Comic: The Bash Street Kids

 

Probably the most famous school in English comics – and there have been many when you include the older storybooks such as The Magnet – is Bash Street in the Beano.

The Bash Street Kids centres on Class 2B of the aforesaid school. The strip started in 1954 and has been going in one form or another ever since.

The strip involves a large cast of characters including Erbert Hoover, Fatty Brown, Plug Plugsley, Aristotle Smiffy, and Spotty Cameron. They were kipt in control (Of a sort) by a cane-wielding schoolmaster simply called Teacher. You can read details of them and others (and much more besides on The Bash Street Kids on Wikipedia.

Frozen in the era when it began, it portrays Class 2B of the Bash Street School in Beanotown, where the teacher and headmaster wear mortarboards and gowns and the students sit at wood desks with inkwells.

Many of the stories involving The Bash Street Kids are dreamlike and unlike in some other school stories (Billy Bunter comes immediately to mind) although there is a lot of cane waving the pupils are rarely actually caned. At least, not ‘on screen’. Canings often take place behind closed doors or you see pictures of the Kids humorously suffering the aftermath.

Here are a few examples of the Bash Street Kids picked at random. Look out for more during 2023.

If you can’t wait, you can find a huge number of examples across the decades on the British Comics Compilations website.

Picture credits: D. C. Thomson

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