B&T

In 1990, two of D. C. Thomson's remaining weekly humour titles, the Beezer (running since 1956) and the Topper (running since 1953) merged to form a publication which was called, not unreasonably, Beezer and Topper. The nature of the combined comic was a little different to other comics mergers -- usually the 'junior' title would merge into the 'senior' one, but these two titles got equal billing in a publication which was essentially considered a new comic in its own right, starting the numbering back at issue 1.

The Topper and the Beezer had arguably not moved with the times in the way D. C.'s other publications, the Beano and the Dandy, had, and this joining of forces saw several long-serving stories -- some of which had been running since the beginning -- get quietly retired. Amongst the stories not carried forward were Ginger, who had been the Beezer's cover star for some 28 of its 37 years, The Badd Lads, The Hillies and the Billies, Hungry Horace and Figaro, whilst several others would be retooled to better appeal to a modern audience, and a variety of entirely new strips also appeared.

Beezer and Topper would last for 153 issues and just under three years, and then both titles disappeared from weekly newsstands for good, although the Beezer Summer Specials and Christmas annuals would continue to be issued until 2002 (and the quarterly reprint titles The Best of the Beezer and The Best of the Topper until 1996 when they were supplanted by the all-purpose monthly Classics From the Comics); several of the 'legacy' characters moved over to the Beano and Dandy, but for others B&T would prove to be their last chance saloon.

The original plan here had been to scan in one issue from early in the run, to cover all the characters who'd crossed over from Beezer and Topper (some of them were phased out later on, whilst other new stories were chopped and changed). It wouldn't have been anywhere near as representative of the whole run as our look at Hoot was, and it'd probably have been worth scanning in one of the final issues later on to compare.

However, upon unearthing the issues in my possession I discovered that B&T had such a large roster of stories that most of them didn't appear every week, so I went for a different approach: from across five different issues, here's one example of each 'legacy' character, and a selection of notable strips that were unique to the merger.

Little Mo had been a regular in the Beezer since 1964, and continued to appear in the Summer Specials and Christmas books, but her appearances in Beezer and Topper seem to have been fairly erratic and she became the first 'holdover' character to be phased out entirely around early 1992. The strip was drawn by Bob McGrath for all its existence as a weekly, but other artists took over for the specials after he died in 1998.

The Banana Bunch had been with the Beezer since more or less day 1, appeared in B&T through to the end... but then did not get picked up by the Beano or Dandy in 1993. (They had several different artists over the years, but Tom Paterson took over for this final incarnation.) Possible explanations for this are coming up, but they were resurrected for a stint or two in the Dandy in the noughties. Scratcher, meanwhile, was a spin-off of a strip simply called Pam which had debuted in 1988; the spin-off survived to B&T (although it doesn't seem to have done so for very long), but the original story didn't!

Scaredy Cat (John Dallas) had debuted late in Topper's life, circa 1988-89, and was also a constant throughout B&T's lifetime but didn't survive its closure.

Foxy, drawn in this incarnation by the wonderfully named Evi De Bono, had been in the first issue of the Topper but weaved in and out of favour over the years and disappeared from B&T a few months before it ended. (This version seems to modernise the character a bit, being less focused on his attempts to steal the farmer's chickens.) The character wasn't initially carried over but enjoyed a few runs in the Dandy later in the nineties and noughties; many of these seem to be Beezer & Topper reprints, but De Bono drew at least one new story for the Dandy Book 2001.

This is a revamp of the spy caper Send for Kelly, most notably replacing his assistant Cedric with a preteen. The original version had been in the Topper since the early sixties and had enjoyed a two-year stint as the cover story in the seventies, but this incarnation -- still drawn by original artist George Martin -- was dropped a few months after Little Mo. (Earlier versions of the strip had told serialised stories over several issues, whereas this incarnation is more gag-a-day, but I'm not sure exactly when the change was made.)

Baby Crockett hadn't quite been in the Beezer for its entire lifetime, but did debut in issue 34, and survived the whole lifetime of B&T only to not get carried forward to the B or D; maybe there was too much overlap with existing stories about toddlers in those comics such as Ivy the Terrible and Growing Paynes, but that's only a theory. (Bill Ritchie, who had drawn the strip for all its existence, retired at some point in the 90s, but that doesn't seem like a barrier to it ending...)

Geezer had debuted in the Beezer only a year or so out from its end, but was another story to appear in B&T from cradle to grave and frequently graced the cover later on in the run. I don't know how much his failure to survive the comic's closure can be attributed to the fact his name is a pun on the title of the comic he appears in, but again he may have been too similar to existing stories in either of his potential new homes (most notably Roger the Dodger, down to also being drawn by Robert Nixon).

I covered The Numskulls not long ago, of course, but it's worth noting they seem to have appeared in every issue of B&T, always appeared in the same place and were always in full colour, which is not the case for many other stories.

Well, we've reached the big one. Indisputably the most famous character in the Topper, quite possibly the most famous D. C. Thomson character to originate outside the Beano or Dandy apart from Bananaman, Beryl the Peril had been running since issue 1, had her own Christmas annual for several years, was the Topper's cover star for its last few years and was the de facto cover star of the Beezer and Topper for much of its run in addition to having a further strip inside the comic (another rare example of a strip that appeared in every single issue).

