This week's issue

[big bad bri]

Its a shame the pages are being filled with magazine stuff..prefer comic pages myself..

same here i just hope it doesnt go the way dandy did with extreme

[Digifiend]

It won't. They already have BeanoMAX for that.

Other changes that are less obvious: Ivy the Terrible has been dropped, and Super School has moved to MAX. SS has been absent for a while, and Ivy seems to have given way to one of these non-comic pages.

The one plus point is that Roger and the retro pages seem to be the only reprints.

[Lew Stringer]

It won't. They already have BeanoMAX for that.

Other changes that are less obvious: Ivy the Terrible has been dropped, and Super School has moved to MAX.

Only for one issue. The other strips in stock have a winter theme so you won't be seeing those for a while. Have a few more to draw which hopefully will appear before then.

[Peter Gray]

As usual loved the retro pages...Bob did some great stuff for the Three Bears each panel with different expressions and added humour..loved the large spoon and Castor Oil Ma was holding...

Also a very good Meebo and Zuky Dam Busters tributeish..
and the Fred's Bed

Still feel the fillers are not that good...
The Bash Street art from readers and jokes could be put on one page and then the other page could have a retro Bash Street..or a new comic page of the Bash street..

the cover for The Beano next week looks good..
also the page number for the Numbskulls is better..

I'm sure we all spotted the change to Rogers story to fool todays kids in the first panel..

[Digifiend]

Yeah, they called it a retro Beano collection, so that the Calamity James reference still made sense, now that he's been dropped.

[Jonny Whizz]

Not a bad attempt to hide the fact that it was old, but I think it would have been better if he'd referred to his old Beanos. I wouldn't really call old issues of comics 'retro' as such, but maybe this term is simply considered 'cooler'.

[Digifiend]

I reckon the phrase "retro Beanos" was used to match with the classic reprint pages. But calling them retro is a little odd, given just how recently James was dropped. They don't have to be from the 80s, they could be from only two years ago. Hardly retro. I know why they did it, but yeah, just saying "old Beanos" would've made more sense, as that could refer to any back issue. Last week's issue is not retro, but it's no longer new, and thus can be called old.

[Jonny Whizz]

Mind you, come to think of it, Calamity James has been around for longer than it seems he has - he made his debut almost a quarter of a century ago (it's 25 years since he first appeared this November). This could be because he became less regular over the years - I remember in 2004 he appeared regularly in the first half of the year, but then wasn't seen from May to November, but then appeared in five of the year's seven remaining issues. I don't quite know why that happened, his absence could be explained by Tom Paterson being busy with other strips but that doesn't quite explain why he appeared regularly on either side of that, as opposed to being spread out (like when Tim Traveller was phased out of the comic, he would appear once every three months or so before being finally dropped).

Strange really, I still don't really think of him as an 'old' character as such but it is actually a long time. Same with Les Pretend, who was in the comic for 20 years. Again it doesn't seem like he was around that long, although after 2003 his appearances were either irregular or reprints. By contrast, Ivy the Terrible appeared not that long before James but I feel like she's been around a lot longer than he has, because she was a fixture in the comic. All three strips have been dropped though. Similarly, Freddie Fear still seems quite recent, but he's been around almost a decade - I think that's because I started reading the Beano shortly after he was introduced.

[Digifiend]

Yes, James was a brand new character when this Roger strip first appeared (we know it has to be 1986-88). He debuted in 1986, and I bet that this particular episode of Roger is from within a few months of James's debut.

[AndyB]

Go back and look at the covers of the Beanos and you'll see why they made something of them being old.

(Hint: Dennis strip on the front cover, not full-page illustration)

[Peter Gray]

Roger was on a telephone banana not a mobile banana...another change to make it up to date..

Loved the cover this week..
the feature I like is Fred's Bed..
not keen on the others..the Bash street fan posters and jokes could be combined to one page..
Rogers diary is not very visual to look at..

[diegotheterrible]

It'd fun to tackle Roger, were i ever to return to The Beano, but i'd update his wardrobe if given the chance

[Digifiend]

Speaking of wardrobe, I hope the Bash Street Kids get an update when Dave Sutherland finally stops drawing it (which hopefully won't be for a while yet!). They and Dennis are the only characters who still wear shorts with a long sleeved top, which isn't the norm nowadays. Dennis of course offered an explanation in the 90s, which showed that if he did wear long trousers, his famous knobbly knees would rip them! What's Bash Street's excuse?

[swirlythingy]

You think the kids have the most outdated clothes in Bash Street?

Teacher's excuse - elaborated on several times - is that he has to wear old clothes because of everything the kids throw at him, but of course we know it's because he's a comic character and nobody would recognise him in anything else. Same goes for the kids, and there would be a national outcry if Dennis's gear changed - heck, there was a minor national outcry (courtesy of the usual suspects) when he started wearing a slightly different design of shoes after the 2009 revamp.

Roger, uniquely, already has been updated quite a bit compared with his original incarnation - he grew into long trousers in the 1970s, started wearing trainers in the 1980s, and his tie disappeared in the 2000s. (I always thought he looked better with it on, but that's probably "the best is the one you grew up with" talking again.)

The problem, of course, is that if you try to "update" anything, it looks hilariously old-fashioned and uncool within eighteen months, whereas nobody bats an eyelid at a 1950s time warp because that's just how it's always been and it's long since dropped off most people's fashion memories. Thanks to the cyclic nature of the gigantic multibillion global con that is fashion, wearing last season's garments is a hanging crime compared to wearing clothes from, say, last decade. (Bell-bottoms excepted. Nothing will bring those back.)

So, in short, while I'd love to see Diego come to Roger's rescue, anything beyond a very minor outfit update (such as those already implemented) can only bring pain. Tread carefully when "modernising". We don't want another London B4 12.

[Jonny Whizz]

Billy Whizz also changed outfit - he originally wore shorts, started wearing long trousers (tracksuit bottoms) in the late 1970s and began wearing the full lightning bolt tracksuit in 1992. He also started to wear trainers instead of plain shoes around the same time. However, this seemed to happen largely without rancour, as did the changes made to Roger (and also to Beryl the Peril), even though they were quite significant outfit changes being made to fairly well-known characters, whereas much more minor changes to Dennis, the kids and Desperate Dan would likely cause an outcry.

I agree that Roger looks better with his tie, although I started reading the Beano before it was dropped, I think because other than the kids none of the other young human characters wear a collared shirt. Some other characters used to - Billy Whizz did before his outfit change, although not with a tie like Roger.

Also, did anyone else notice in last week's Roger strip how when Roger was on the 'mobile' (banana), he said he was speaking to Dave? As long as the Beano uses reprints of Bob's work, Dave won't actually appear, as he wasn't introduced until about three years ago. He didn't appear in the recent Barrie Appleby reprints either, which were about six years old, so from before he first appeared.