Minnie the Minx
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Minnie the Minx is a fictional character in a comic strip in the UK comic The Beano. Created and originally drawn by Leo Baxendale, she first appeared in issue 596, dated 19 December 1953.
A world champion "minx", she would seem to be a female counterpart to Dennis the Menace on the surface, even wearing a similar red-and-black jumper. However, as David Law's Beryl the Peril had already taken on the role of a female Dennis, Baxendale imagined Minnie with the ferocity and strength of an Amazon warrior- naturally, she is tougher than most boys.
Minnie is mischievous and impudent, but needless to say absolutely not flirtatious, though the more normal usage of "minx" would be applied to a flirty woman.
Minnie has had a problem with many neighbours. Two examples are a baby called Delilah, who had a snob of a mother. She got Minnie plenty of punishments, including extra baths.Minnie defeated her by tricking her into eating a frighteningly hot curry and embarrassing her mother. The mother had just entered Delilah in a baby contest. The curry effect on Delilah happened at the time her boastful mother had arranged for a journalist to take her photo. Her mother was similar to another mother called "Mrs Proudpants" who was boasting about her baby who she said was sure to win the contest, just like Delilah's mother. Another was a complete snob as well. A girl called "Chavette Bling." She had a motorised skateboard, a global positioning gadget, a "Nukia Slimline Camera phone" many super friends, a cool iPod, a lot of goodies from her phone and a letter. Minnie envied her so much, especially seeing as her own parents are misers sometimes and don't normally buy her so much stuff, she had phone that weighed a ton and was rarely used and hardly ever got mail, and threw insults at Chavette, but stopped when the letter Chavette Bling got was a mega-long phone bill. Chavette probably had to pay it herself and it probably climbed as high as 6 thousand pounds.
Minnie has a cat called Chester, whose rival is Bonzo (a dog) from number 12. Chester has occasionally been seen in separate strips alongside fellow feline Beano characters Dodgecat (Roger the Dodger's pet cat) and Winston (from the Bash Street Kids). Other characters in the strip include PC Justin Thyme, Soppy Susan and Fatty Fudge. Generally these characters are the butt of Minnie's pranks, but Fatty Fudge particularly is also sometimes called upon to assist Minnie in a particularly elaborate plot, since his services can always be bought with a bag of sweets.
Fatty Fudge himself was briefly the subject of a spin-off strip in the early 1990s that parodied famous films, usually in ways involving the character's love of food (examples including 'You Only Eat Rice' and 20,000 Leeks Under The Sea.
Jim Petrie took over drawing when Baxendale left DC Thomson, Petrie drawing the strip from June 1961 to issue 3052 (dated 13 January 2001) after which he retired. The artist since then has been Tom Paterson.
Like Desperate Dan from The Dandy, she has a statue in Dundee.
