strips moving in instead. In later years, Snooty would struggle for money to pay for repairs to the castle. And then there was the time his grandson got his own strip - which was retconned away when the original Snooty returned again. |
| 366 | ** Biffo the Bear was rested in the late eighties (some time after he lost his status as cover star to Dennis), and after a few years returned as a half-page strip with no dialogue, relying on surreal visuals. |
| 367 | * ResentfulOutnumberedSibling: A frequent premise of ''Tom, Dick, and Sally''. Tom and Dick would gang up on their sister Sally because she was a girl, such as trying to get her to do something for them (often household chores) or blame her for their naughty behaviour. Of course she'd either get revenge or make sure they get found out so that the boys always ended up worse off. |
| 368 | * RhymingTitle: The strips feature many series that use CharacterTitle with RhymingNames. In addition to the famous Dennis the Menace, there's also Roger the Dodger and Tricky Dicky. Defunct strips include Contrary Mary, Handy Sandy, Wavy Davey and his Navy, Jenny Penny, Alf Witt the Ancient Brit, Daniel the Spaniel, and Even Steven. |
| 369 | * RidiculouslyCuteCritter: Gnipper and his sisters. |
| 370 | * RogerRabbitEffect: 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. Became a feature in the comics when [=#SoBeano=] competition began when the children reading could send in photos to prove how much they love the magazine so that they can win prizes. |
| 371 | * RubberMan: PlayedForLaughs in the strip Ping the Elastic Man. This strip is from 1938 and often ended with Ping being tied up in knots. |
| 372 | * RuleSixtyThree: 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 back in the autumn of 1967); she looked just like Dennis except for a bow in her hair and she wore a skirt. |
| 373 | * SchoolIsForLosers: The standard attitude of the characters. |
| 374 | * TheScrooge: 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 [[ThriftyScot Scottish origins]]. |
| 375 | * SecretPetPlot: In "Betty and the Yeti". The tagline for the story is "the little girl with the extraordinary best friend". Betty keeps the yeti (whose name is actually Yeti) as a pet, who causes chaos, often breaking things. Her parents don't know he exists. To help hide him, Yeti sometimes wears a wig and a dress, pretending to be a very large human girl named Agnes. |
| 376 | * SheIsNotMyGirlfriend: Anyone who asks Dennis if he fancies Minnie is threatened with violence. |
| 377 | * ShipTease: In one 60s strip, Dennis was Minnie's date to a Valentine's Day dance. In the '90s Dennis The Menace TV series, there was a flashback where Dennis' next door neighbour The Colonel was in a brief relationship with Dennis' granny before he joined the army, and when he encountered her again it seemed to reignite his feelings for her. |
| 378 | * ShoutOut: |
| 379 | ** One strip had a bunch of protesters holding signs, among them [[Series/FatherTed "Down With This Sort Of Thing" and "Careful Now".]] |
| 380 | ** Calamity James is named after Calamity Jane. And then you have his pet Alexander Lemming, named after scientist Alexander Fleming. |
| 381 | ** The ''Meebo and Zucky'' stories are definitely a more sadistic ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry''. |
| 382 | ** Belles of St. Lemons (a lyric in "Oranges and Lemons") was about a group of boarding school girls always getting into trouble. |
| 383 | ** ''Uh Oh, Si Co!'' was intended to be this to ''Anime/YuGiOh'', but it apparently didn't work because ''The News of the World'' accusing the stories of encouraging bullying caused its cancellation. |
| 384 | ** Jonah the disastrous sailor is most likely named after the naval "Jonah the sailor" superstition. |
| 385 | ** Many of the superheroes that have passed through have confirmed or implied connections to popular American comic book heroes. |
| 386 | *** Jack Flash was designed as a ''Beano'' equivalent to Creator/DCComics' [[ComicBook/{{Shazam}} Captain Marvel]], despite having more parallels to Characters/{{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. |
