To celebrate its 85th birthday, the Beano, Britain’s longest-running comic, is undergoing a woke makeover. In collaboration with Inclusive Minds, known for their work on ‘reworking’ Roald Dahl’s books, the comic is introducing a new and diverse range of characters while also ‘rebranding’ its existing ones. The Sunday Times has the story.
For generations the Beano unleashed a riot of peashooters, pranks and slipper-wielding parents on a weekly basis.
But now, as it prepares to celebrate its 85th birthday, the country’s longest-running comic has undergone a quiet transformation to make it more appealing to its idealistic young readers – with the help of Inclusive Minds, the consultancy that recently rewrote Roald Dahl’s books to remove offensive material.
New Beano characters are vetted and shaped by a vast digital focus group of children and advisers from Inclusive Minds, which seeks to “embed authenticity” in children’s books and comics.
After remaining largely unchanged for almost 70 years, the Bash Street Kids have been joined by five new pupils; Harsha, Mandi, Khadija, Mahira and Stevie Starr, in an attempt to better represent the demographics of modern Britain.
Fatty and Spotty, long-time students at the unruly school, were rebranded as Freddy and Scotty to stop youngsters with acne, freckles or weight problems being taunted by classmates.
Mike Stirling, 49, creative director of the Dundee-based comic, whose inaugural edition from 1938 featured a controversial caricature of a black child, is unfazed by the prospect of being branded “woke” by ageing former readers.
“We have never seen that as a pejorative term,” he said. “It’s awareness and being awake to things. What would be easy to do would be to sleepwalk and keep the Beano the way it had always been done for ever.
“When we make a new character, [Inclusive Minds] connect us with an ambassador who advises us. That allows us to get the details right in terms of clothes they are wearing and cultural celebrations their family might get involved in.”
Stirling has updated its most popular school saga — which continued to feature inkwells and mortarboards long after they had vanished from the real world.
“The Bash Street Kids were completely anachronistic,” Stirling said. “There were ten kids. Nine were boys and one was a girl. All of them were white. The make-up of that class was OK in 1954 but it had to change.”
The new intake includes Mandira Sharma, known as Mandi, a nervous girl whose anxieties are used to highlight mental health problems, and the hijab-wearing Khadija Raad, a talented artist. There is parity between male and female characters thanks to newcomers such as Rubi, a ginger-haired scientist who uses a wheelchair, and Jemima Jones, a junior ghost hunter who is black.
“We don’t take out the characters that our readers’ grandad or granny knew and loved,” said Stirling, a lifelong Beano reader from the coastal golfing town of Carnoustie, Angus.
“We keep them in but have brought in new characters alongside them. We never get too battered and beaten when older people say, ‘I don’t like this’ because as long as the kids like it, it’s golden.”
Older content is carefully analysed before being reprinted — with strips deemed to be offensive excised. Examples include a Lord Snooty strip from 1953 — when the comic sold about a million copies a week — where the main character is “gifted” an African servant with an offensive name. Reprinted vintage Beanos feature a warning that the content reflects the attitudes of their time.
The comic, published every Wednesday, sells about 40,000 copies but most children interact through its website, while revenue is raised through spin-off novels, merchandise and film and TV.
In previous decades parents and teachers were portrayed as petty, vindictive and not adverse to walloping Dennis the Menace — and Minnie the Minx — with a slipper or cane. Changing societal attitudes mean they are portrayed as sympathetic and nurturing.
“I was always a bit spooked and scared about going to school, but my kids don’t think that way,” Stirling said. “It’s a chance to see their pals and teachers help them if there is a problem. We reflect that in the comic now. Similarly, the mums and dads have become characters in their own right, rather than just disciplinarians.”
In today’s Beano, libraries are promoted as being like “Netflix for books”, while characters who once punched playground rivals and hurled stink bombs dutifully wear helmets when they cycle or skateboard.
Stirling insists, however, that the spirit of anarchy and mischief-making lives on. In 2018 he sent a cease and desist letter to Jacob Rees-Mogg, claiming he was “masquerading” as Walter Brown, a foe of Dennis the Menace better known as Walter the Softy.
The Conservative MP for North East Somerset was served with a tongue-in-cheek legal warning alleging he had been infringing intellectual property rights by having the same spectacles, hairstyle and “snootiness”as the pompous comic character.
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So Stirling thinks it’s okay to taunt people when it serves his own ends. Definitely Woke.
I don’t see this the same as a crime like rewriting classic children’s books, and losing their meaning in that process. It would be easy to cry foul on this, but I think updating storylines and characters to more closely reflect our current society.? Yes I can see where Stirling is coming from. We don’t expect our comedy today to be that of Tommy Trinder and Arthur Askey. Why should the Beano be preserved in aspic. Things move on.
