One of the newest strips in the weekly Beano, Rubi's Screwtop Science, started life in CBBC's 2016 series Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed; Rubidium "Rubi" von Screwtop (daughter of Professor von Screwtop, a re-imagining of a mad scientist who originated in Lord Snooty and His Pals all the way back in 1939) was one of several new friends for Dennis created for the TV series who was subsequently transplanted into the weekly comic. She started out as a supporting character in Dennis' own strip, but also made some appearances alongside Dennis' other two best friends from the series, Jemima "JJ" Jones and Pie-Face (a new take on Dennis' friend from the nineties and noughties) in a strip known simply as Rubi, JJ and Pie-Face, then in 2017 she got a strip of her own.
JJ and Pie-Face also had their own stories for a while, but Rubi's has proved by far the most popular, and the other two only seem to appear as supporting characters these days. (Pie-Face's pet potato Paul also briefly had a strip of his own, which is the only strip ever to be headlined by an inanimate object; certainly in D. C. Thomson's history, and quite possibly in any comic, anywhere, ever.) Rubi's Screwtop Science began as a half-page Funsize Funny in early 2017, and was notable as the first strip in the comic's history headlined by a disabled character.
One curious thing about RSS is that, in its comparatively short run, it has had an unusually high turnover of artists. Whilst the majority of its first year in Funsize form is drawn by Rianne Rowlands, there's a couple done by Emily McGorman-Bruce:
A year or so after her debut, Rubi was promoted to a full page (which is an unusually rapid ascent for a Funsize strip), initially drawn by McGorman-Bruce:
In early 2019, Shannon Gallant took over:
After about a year, though, McGorman-Bruce came back:
The majority of the strips in 2021 are done by Rianne Rowlands...
...but Rubi has no fewer than three artists across the year: there's a month or two of Shannon Gallant strips in April and May, then McGorman-Bruce briefly comes back to do the strip in the last two issues of the year.
The majority of 2022 strips are also done by Rowlands, but there's also a handful by Gallant early in the year, and in the autumn another new name starts doing the strip, Spanish artist Mel Prats:
(That's a truly excellent joke at the bottom of the right-hand strip, incidentally.)
The first Prats strips still have Rowlands' Rubi in the title banner, and he seems to be trying to consciously 'ghost' her style early on, perhaps indicating he wasn't planned to be the full-time artist at first, but nevertheless Prats went on to be the longest continually-serving artist for the strip to date...
...Until earlier this month, when George Gant became the story's fifth artist in less than a decade.
All of Rubi's former artists are still drawing for the Beano, or at least were earlier this year: McGorman-Bruce currently draws the week's Beano Boss and Har Har's Joke Shop, a strip based on characters originating in the 2009 TV series (which probably took precedence over her drawing Rubi); Rowlands was most recently sharing Gnasher and Gnipper with Barrie Appleby but doesn't seem to have a full-time strip in the comic at the moment; Gallant understudied the late, great David Sutherland as artist for The Bash Street Kids in the last few years, and took over the strip full-time following Sutherland's passing; and in a mini-reshuffle caused by the Bananaman reboot, Prats became the new artist for Billy Whizz a month or two before Rubi strips by him stopped appearing. (George Gant, for his part, also draws Angel Face Investigates, a strip about a preteen detective also based on a character from the 2009 CBBC series.)
Beyond that, though, one of the notable tweaks made to the comic shortly before Rubi's strip began was to more firmly establish that all the different characters lived in the same town, with more frequent crossovers between the various stories. This, plus the frequency with which stories can be improved by a dose of mad science, means that Rubi has very quickly notched up appearances in virtually every strip, drawn by nearly every artist, which might previously have been filled by "generic smart kid".
Obviously she most frequently appears in Dennis' strip, drawn by Nigel Parkinson:
But she's also a frequent presence in Minnie the Minx, currently drawn by Laura Howell:
And Roger the Dodger, drawn by Barrie Appleby:
A Billy Whizz strip where she's drawn by Wayne Thompson, who has done several other stories (including Bananaman, which he's done since the final days of the Dandy in late 2010):
She's not as frequent a presence in other strips, but here's a Calamity James story where she's drawn by the now-former artist Leslie Stannage:
Here she pops up in a Dangerous Dan strip by the Sharp Brothers:
The Numskulls, drawn by Nigel Auchterlounie:
Betty and the Yeti, drawn by Hugh Raine:
Hunt Emerson's Make Me a Menace:
A jokes page and a puzzle page where she's drawn by Alan Ryan and Steve Beckett respectively:
And as a nice one to finish on, here she is in a Bash Street Kids story from 2020 by David Sutherland:
Sutherland tended to hew closer to the usual artist's design, and this looks like he's based it on the Rowlands version. (There are a few curios in BSK strips in 2021 and 2022, when a few new Kids were transplanted in from existing strips to end the antiquated situation of a class of entirely white schoolchildren with one girl, but that's another post.)
In the 20th century it wasn't unusual for a strip to finish because its artist had left or died, rather than a replacement being sought (when Les Pretend artist John Sherwood died in 2003 they originally ended the strip, but popular demand saw it brought back drawn by Trevor Metcalfe) and I do wonder if the increased number of opportunities for characters to appear drawn by someone else makes it easier for readers to accept change.
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