| 387 | *** 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 ComicBook/SpiderMan to be a coincidence. |
| 388 | *** Later-newcomer Bananaman is more of a Shazam expy than Jack Flash, but is also DC Thomson's ComicBook/{{Batman}}. Issue 4000's ''Beano'' crossover even revealed his BadFuture counterpart is a gravel-voiced and PermaStubble cynic perched in a [[TheCowl cowling pose]] on a rooftop. |
| 389 | *** Played with in one of Rasher's comic strips when he imagines himself as [[Film/AntMan1 Ham-Man]]. |
| 390 | ** Dennis the Menace was named after the music hall song "Dennis the Menace From Venice" by Eddie Pola. |
| 391 | ** One strip had Dennis go to a comic convention, where he is briefly approached by two cosplayers from apparently America, who confuse him with [[ComicStrip/DennisTheMenaceUS the other Dennis the Menace]]. |
| 392 | * SignificantGreenEyedRedhead: When Tom Paterson drew Minnie the Minx, her eyes would be shown to be green in close-ups. |
| 393 | * SixthRanger: Bananagirl who joined Super School a few weeks after it started. |
| 394 | * SlobsVersusSnobs: |
| 395 | ** Dennis is a catapult wielding tearaway against the more nicely brought up Softies. |
| 396 | ** Lord Snooty and his family versus the Gasworks Gang. Most of Lord Snooty's close friends were also commoners, though; in the first issue, he decides they're more fun than his posh friends. |
| 397 | ** Posh Street School is one of the two schools that has a rivalry with Bash Street. (The other being Blob Street, which is more or less the same socioeconomic status as Bash Street.) |
| 398 | ** Minnie the Minx against Soppy Susan. Heck, Minnie hates snobs and spoiled children in general. |
| 399 | * {{Slogan|s}}: |
| 400 | ** The Beano used to have the slogan "Never be without a Beano". |
| 401 | *** Later they used the rhyming slogan "Everyone we know reads the Beano!" |
| 402 | ** The Bash Street Kids have "The class every teacher dreads!" |
| 403 | * TheSmurfettePrinciple: |
| 404 | ** 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 her twin brother Sidney). Unfortunately for all of them, Toots canonically has a crush on Dennis the Menace. Averted as of June 2021, as a few new girls, Harsha, Khadijah, and Mandi, have joined the class. |
| 405 | ** Minnie the Minx was said to be created for this very reason so that girls reading wouldn't feel left out. |
| 406 | * SpeciesSubversives: Richard the Lion, instead of being King of Beasts, is weedy, skinny and only 'king' of Lord Threadbare's Safari Park. |
| 407 | * SpeciesSurname: Alexander Lemming. |
| 408 | * TheSpeedster: Billy Whizz is exceptionally fast and is known as "The world's fastest boy". |
| 409 | * SpidermanSendUp: Billy the Cat is an athletic [[KidHero young]] AnimalThemedSuperbeing who relies on a variety of gadgets, and lives with his elderly aunt. |
| 410 | * SpinOff: 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''.[[note]]Said comic folded after 75 issues and was [[ComicsMerger merged]] into ''ComicBook/TheBeezer'', leading to the unusual situation for several years where Plug was simultaneously appearing in two different comics.[[/note]] Some Beano comic strips are spinoffs of other strips in the Beano, e.g. Bea the Mini-Menace was a spinoff of Dennis the Menace, and The Three Bears was a spinoff of Little Plum. |
| 411 | * SpinoffBabies: Bringing Up Dennis was a late 1950s' spinoff of Dennis the Menace with Dennis as a baby. This trope has also been used as a gag in some of the annuals. |
| 412 | ** The mini strip The Bam-Beanos definitely qualifies as it depicts Dennis, Minnie, Roger and the Bash Street Kids as toddlers at a daycare. |
| 413 | * SplashPanel: 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. |
| 414 | * SpotlightStealingSquad: ''The Beano [=SuperStars=]'' used to alternate between Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Roger the Dodger and The Bash Street Kids, but starting with issue 81 they were all Dennis the Menace stories. |
| 415 | * StalkerWithACrush: Ernest Valentine of ''Crazy For Daisy''. |
| 416 | * StealthPun: The biggest, strongest member of the Nibblers, a group of mice, is called Enor ([[DontExplainTheJoke Enor Mouse; enormous]]). |
