I hesitated before buying copies of The Beano for my sons. Here was a comic that pretty much created my sense of humour back in the eighties and early nineties. As a kid I had stacks of Beano issues wherever I could stash them. Each weekly issue was a thrill, a big event in my week. I would read every issue cover to cover, then again, repeating this throughout the week until the next one arrived at the newsagent.
Once the new issue was in my hands, the previous issue would join my teetering pile of recent issues and cherished older issues that had been gifted by friends and family. This was before superheroes stole my attention entirely, but my Beano era did run alongside my obsessions with Transformers and The Real Ghostbusters.
Those things were glorious, but they didn't take place in Beanotown. As rough around the edges and chaotic as Beanotown can be, there's always the promise of sausage and mash ('Beano tea' as we call it at Castle Hawnt) once the mayhem comes to an end and everyone heads home to their perpetually bemused and befuddled parents. Along with the manic jokes, menacing, dodging and minxing, there was always something reassuring about it. The Beano is one of those things I'm genuinely grateful for having in my life.
So how would my two very modern sons react to it? Would it be the same? Would Beanotown have become a place of textspeak, emojis and down-with-the-kids crassness? Would I pay money to have my long-standing love of the Beano tarnished?
Thankfully not. While the cover price has certainly changed (£2.75 as opposed to the 32p I used to get it for in prehistoric times), the Beano is still very much the same comic it always was, and probably better than ever before.
The art is modern yet totally in keeping with the Beano of yore. The scripts are really, really funny. The new characters fit perfectly (Betty and the Yeti is a firm family favourite). Stories are often embellished with little tasks or games that add an extra bit of entertainment.
Strips are representational. The inclusion of strips based on young readers is a stroke of genius, as are the pages of fan photos that really help kids to feel part of it all. This is a comic that understands its heritage yet understands its audience even better.
While it isn't polybagged with a bunch of tat like several other titles aimed at young readers (titles such as Toxic and its ilk, which are very light on actual content), the Beano earns every penny of its cover price by offering a genuine feast of fun every seven days. The kids love it, and both me and my wife are reading it too.
Despite its rich and lengthy history, the Beano is far from a nostalgia item or an analogue antique in a digital world. It's a vibrant piece of quality entertainment that has, in all honesty, never been better.
It's good to be back in Beanotown. The world has become a very strange and often harrowing place, but in Beanotown there's always room for some mischief, and always enough room left for sausage and mash.
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