Obviously Beryl was carried forward to the Dandy, and unlike other B&T survivors she did so immediately and with the same artist (Robert Nixon again): she appeared in the final issue of Beezer and Topper one week, and in the Dandy the week after entirely unchanged. She became rather sporadic over the course of the Dandy's multiple ill-advised retools in the noughties, but new strips with her appear to this day in the Dandy Annual.

(You may have been wondering why, if the Topper was three years older, the Beezer was the one that continued in the form of specials. One of the big factors attributed to this was that with Beryl moving forward to the Dandy, the Topper had lost by far its biggest, most iconic character and hence a key selling point, as she could not appear in both.)

Blinky (George Martin) was another 'modernised' version of a legacy character, having originally been the adult Colonel Blink in the Beezer. Curiously, it took him a couple of months to show up in the Dandy, not doing so until early 1994; for his new home a new artist, Nick Brennan, took over, so perhaps it took a bit of time to find a tone that fitted with the rest of the Dandy? (Brennan's take on the strip was always different, but got considerably more 'wacky' over time.)

Adrian the Barbarian (Fleetway defector Sid Burgon, although early strips were done by Nigel Parkinson) was another story that debuted near the end of the Beezer's life in 1989, and was the comic's final cover star. Despite appearing to be another story that appeared in every issue, he wasn't carried forwards; however, reprints were used in the Beano for a few months in 2008 under the title Olaff the Madlander.

Although never resurfacing as reprints, Sting (Bob Dewar) otherwise has a remarkably similar history to Adrian.

Despite having been in the Beezer since the beginning and having a three-year stint as cover stars, Pop, Dick & Harry (several different artists over the years, but this one is Brian Walker) were retired in mid-1992.

Wabits (Gordon Bell) was another carry-over from the Beezer that had only debuted in 1989, but curiously didn't start appearing in B&T until around five months in, and was dropped another six or seven months after that.

Pup Parade (also Gordon Bell, who did a large number of 'anthropomorphic animal' strips for D. C.) is a curious one: a spin-off of The Bash Street Kids about the kids' dogs, who all bore remarkable resemblances to their owners, it started life in the Beano, moved over to the Topper in 1989, survived the merger until near the end, then popped back up in the Beano later on.

Tricky Dicky is another strip that stands out as rather curiously not surviving the comic's closure: he'd only debuted in the Topper in 1976, but had a seven-year stint as cover star from '79 to '86 and was more or less ever-present in B&T. However, there were several attempts to introduce him to the Beano in the late nineties and early noughties (still drawn by his original artist, John Dallas), the first of which was in one of the occasional 'Comic Idol' contests where several strips would have trial runs and readers would vote for who they wanted to join the comic permanently.

Dicky had some further stints in the Beano from 2013, first drawn by Laura Howell and later Rianne Rowlands, but he now seems to have been supplanted by Har Har's Joke Shop, a strip about a girl called Harsha whose parents own a bakery. He does still make the occasional background appearance, making him the sole strand of Topper DNA present in the last of the weekly humour anthology comics.

Moving on to characters created for B&T, we start off with what else but a quartet of characters drawn by my favourite comics artist John Geering:

Whilst none of these were carried forward (indeed, Birdbrain had vanished before the comic hit the halfway point), Robohog is not dissimilar to one of Geering's strips for the Dandy, Sherman Tortoise (with one hopefully obvious difference).

Des Troy (Barrie Appleby) cropped up in a couple of Beezer books further down the line (the merger-specific characters generally appeared in the Beezer or Topper 'side' of the comic, and Des was consistently considered a Topper character); again, similarities with existing strips such as Smasher in the Dandy may have prevented him from surviving in a weekly form.

I'm not terribly sure there's anything I can add to Crazy Daisy...

Gnatasha (Bill Ritchie) was another spin-off from the Beano: at the conclusion of the "Who's Gnicked Gnasher?" story arc in 1986, Dennis the Menace's faithful hound became a father to a litter of puppies called Gnipper, Gnatasha, Gnancy, Gnanette, Gnaomi and Gnorah. Whilst only Gnipper was retained in the Beano permanently and the others were given away to loving homes, we did follow Gnatasha's adventures throughout B&T's run. It's a cute idea (even somewhat meta -- Gnatasha literally gets adopted by another comic), and with the Beano the only weekly D. C. T comic still going it's a shame you couldn't do something similar these days.

This strip with either a very long title or a very short title, depending how you look at it, wasn't carried forwards... sort of. In 1996 a very similar story from the same artist (David Mostyn) began in the Dandy, Hector Spectre, the key difference being that Hector haunted a stately home and was forever being pestered by tourists. (The only B&T-exclusive story to directly transfer to another comic upon its home's closure was Potsworth & Co., based on the animated series known as Midnight Patrol in its native America, but unfortunately there aren't any examples of that in the issues I have.)

Fred's Bed is another interesting one -- it was used as reprints in the Beano from 2007, but the story proved so popular that new strips (some by the original artist, Tom Paterson) started running from around 2009 until 2012. Surely the most successful and recognisable strip created for the comic, even if it is frequently associated with another title altogether.

Some of these strips -- particularly the ones with new characters -- are a shade more surreal than the typical D. C. Thomson fare, the comic often has an uneven tone, and I wonder if maybe some of the artists and writers had an inkling Beezer and Topper wasn't going to be around for that long and wanted to see what they could get away with. (As we've previously seen, the Beezer annuals published after B&T ended are even stranger.)