| 417 | * StockAnimalDiet: Pretty much all of the stereotypes about what certain animals like to eat have appeared on a regular basis. One time two were linked together in an interesting way was a Minnie The Minx episode when she pulls a face so grotesque it curdles her pet cat's milk so it turns to cheese, which some mice then come to eat. |
| 418 | * StoryArc: 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. |
| 419 | ** One was used leading up to the 2016 revamp. Walter's father, Mayor Wilbur Brown, manages to take over the Beano editor job. The next week, Walter and his Dad appear in most strips, ruining everyone's fun (by making Billy Whizz wear lead shoes, releasing a wild boar to stop Roger from dodging a cross country run, confiscating all of Minnie's weapons, etc) and thus, the comic, which he's trying to get closed down (he figured if it's already ruined, nobody will complain). At the end of that issue, Dennis promises the readers that the cast will fight back the next week. |
| 420 | ** Previous story arcs were used to introduce Gnipper (and his sisters) in 1986, and Bea, Dennis's baby sister, in 1998. |
| 421 | * SuckySchool: 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 has no central heating[[note]]except when RuleOfFunny demands it; the Janitor has been seen stoking an antiquated boiler before now[[/note]] and (wasn't outdated then) Teacher still wearing a mortar board. |
| 422 | ** 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. |
| 423 | *** 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. [[spoiler: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 StoryArc.]] |
| 424 | ** Eventually, the school was demolished by Creator/AntAndDec and the cast were migrated into Dennis's school. |
| 425 | * SuicidalLemmings: Calamity James's pet lemming, [[PunnyName Alexander Lemming]], likes to find high surfaces to plummet from. |
| 426 | * SuperDickery: 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. |
| 427 | ** Same with Daisy. |
| 428 | ** 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 ran an outraged story condemning the changes. When it was published, the conclusion of the two-part story [[ResetButton undid all of the changes]]. |
| 429 | * SuperheroSchool: In ''Super School'', the idea of a superhero school is PlayedForLaughs. Extra points for the strip's title is almost the name of this trope. |
| 430 | * SuperSpeed: Billy Whizz. His speed and reactions are so fast they even allow him to ''stay dry in a rainstorm by dodging between raindrops''. |
| 431 | ** To put it into perspective, a "slow jog" for Billy is about 100mph or so. He can easily outrun sound - he once went supersonic at school to prevent a teacher from hearing an insulting remark his friend had just made about the teacher. His greatest moment to date though was when his father wanted to change the TV channel to watch some boring football match, and Billy outran the signal from the remote control in order to negate the channel-change command. Yes, he went considerably ''faster than light'' across the living-room and back! |
| 432 | ** In October 2013, Billy was introduced to his female cousin, Wilma "Billie" Whizz; who turned out to be about as fast as him. The first thing that they decided to do was challenge each other to a race. Surprisingly enough for a speedster race, it did not end in a draw. |
| 433 | *** The first race was a short sprint across Beanotown (several miles) and was won by Billy by about an arms-length. Billie challenged him to 2 further races to determine who was the faster, with the prize possibly being who got control of his comic strip in future. Billy agreed. |
| 434 | *** The second race was a "middle distance" race from Beanotown (usually depicted as a small town somewhere in the southeast of England, surrounded by countryside) to Dundee, Scotland (a distance of abut some 400 miles). Billy was leading early in the race, but was overtaken in the latter stages and lost by several metres. |