My concern is that the Bash Street Kids were often on the very edge of their boundaries, but punishments were always there if they transgressed. Easy for kids to understand without having to go through the pain of being caught and getting punished. Theres no point really if they are dutiful and perpetually acting with safety in mind. We loved Dennis the Menace because he was a rebel who took the risks we wouldn’t dare. I don’t suppose kids give a toss nowadays such is the soft approach of parents, teachers and police.
It’s not the equivalent of rewriting an existing work – I agree
I still disapprove because it is politically motivated and conscious rather than a natural product of the writing changing organically over time
This is grown-ups messing with children’s literature to adapt it to their own prejudices to make themselves feel good about it, paint themselves in a way better light than they deserve and – obviously – also for political indoctrinaton of children as early as possible. Every bit of that is despicable.
On a more serious note: This is wanton destruction of another British cultural institution guilty of not having been invented by the woketurds themselves, who all mistakenly believe to be children’s book authors because anything can be sold to children. Except new-style gay agenda Disney flicks, that is, but let’s not bother with reality too much for as long as the money rolls in punctually.
I agree and yes it is despicable. I am steeling myself for when grandchildren arrive and we have to hear about the indoctrination to which they are subjected. Not looking forward to the battles with my kids over this – if that’s what happens. Not sure how they will handle this. I don’t generally hold with grandparents being backseat parents but on certain subjects it’s hard to hold your tongue.
You can see where Stirling is coming from? ————Yes, Cleansing. –No child with spots, no fat child, plenty of blacks and Asians in the gang? ——–Oops did I say gang? How dare I? This could lead to innocent children seeking out drugs to run across county lines for a bag of sherbet.
Oh yes. Nowdays, teachers are so sympathetic and nurturing wrt pupils that they unleash torrents of abuse at pupils daring to question gender ideology and not that long ago, they wanted them masked all day force-swabbed twice or thrice to make sure they’re not infected with any germs which might be dangerous to teachers. By the time I was in elementary school, corporal punishment was still legal in German schools and I don’t remember this as anything out of the ordinary or particularly scary. Occasionally, someone got slapped or otherwise hit[*] when acting up. Well, our parent also did that. The systematic torture and constant treatment as dangerous not-quite-humans of 2020 – 2021 was in an entirely different ballpark.
Whom are these people trying to fool?
[*] An English teacher of mine once threw a heavy keychain into my face from 5m distance because he – correctly – suspected that I was reading a dime novel behind my schoolbook instead of following his rather boring lecture. That was a bit overdoing it but apart from that, I have no real reason to complain about teacher violence.
I known a girl that looks like plug!
I’ve got her phone number if you want it?
Kids like reading about meanness and anarchy. It’s cathartic. I was probably more like Walter the Softy in real life, but I loved Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx and the Bash Street Kids. Their pint-sized villainy was an outlet for all my frustrations. Inclusive Minds are a___holes who have no concept of the joy and pain of childhood. They’re perverted adults forcing an ideology on children that includes effectively wrapping them in cotton wool, permanently infantilising them and not preparing them for the grown up world. That’s why fairytales are great, why uncensored Roald Dahl is great, why the Beano, Dandy and Topper were great. The world is shitty and hard to live in. It also requires a sense of humour to handle it as an adult. Take those tools away from children and you get… well… the modern world!
Good luck Beano – we’ll miss you.
Viz next?
The name will have to change: it might upset blind people!
Viz was tamed a long time ago actually.
It’s been weak for 20 years or more – they never surpassed the one off strip “The Thieving Gypsy Bastards”
My 10 year old son recently purchased an old Beano Annual in the charity shop because he said he felt the recent stuff isn’t funny and he wanted to see if the older stuff is. He wasn’t disappointed.
Yes, personally I don’t object to them adding a range of characters but if in the new version the kids are all talented and the adults all supportive and nurturing, what’s funny?
Nothing!
When do we get a fat/spotty ‘global majority’ character; or are all the smelly, poxy ones going to be Anglo-Saxon as always?
The only minor character flaw in one of the new kids is neuroticism. Maybe I will be downticked for suggesting that such a thing is undesirable.
Fun is racist. And people whose future will better be destroyed by a climate emergency shouldn’t be laughing about anything, anyway. Wailing and gnashing of teeth is the only thing which is age-appropriate for them.
There’s an interesting synchronicity between modern slow walking climate protestors and historic wailing women walking down the street whipping themselves with their own hair!
“We have never seen [woke] as a pejorative term,”
Reminds me of the cartoon where Garfield says to the daft puppy “Did you know that some people are so stupid that they don’t know when they’re being insulted?”… And the puppy just sits there wagging it’s tail.
I wonder how the weekly sales chart lines up with the increase in wokeness?
Dennis the Menace and Beryl the Peril ———Dennis the nice little polite lad———–Beryl the cutey full of sweetness and light.—- Oh dear wokery is such a tedious bore.
Billy Whizz clearly had an amphetamine abuse problem.
Round my neck of the woods “Plug” is still how we refer to the generic ugly bloke or bird.
I remember one issue where Plug had a job in a yoghurt factory. He’s look at the milk and it would turn sour!!