Handmade screen print on cotton paper.
Signed and numbered out of 200 in pencil by the printer, John Patrick Reynolds.
Standard size: 26cm x 19cm - with spot red
Medium size: 48cm x 38cm - with spot red and blue, and benday dots behind (see photo)
Large size: 76cm x 56cm
The great thing about the Bash Street Kids is that there’s somebody for pretty much everybody to relate to: all humanity is there from tall skinny ones to shorter fatter ones.
And I love that many of their names are unabashedly direct: there’s Fatty, Spotty and Plug (ugly), just there would be in any classroom.
And for the record, as well as those three, the regular characters are: Danny, Erbert, Sydney, Smiffy, Toots, Wlfred and Cuthbert. And, of course, Teacher.
The strip, created by Leo Baxendale as When the Bell Rings, first appeared on 13 February 1954. The story became The Bash Street Kids in 1956.
The Beano is of course also home to those other icons of British children's comic humour Dennis the Menace and Gnasher.
Incidentally, the word beano is apparently short for "bean-feast" and means a feast, a celebration and a good time.
This screenprint has been officially approved by DC Thomson. I am the first and only screenprinter with permission to use the images of Dennis The Menace and Gnasher in my work.
These are all original screenprints. An original print is a work of art printed by hand, from a plate, block, stone, or stencil (which is the case here - screenprints are made using screen stencils) that has been created by the artist for the purpose of producing the image.
Pictured are the standard-size version, with spot red, and the medium-format print, with a blue stippled background.
© D.C. Thomson & Co., Ltd.