ABSTRACT
As a child, everything about being a Beano reader seemed magical. The satisfying sound as the newspapers dropped on the mat, the anticipation as you found the precious comic in the folds of a newspaper, the blessed regularity with which it appeared, no matter what, and the wonderful way that your surname was written across the top by the newsagent, emphasising the fact that this was your comic and no one else’s. After all this, came the magic of reading the comic itself. For me the approach was ritualistic. Find somewhere relatively private, curl up and work through the comic in the order that I deemed to be appropriate. A very conformist child, I would always read the front cover first, even though Biffo the Bear was not my favourite character, then to the middle to see what the Bash St. Kids were up to, and then in order of preference until the whole comic had been read. One reading was never enough. There were jokes to be savoured over and over again, and sometimes puzzling references that needed to be mulled over, until they were understood to my own satisfaction.
