A Brief History Of British Comics 1937 - 2009

It all began way back on December 04th, 1937, when DC Thomson took the bold move to release a children's comic book, The Dandy Comic (left), but use the American speech bubble style, used in short newspaper strips, rather than the more traditional (for then) single panel with a paragraph of text below it. The Dandy is still being published today (2009, all be it in a new look, see later) and thus holds the title of the worlds longest running comic book. The Dandy Comic proved popular enough that DC Thomson released a second comic, The Beano, on July 26th, 1937.

In 2009 there are only twelve known copies of the first issue of The Beano (right). One was sold recently for just over £12,000. The Beano is the second longest running comic book and is, like The Dandy, still running today and is, it seems, sticking to its roots.

1941 saw the beginning of World War II and DC Thomson was doing it's bit by encouraging people to recycle their old comics, hence the rarity of comics around this time. Paper and ink were also in short supply, so much so, that The Beano and The Dandy Comic were released on alternate weeks and no new publishings were started. 1949 saw them return to their normal weekly schedule and in 1950, The Dandy Comic, became, simply, The Dandy.

After the end of WWII, a population boom happened with more and more children reading, and wanting, comic books. DC Thompson stepped up and on February 07th, 1953, they released The Topper (left). Unlike The Beano, and The Dandy, The Topper was in A3 format, twice the size of its predecessors. Hard to see in the small thumbnail, but note the small Oor Wullie character in the top left. While I doubt he made an appearance in The Topper, Dudley D. Watkins worked on all the comics I've mentioned thus far, including Thomsons next comic.

Not one to stop its laurels, DC Thomson released yet another comic, The Beezer (right). First released on January 21st, 1956, The Beezer was, like The Topper, also in A3 format. Watkins worked on The Beezer, note the similarity between the character Ginger, and Oor Wullie.

By now, other publishers were bigginning to sit up, and take note, of the booming comic market. Fleetway entered the fray with it's first comic, Buster (left). Buster was billed as Buster : Son of Andy Capp (a long running comic strip, shown right), and began life on May 28th, 1960. Notice how, Buster, and Andy, both have the same distinctive green cap.

Somewhat disgruntled with DC Thomson, artist Leo Baxendale left Thomson and was immediately snapped up by Odhams Press and given free will to launch a 'super Beano'. Baxendale's answer was Wham! Wham! used Baxendale's near legendary status and launched to much aplomb on Jun 20th, 1964. Wham! was a blatant Beano rip-off with similar characters and stories mostly all drawn by Baxendale. The initial success of Wham! forced Odhams to release, on January 14th 1967, a second comic, Pow!

By now, Fleetway Publications had bought up Odhams and formed IPC, soon to become one of the largest comic producers.

January 13th, 1968, brought the end for Wham!, by now it was a shadow of it's former self with 'ghost artists' trying to duplicate Baxendale. It was merged with its sister title, Pow! which was, by now, starting to reprint American Marvel comic strips to pad its self out. By September 07th of that same year, Pow! had also ceased.

1969 brought a new idea to the comic market from Fleetway/IPC. October 18th brough us Whizzer & Chips. The format was that the reader would either be a Whizz-kid, or a Chip-ite. The chip-ite section was a pull-out from the whizz-kid outer comic. While June 06th, 1970, brought Cor! (right).

The first of many mergers came in 1973 when Knockout merged with Whizzer & Chips, but a new comic, Shiver & Shake appeared on March 10th. It used the new familiar two part format started by Whizzer & Chips.

March 09th 1974 IPC gave birth to Whoopee! (left) a whopping forty pages no-less! By the end of June, Cor! had merged with Buster, and later in the year Shiver & Shake merged with the newly released Whoopee! (right).

The next couple of years brought no new, big, releases, only more mergers. In 1975 both Buzz, and Sparky, merged with The Topper. 1976 forced Cracker to merge with The Beezer.

Cheeky (left) was born in 1977, October 22nd to be exact.

1978 had one main merger when Krazy joined Whizzer & Chips (right).

Plug merged with The Beezer in 1979, but there was also the release of Jackpot! on May 05th.

A new comic, Nutty (left), was released on February 16th, 1980. Nutty brought us Bananaman who is still in publication today (2009) in The Dandy (aka: Dandy Xtreme). February 02nd brought the merger of Cheeky in to Whoopee! Proof, if it were needed, that things were bad came in the form of The Topper losing it's A3 format and going A4. 1981 The Beezer follows suit and also resizes to A4.

January 30th 1982 spelled the end for the short lived Jackpot! comic. But with the bad, comes the good. On the scene came Wow! comic and DC Thomson starts the release of Beano, and Dandy, 'comic libraries' (right), small square comics, each issue featuring one long story.

After only one year of life, Wow! merged with Whoopee! on June 25th 1983.

Nutty merged with The Dandy on September 14th, 1985. In the same year Whoopee! merged with Whizzer & Chips.

In 1987 all IPC comics were grouped into the Fleetway arm and sold to Robert Maxwell.

1988 brought The Beano it's first revamp in it's fifty year history (left). More pages, more colour and a slightly wider than A4 format.

The big names were becoming less and less. The Beezer and The Topper merged on September 15th 1990 to form The Beezer and Topper (right), and on October 27th, of the same year, Whizzer & Chips merged with Buster.

In 1991 the Fleetway properties were bought by Egmont who merged it with their own comic division (London Editions) forming, Fleetway Editions.

August 21st 1993 was the end for The Beezer and Topper. It is unofficially merged with The Beano which is now in full colour and publishing Numskulls, previously printed in The Beezer.

Beano, and Dandy, comic libraries are replaced by Fun Size editions (left) in 1997, but they are now in full colour, but also with some reprints...

In 1998 The Beano (left) unveils Bea (right), Dennis the Menace's baby sister. The Beano logo is also more rounded now, they add eight more pages and it is the end of hand drawn speech bubbles.

The new year of 2000 was not a happy one for Buster. Poor Buster took off his green hat, to show Dennis the Menace like hair, Ivor Lott became poor, Tony Broke became rich and Buster, the comic, ceased to be.

After 2002, Egmont dropped the Fleetway Editions name entirely. Egmont own the intellectual rights to all the Fleetway characters and comics (with a few exceptions) created after 1970. While IPC Media own the rights to all characters and comics pre-1970.

Although The Beezer (and The Beezer and Topper) ceased in 1993 the odd annual for them was produced, but 2003 brough the last of them with The Beezer Book (left).

2004 brought a radical, and some would say controversial, change to The Dandy (2005 issue, shown right). Gone from the cover were the Dandy stallwarts (Desperate Dan etc.) they were still inside, but on the redesigned Dandy cover was Bart Simpson.

2007 brough BeanoMAX (left)and another, even more controversial, Dandy design. The BeanoMAX was aimed at slightly older kids with more of a TV/music theme to it with several Beano names in it, the artwork was quite different. The Dandy was renamed Dandy Xtreme with half of the magazine being TV/music based with Dandy Comix being a comic pull-out. This radical change is viewed as being a redesign, Dandy Xtreme (The Comic Formerly Known As The Dandy) is still the longest running comic in the world.

Thankfully, The Beano has remained largely unchanged. It has just under 40 pages, is in full colour, no longer uses hand drawn speech bubbles, has (mainly) the same characters as it used to, and with very similar artwork to the original artists of the golden years.

Long live The Beano!