| 435 | *** The third challenge was a long distance race around the world. It started in Beanotown, travelling south and across the English channel, through France, Germany, and shortly afterwards passing through Transylvania (during the Hallowe'en 2013 edition of the comic). At this point, Billy and Billie were still level. |
| 436 | * SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: |
| 437 | ** One time when Ernest broke into Daisy's bedroom through her window, rather than deal with him the comical way she usually does, she instead called the police. |
| 438 | ** A man named Sylvester, who decided that everyone has had enough of Gnasher's menacing, crept into Dennis's backyard at night and tied balloons to his kennel to send him away. After Rasher headbutts and causes him to land in his parent's room, they immediately press charges against him for trespassing and endangering their son since Dennis happened to be sleeping in Gnasher's kennel. |
| 439 | *** When Sylvester informs Dennis' dad of what he's done, he expects him to be delighted. The next panel is of Dennis' dad visibly distraught, wondering how he's going to explain to his pre-teen son that he's never going to see his beloved pet dog again. |
| 440 | * TakeThat: |
| 441 | ** ''The Beano'' and ''ComicBook/TheDandy'' 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). Stopped after the Dandy's demise in 2012. |
| 442 | ** 2020 saw a special ''[[{{Pun}} [=BeanOLD=]]]'' 8-page bonus comic released, intended for the adults who'd been reading the regular ''Beano'' during the UsefulNotes/Covid19Pandemic and other assorted crises of the year; the plot revolved around Dennis Sr. and Sandra pitted against Prime Minister UsefulNotes/BorisJohnson (who's depicted as being unable to make a decision) and Walter's father, who has put Dennis Sr. out of a job by way of closing Beanotown's paperclip factory. Jabs at 2020's multitude of horribleness abounded. |
| 443 | ** In 2018 the comic issued a cease and desist at Jacob Rees-Mogg, accusing him of copying Walter the Softy: both were incredibly snooty, stopped other people having fun, and constantly invoked their father's name. A bit harsh on Walter, perhaps. |
| 444 | ** A Bash Street Kids strip in the 30th of April, 2022 issue is an entire jab at the controversial NFT market, with farts sold on the "Niffy Fart Trade" in place of digital media. |
| 445 | * TalkingAnimal: 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". |
| 446 | * TemporaryBulkChange: Several characters have gone through this. Out of all the characters, Minnie has become fat the most times. |
| 447 | ** In the Crazy for Daisy strip in issue 3265, Daisy became massively obese after eating a giant box of chocolates Ernest brought her. She soon lost the weight through exercising... by jumping up and down repeatedly on Ernest. |
| 448 | * TheMakeover: |
| 449 | ** Happened to Dennis's parents thanks to Gok Wan, and Roger's parents off panel (due to an artist change) in August 2012. Both Dads lost their outdated moustaches. Roger's later changed back, while Dennis's was retconned as GenerationXerox. |
| 450 | ** Pie-Face, because of ''WesternAnimation/DennisAndGnasherUnleashed''. His hair grew longer and he started wearing glasses. |
| 451 | * TheOneGuy: Gnipper is the only boy in his litter. |
| 452 | * ThemeNaming: All of the Bash Street Dogs are named similar 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. |
| 453 | ** Harsha and her siblings Heena and Hani all have names starting with the letter "H," and themed around laughter ("har," "hee," "ha") due to Harsha's nature as a prankster. |
| 454 | * ThrowTheDogABone: Occasionally a strip will have characters doing something nice for their victims; Minnie tricking her Dad's boss into giving them tickets to the fairground to cheer him up, the Bash Street Kids cooperating with Teacher to overcome a third-party antagonist, etc. Even Calamity James got thrown a bone in a Beano Comic Library special when First Ada - a wannabe nurse whose schtick was [[ComicallyIneptHealing causing harm to the people she wanted to help]] - seemingly cancelled out his chronic bad luck, giving him a day of good fortune. |
