British comic magazine The Beano reaches 2000 issues in November 1980


It was November 1980. A time when the concept of an internet that could tell you the nutritional value of a kumquat in under a microsecond was still, well, utterly preposterous. And amidst this glorious tapestry of human folly, new wave, and fashion faux pas, something truly remarkable occurred. The Beano, that venerable, vibrant, and utterly unhinged periodical, published its 2000th issue.

Picture the scene: it is 1938, and the editors of D.C. Thomson & Co. in Dundee are staring at a blank sheet of paper the way early man once stared at fire—equal parts terror and the dawning realisation that this thing might be useful for keeping warm, cooking mammoths, or, in their case, keeping small boys quiet on a Saturday morning. They fill the sheet with Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, and the Bash Street Kids, whose collective IQ hovers somewhere around room temperature on the Kelvin scale. The comic is launched. Britain shrugs, buys a copy, and promptly forgets to cancel the subscription for the next four decades.

Fast-forward to November 1980. The two-thousandth issue lands on doormats with the gentle thwack of inevitability. Over the decades in between, The Beano has outlasted the British Empire, the three-day week, the invention of the Rubik’s Cube, and at least seventeen distinct hairstyles worn by members of the royal family. It has survived paper shortages, rationing, the advent of television, the advent of color television, and even the advent of Ceefax.

Two thousand. Think about that for a moment. Two thousand weeks.

It’s a number that speaks of persistence, or just a stubborn refusal to yield to the logical conclusion that, eventually, all good things must come to an end. Or, in the Beano’s case, all chaotic, ink-splattered, perpetually anarchic things must come to an end. Yet, it didn’t. It simply…continued, leaving a trail of laughter and occasional mild discomfort for authority figures in its wake.

The Beano would double the feat by publishing its 4000th issue in August 2019. And it's still going today. Like beans on toast and Doctor Who, leave it to the Brits to keep a good thing going infinitely.

Location: Dundee, UK

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