The little miss and I were on a day trip to Brighton, strolling through the Lanes and looking through comic shops I'd been a regular visitor to when I lived down there.
One place had a huge collection of (surprisingly reasonably priced) old Beano annuals. I'd already given C the choice of buying any of the other comics or books in the store but she zoomed in on these, and we ended up picking up half a dozen of 'em.
The Beano has been in print since 1938, and is still going strong today, mostly because it's a comic that keeps true to its core set of characters but isn't afraid to respin and reinvent them from time to time (though we won't talk about the 'trendy' Dennis the Menace they tried in the early noughties, that was an unmitigated disaster).
With a fantastic pool of talent to pick from, the modern Beano (including the annuals of course) has now woven its way into our lives and our bookshelves, and it's very rare to find C scoffing breakfast without at least one of her annuals in front of her, even though she's practically read the print off them several times.
For a while we religiously bought the weekly comic as well, until we began to run out of storage space for them. Characters such as the Bash Street Kids, Minnie the Minx and of course Dennis and Gnasher are now such a colossal part of Brit comic pop culture, iconic characters that have ensured every new generation of readers that discover The Beano will find a fave character or strip to pin their colours to (C absolutely loves Calamity James when drawn by Tom "Tam" Paterson, purely because of the utterly ridiculous and hilarious jokes and details he weaves into every strip).
She's still collecting the annuals, and just like when I was a kid, they're an absolute must for her christmas stocking (do other parents still buy their kids annuals for christmas?) There's no finer thing when the house is busy and bustling with christmas preparations than being a kid who can escape the craziness by wrapping themselves up in a nice warm blanket with a copy of a Beano annual to escape into.
Original review links:
ReadItDaddy's Booky Advent Calendar Dec 2nd: The Beano Annual 2014 - 75 years of Beano Brilliance! (DC Thomson)
Booky Advent Calendar: Christmas Eve - "ANNUALS!"
Nearly a century of mischief, mayhem and fun - Happy 80th Birthday to The Beano, the generation-spanning comic.