There's a discussion on Facebook at the moment about this annual cover so I thought I'd expand upon it here. This memorable cover to The Beano Book 1970 was painted by Dave Sutherland, who was the regular cover artist on the Beano annuals at that time (and for many years afterwards). He still draws The Bash Street Kids in The Beano every week of course, and this year will be his 53rd year on the strip!
The interesting thing about this annual cover is that the week the book was published, that week's Beano comic (No.1416, dated September 6th 1969) tied in with it, showing what happened next! A rare British comics crossover. Although the book cover was by Dave Sutherland, the strip on the weekly was by Biffo's regular artist Dudley Watkins. Sadly, by the time this saw print, Mr.Watkins had passed away suddenly the previous month.
That same issue also carried an ad for the latest Dennis the Menace annual on the back page, with a vague link to that week's Dennis strip drawn by Davey Law.
My thanks to Jimmy Tweed again for sending me more comic scans from his collection. There's some fascinating items here that I've certainly never seen before.
Above is an early appearance of Dennis the Menace gatecrashing Biffo the Bear's cover strip in 1952. We all know that Dennis eventually gained the cover slot in 1974 but back then he was just an interior strip. Considering that Dennis the Menace had only started in The Beano the year before, I'm guessing that this 1952 strip is the first time he'd appeared on the cover. A sign of his immediate popularity perhaps, and a foreshadowing of great things to come! The brilliant Dudley Watkins drew Dennis a bit bulkier than his regular artist Davy Law did, but it's a great strip all the same.
Moving on a few years and here's a 1958 cover with Dennis making another appearance! Again, artwork by Dudley Watkins who drew him closer to the traditional version this time. (Although to be fair, like most comic characters, the design of Dennis did fluctuate a bit even under Davy Law until he settled on a comfortable design.)
As a bonus item, here's a Dennis the Menace strip by Davy Law from the back cover of The Beano from late August 1955, ending with an ad for the very first Dennis the Menace Annual. (Proving that annuals have always been published several months before Christmas, although these days they come out even earlier, in July.)
The celebration of Halloween as a commercial venture is relatively new to the UK, only really taking hold over the last 20 years or so. These days you'll find a whole aisle in supermarkets taken up with Halloween merchandise. This wasn't the case years ago, and Halloween was a very low key affair. All you needed was a turnip and a piece of string.
Comics didn't celebrate Halloween at all back in the 1960s but there would sometimes be one or two strips at the end of October that would touch upon it. Here's the cover to The Beano No.1319 (October 28th 1967) by the great Dudley D. Watkins showing Biffo the Bear and his pals and their 'turnip lanterns'. Yes, in Britain it was the tradition for turnips to be carved out, not pumpkins! So, if you can't get hold of a pumpkin today, or the shops are charging too much, buy a cheap turnip instead and revive the old tradition.
(Yes, that's the actual copy I had 46 years ago. I had The Beano reserved at my newsagent every week, which is why he wrote my name on the top.)