| 455 | * TimeyWimeyBall: Lord Snooty III is the grandson of the original Lord Snooty, who was implied to be deceased (otherwise, III couldn't have the title of Lord). So why are they shown together on the third page of the 2014 annual? |
| 456 | * TitleDrop: Whenever someone says to Bea (Dennis the Menace's baby sister), Bea No!. |
| 457 | * {{Tomboy}}: Minnie the Minx, the world's wildest tomboy. Also Toots from the Bash Street Kids. |
| 458 | * TookALevelInJerkass: Walter. In the early days of the comic, he was a genuinely nice boy who simply preferred girly interests. Due to the fear that Dennis bullying him would seem like homophobia, Walter has become more malicious, vindictive and determined to get Dennis into trouble, making any comeuppance Dennis gives him justified. |
| 459 | * TookALevelInKindness: In contrast, Dennis became more mischievous and attention seeking than malicious. |
| 460 | * TooDumbToLive: Bantersaurus Rex. In his 2015 debut, he pretends to have accidents, then says "it's just bantz, innit?" - then he ends up sinking in quicksand and nobody believes he's in trouble. He's essentially The Boy Who Cried Wolf. |
| 461 | * TooSpicyForYogSothoth: Any attempt to give Plug plastic surgery ends with Plug's natural ugliness undoing it. |
| 462 | * TormentedTeacher: Due to its focus on [[NaughtyIsGood mischievous and disruptive but loveable kids]], baring the odd SadisticTeacher, this pretty much the norm for every teacher the protagonists go up against (especially for [[ComicStrip/DennisTheMenaceUK Dennis the Menace]] and Minnie The Minx). However, no one else embodies quite as much as this [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep Teacher]] from the The Bash Street Kids. As well as Bash Street school being an [[SuckySchool underfunded dump that is literally falling apart at the seams]], he constantly has to deal with the kids antics which can range from simply being disruptive in class to flat out causing chaos throughout the town, with him constantly being the victim of numerous practical jokes and disasters they cause. To the point that several issues involve him flat out assisting the kids in their efforts to bunk off school for the day, just so he can get some peace. However, every so often their be an issue do end with him [[ThrowTheDogABone getting the occasional victory]], so that things don't get too hopeless. |
| 463 | * TotallyRadical: In the 2013 annual, Dennis' (younger and hipper) Dad uses the term "chillaxing". |
| 464 | * TrademarkFavoriteFood: Pie-face (from Dennis the Menace) and pies. |
| 465 | * {{Transplant}}: 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. |
| 466 | ** 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. |
| 467 | ** Bananaman, who came from ''Nutty'' and ''The Dandy''. |
| 468 | ** The Numskulls had their time hopping around different DC Thomson comics. |
| 469 | ** A number of characters from other ''Beano'' strips have been transplanted to the Bash Street Kids in order to avert TheSmurfettePrinciple and MonochromeCasting: Harsha (from "Har Har's Joke Shop"), Mandi (from the VerySpecialEpisode strip "Mandi"), Stevie (from "Stevie Star"), Mahira (from "Mahira of the Match"), and Khadija (from "Sketch Khad"). |
| 470 | ** Angel Face originated from her own ''The Dandy'' strip ''Little Angel Face'' in 1954 before she was brought back for the 2013 ''Dennis the Menace and Gnasher'' TV series and soon started appearing in ''The Beano''. |
| 471 | * {{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. |
| 472 | * TunnelKing: Henry Burrows |
| 473 | * TwinThemeNaming: Sidney and Sydney Pye of the Bash Street Kids. Which is probably why Sydney goes by Toots. |
| 474 | * UncannyFamilyResemblance: Dennis the Menace and his cousin Denise the Menace. |
| 475 | * UncattyResemblance: The comic ''loves'' this trope. Gnasher's spiky fur resembles Dennis' hair, and he also has Rasher, a pig covered in spiky bristles; ''Pup Parade'', featuring the pets of the Bash Street Kids; Roger the Dodger used to have a pet called Joe Crow with the same tuft of hair/feathers; and, in the silliest example, Cuthbert Cringeworthy, the Bash Street school swot, looks like Teacher. Because he's the teacher's pet. |
