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| Images copyright D.C. THOMSON & Co., Ltd |
Thanks to a generous benefactor, I now own issue #646 of The BEANO from 1954. Just think - WATKINS, REID, BAXENDALE and LAW - all in one single comic. Things seldom (if ever) got better than this, and I'm sharing these masterpieces of art with all you Criv-ites! So - where's my BLUE PETER badge for unselfish generosity?
And just think - The BASH STREET KIDS weren't even called that then. A slice of history, or what?!
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8 comments:
What a beauty and thanks so much for sharing! Can you hear all the furious clicking going on?
I can indeed, JP. You're under arrest.
Looking at the Bash Street Kids I can't see Plug (or was it Pug ?) so this was before they were properly developed, was it ? One of my father's sayings when he saw somebody posh on TV was "I bet he/she never went to Bash Street school" but thinking about it I'm not sure how he knew about the Bash Street kids - unless he'd been reading one of my Beano annuals. He never mentioned any other Beano characters.
The BSKs as we know them today appeared gradually over time, CJ. Only Danny, Toots and the caretaker appeared in the first strip in 1954. Plug, who is said to have originally been called 'Pug' until Smiffy added an extra 'l' to the name (although I'm unsure if this occurred in the actual history of the strip, or was a retro-rewrite in a later story), wasn't quite as ugly in his early appearances. His ugliness developed over time as Bax found his style, although reprints of earlier strips often had Plug's face redrawn to match his later appearance. The BSKs became part of popular culture within a few years, and unruly kids were often described as 'Bash Street' kids to denote a lack of breeding or sophistication, so your father wouldn't need to have read them himself to understand the reference.
I have a couple of Wizard comics from the mid 50s that featured the Bash Street Kids. One had a colour one panel, full front all action page similar to those found in the inside covers of 50s Beano annuals. I cannot for the life of me remember if they were called the BSK or something else then.Memo to self - pay a visit to the roof space and have a look.
Ken.
Could it have been under their original title of 'When the Bell Rings', Ken? Let me know what you find out up in the loft, will you?
Yep, you were right, 'When The Bell Rings' in the Wizard 1955. Prose story with great front cover. If memory serves me right Desperate Dan was also briefly in the Wizard in a series of stories about when he was a young boy.
Ken.
Hope you're looking after those Wizards, Ken. They might be worth a shilling or two.
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