The Kids of Class 2B

A great traditional thing to find under the tree on Christmas morning is this year's Bash Street Kids Book! Of course, the ones from the mid-1980s, when I was young, were the best, because things were so much better all round in the good old days. But the Kids were of course around long before I was born, and are continuing their misadventures unabated even today, so it's good to see there's at least a Bash Street Kids special on the shelves of Smiths right now, to delight the latest generation of readers!

You might remember how back in May 2022 I went on about how the Kids weren't as good as they used to be, only to find immediately afterwards that the good people at DC Thomson had taken my words to heart and revamped the strip once again. This new collection reprints the strips from that relaunch, with the usual smattering of bonus features to fill the 68 pages (including covers), it's a great successor to the classic books, and I heartily recommend it to anyone still shopping for stocking-fillers!

(Although six ninety-nine for a comic? Spoilt brats these days, getting such expensive things in their stockings. We were happy with a satsuma and a kick up the bum!)

Now, introducing the cast is an important part of this kind of comic, and for me the definitive roll-call of the Bash Street Kids came in the Beano Book 1979 - perhaps more because of it being the first one I read rather than any great literary merit. But I can still reel off that list of the classic nine characters, and I remember being grateful to have a proper checklist, since the weekly adventures wouldn't usually identify everyone by name.

A lot of the strips in the 1979 Beano Book still ended with violent, brutal and furious corporal punishment being meted out on the heroes by a parent or teacher. This was phased out over the eighties as fashions changed. Teacher hasn't wielded his cane in anger for many years now. This year's collection, though, gives us a very nice introduction to the Kids and their personalities - even to the extent of telling us their full names!

Wilfrid's name is misspelt, which is annoying. The Beano needs to hire me as a proof-reader to catch things like this. I inherit this pedantry from my dad, who was a teacher very much in the mould of the Teacher of 2B, and "Wilfird" makes me want to descend on the Beano offices with a cane of my own...

But apart from that, these names aren't all new! They're historically-established, in many cases, dating from the text stories that appeared in the Wizard comic in 1955! I don't own any of these classic comics, but they can be found for sale at reasonable prices in places like here and here. I'm so desperately poor at the moment, that I can't really buy them myself, but... it IS the season of giving, and if anyone was looking for a last-minute gift for MY stocking...

Anyway, the "Bash Street School" stories in the Wizard were narrated by Sidney Pye, and included characters like Death's Head Danny Morgan, Fatty Brown and Jimmy Smiff. This was before the comic in the weekly Beano had settled down into a fixed cast, but the main stars were already there. It's good to see the Kids have, mostly, kept their earliest identities!

A few points - Danny is short for Daniel (that's what Teacher always called him), so that should be mentioned here. Smiffy, as mentioned above, was a Jimmy in at least one Wizard comic, although to be fair he's not the type who can always remember what his name is. His surname, though, has always been given as Smiff rather than Smith before now. Stevie's real name is Super Star? Did he legally change it, or did his parents want to call him that? And check it out - Toots is Kate! I don't know if that's ever been mentioned before...

Yes, I approve of this. Long may the Bash Street Kids continue to wreak havoc!

The crazy 1986 calendar

The cartoon talked about in yesterday's blog post was first shown in October 2022, making its British debut in December that year. The book Cosmic Frontier that Gus and Hunter geek out about (and which Luz's mother was similarly geeky with when she was younger) was written in the nineties about the year 2008. "Can't wait for that new year's party!" Hunter enthuses.

All these dates might be confusing to some, but they feel perfectly natural to one who grew up in the golden age of the Transformers comic published by Marvel UK! It just puts me in mind of the strange chronological confusion of the Transformers' adventures in 1986, as published in the British comic.

By the summer of 1986, the Transformers comic had settled into a nice pattern. The monthly American comic could be reprinted, each issue split in half and spread across two consecutive weekly issues of the British title, and the other two or three weeks of a month could contain original British material, fitting cleverly in between the action of the US stories. And by this time, the British material was much, much better than the American stuff it had been created to fill in time waiting for! It was always a big disappointment when we had to go back to the American stuff after a really good run of British adventures written by Simon Furman!

