THE BIG ISSUES
Some milestone Beanos see debuts for Dennis, Snooty and Minnie while, in others, the comic joins the war effort to poke fun at Nazis
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Only 25 copies of the first edition of The Beano are known to exist.
Many of these remaining copies are in poor condition so better quality ones are highly valued.
A 28-page edition of the first-ever Beano reached £17,300 at auction in 2015 but experts believe it would now reach in excess of £20,000.
In which aristocratic Lord Snooty foils one of Hitler’s plans to drop a giant beehive on Britain.
The Beano, which went to a fortnightly publication due to paper shortages, produced anti-nazi propaganda during the war.
After the invasion of Germany, Nazi plans were discovered to arrest Beano artist Dudley D Watkins for the crime of “Gross Disrespect”.
Opposite a story called The Quick Tricks Of Granny Green (The Trickiest Granny Ever Seen) was the first appearance of Dennis The Menace, The Beano’s most famous character.
The first strip was unlike the Dennis we know now: there were no speech bubbles and our antihero was without his trademark black and red striped jumper.
Coincidentally, on March 12, 1951, another comic strip named Dennis the Menace debuted in the US.
Minnie The Minx made her first appearance in 1953, meaning she is the third longest running Beano character, after Dennis The Menace and Roger The Dodger.
She was created by artist Leo Baxendale, an artist from Preston in Lancashire who become one of the most famous creators of comics of all time. Minnie, like Desperate Dan, has her own statue in Dundee.