| 476 | * UniversalAdaptorCast: Many strips have relocated the characters to other settings, including a graphic novel that reinvented the Bash Street Kids as a starship crew, and a series of text stories in the 1964 annual which placed multiple characters in historic settings (Dennis meets Robin Hood, Roger meets the Artful Dodger, the Bash Street Kids meet Guy Fawkes, and Jonah meets Sir Francis Drake). |
| 477 | * UnnamedParent True in almost all strips except Les Pretend where his dad is named Des. A few times it's implied Dennis's dad is actually named [[ADogNamedDog Dad.]] Averted in TheNewTens, with all the parents being named, at least on the website. Dennis's dad is now ''also'' named Dennis, in keeping with the current implication that Dennis is a LegacyCharacter. |
| 478 | * UnusualPetsForUnusualPeople: Many characters in the strips have strange pets such as Roger the Dodger who had a pet crow and Smudge who had a pet... something... which was covered completely in mud. |
| 479 | * VillainProtagonist: Is Baby Face Finlayson a hero in any strips outside of his own? |
| 480 | * VisualPun: 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. |
| 481 | * WackyHomeroom: The Bash Street Kids all had distinct personalities. Of course, there were only 9 of them. |
| 482 | * WalletMoths: 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 [[RuleOfFunny moth-sized fur coats]]). |
| 483 | * WheelOFeet: Billy Whizz. All the time. |
| 484 | * WhiteGloves: Worn by original cover star Big Eggo mainly to make him more anthropomorphic and white gloves made it look more like he had hands than just wings. |
| 485 | * WholesomeCrossdresser: In the first issue from 1938 in the prose story The Wangles of Granny Green features a boy dressed up as his grandmother. |
| 486 | * WhoWouldBeStupidEnough: Smiffy from the Bash St. Kids and similar characters (other members of his family and Dimmy from Ball Boy for instance). |
| 487 | * TheWonderland: The Pansy Potter in Wonderland strip is an example of this. |
| 488 | * WorldOfSnark: Just about every other character in Mike Pearse's strips reacts to craziness and/or stupidity with deadpan sarcasm. |
| 489 | * WorldsStrongestMan: |
| 490 | ** Morgyn the Mighty, an old adventure strip appearing in the first issue of The Beano. |
| 491 | ** Pansy Potter was the daughter of one. |
| 492 | * WouldHurtAChild: Since the majority of the Beano's main characters are kids, you'll be seeing this a ''[[WhatDoYouMeanItsforKids lot]]''! |
| 493 | * XanatosGambit: 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... |
| 494 | * XenoFiction: Black Flash the Beaver a prose story about a Beaver from the very first issue. |
| 495 | * XtremeKoolLetterz: Ratz |
| 496 | * YankTheDogsChain: Several times Calamity James has come close to averting or even been temporarily "cured" of his bad luck, only for some overriding force to snatch away his good fortune. Examples include: |
| 497 | ** Being relieved of his bad luck by hypnosis treatment, only for someone to snap their fingers within earshot and thus breaking the trance; |
| 498 | ** Being sent to a world where all the inhabitants experience good fortune, only to crash-land on its rubber surface and end up pinballing around a planetary system for hours; |
| 499 | ** Inadvertently rescuing a leprechaun from a pile of peat, who readily agrees to grant James's wish to be lucky as a reward, only for James to wind up in a vat of pig slurry because the leprechaun had peat clogging his ears and misheard the request as "I wish to be mucky". |
| 500 | * YouDontLookLikeYou: In issue 3649, Dennis' parents got a makeover that made them about 20 years younger and more like Dennis. This was revealed to be a subversion: the new designed parents are actually completely different characters to the original parents because Dad is the adult versions of the ''original'' Dennis, [[spoiler:meaning that viewers were now reading about the antics of Dennis the Menace, Jr.]]! |
| 501 | * {{Zeerust}}: Any of the older strips, which was either set in the future, 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). |
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