The summer and autumn of 1986 was glorious - fifteen consecutive weeks of British material, with "In the National Interest" followed by the sensational "Target: 2006!" That was the story that unlocked the way to write British stories going forwards - the American stuff was becoming increasingly interlinked and harder to squeeze British side stories into, but they could now write stories set twenty years in the future and not conflict with the present-day American material at all!

Which is good, because both the UK and US stories in 1986 got into the habit of mentioning specific dates, and in 1986, it all got a bit weird. Here are four pages from the UK Transformers comic...

Transformers №84, cover date 25th Oct '86

(British Transformers comics were published a week before the date on the cover)

Target: 2006 takes place over a five-day period, with maybe a day either side for the prologue and epilogue. One day in the middle of this period, as shown on the time-travelling future Autobots' screen there, is the 11th of October, 1986.

(I mean, I suppose they could be writing in the American format, and it's the 10th of November, but no. By the year 2006, we'll have eliminated all these strange foreign ways of writing dates and standardised everything to the correct British format!)

And so after the whole time-travel adventure has been resolved, we can move on to further adventures for the present-day Transformers, and go back to reprinting the American comic...

Transformers №89, cover date 29th Nov.86

(I'm copying the erratic punctuation of the date on the cover of each British comic here, just because it's another thing I find fascinating. Just not quite fascinating enough to write a full blog devoted to it, just yet...)

This is reprinting the first half of the 21st issue of the American Transformers comic, cover-dated October 1986 and published in June. And set, very specifically, on July 4th. But it definitely follows directly on from Target: 2006, because that story is written to lead into it, with the Insecticons (including Bombshell, seen here), travelling to Earth to go on this mission. Time seems to have gone backwards.

But then, America is a weird and unfathomable place to the young (and somewhat dim) ten-year-old British reader of the time. It was probably news to me that the 4th of July was some kind of special day over there, and I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd told me that in America, July 4th happens in November.

Incidentally, notice that the Marvel UK people have corrected the spelling of "colourist" as usual, but have left "penciler" untouched. Unusually sloppy! But let's move ahead another month, for the Christmas issue of the British comic!

Transformers №93, cover date 27th Dec.86

It was traditional to have a Christmas story in British comics, even if, as in this case, we'd just had four weeks of summer-based American stories and another two to come directly after it. And actually, this British story kind of puts the lie to my claim that the British ones were always better than the American - this one seems like speedily-written filler stuff produced at the last minute when someone realised it was Christmas!

But it's definitely shortly before Christmas 86. Buster Witwicky has put up a non-reusable banner in his bedroom to prove it to us! Does he buy a new one with the current year's date every December? The boy's got too much pocket money.

And again, this one makes specific reference to stories that have appeared in the British comic in the last few months. Even throwing in a last-minute rewrite of the dialogue to cover up for Trailbreaker being in this story when he was meant to be near-fatally damaged during Target: 2006. So we've gone October-July-December in our stories so far - the next one must take place in 1987, right?

Transformers №95, cover date 10th Jan.87

We're back to the American continuity. This is the second half of the 23rd American issue, dated December and published in August 1986. Which makes the date on Donny Finkleberg's cheque there all the stranger - it's October 4th now?

A certain amount of time passes between issues of this continuing story, but it doesn't really feel like three whole months have elapsed since that July 4th adventure. The humans don't seem to make much progress in these three months, and the robots must have spent a lot of time sitting around doing nothing in that period if it really has been that long! And why did an American comic published in late August throw in a date of early October? Has the British time-travel continuity spread across the Atlantic?

I think Donny has just got understandably confused by the way the 1986 calendar works. It was a strange year, but a very fun one if you were a dim-witted ten-year-old who loved Transformers comics!