| Beano strip | |
| No image available | |
| Doctor Beastly | |
|---|---|
| Current/last artist | Brian Walker |
| First appearance | Issue 3106 (26 January 2002) |
| Last appearance | Beano Annual 2005 |
| Regular characters | Doctor Beastly |
Doctor Beastly's Tales of the Slightly Unpleasant was a comic strip in the British children's comic The Beano published by D. C. Thomson & Co.. The eponymous character first appeared in a Crazy for Daisy comic strip [1] in January 2002. This strip was entitled Doctor Beastly's Tales of the Unpleasant starring Daisy and Ernest; the title was similar to the name of the strip he would later star in. The strip did not appear again until October 2002 when it was revealed that Doctor Beastly would be a guest star in the Beano for the month of October as a way to celebrate Halloween. The character appeared in all four Beanos in October 2002 which was issues 3142, 3143, 3144 and 3145.[2] After that, the character never appeared again in the weekly Beano, however he did reappear for the Beano Annual 2005.[3]
The strips featured Doctor Beastly narrating a slightly unpleasant tale often involving magic, ghosts, curses and the occasional clown.[4] Each tale Doctor Beastly told always had its own name such as A fete worse than Death.[5] The tales were slightly similar to an older Beano strip, which appeared in the first issue of the Beano,[6] Uncle Windbag, which involved an uncle who told tall tales. The strip was also similar to the children's cartoon and book series Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids as they both involved a narrator telling a slightly unpleasant tale and were aimed at children. The strip also contained many similarities with the Scream Inn strip from Fleetway's Shiver and Shake, also drawn by Brian Walker [7][8] and featuring a top-hatted character who looked like Doctor Beastly, called the Innkeeper.[9]
The first Doctor Beastly strip, where he appeared in a Crazy for Daisy strip, was drawn by Nick Brennan and all subsequent Doctor Beastly strips including the one in the 2005 Beano Annual were drawn by Walker. The strips were usually only two pages long except for the final Doctor Beastly strip in the weekly Beano which lasted for six pages[5] and the one in the Annual which lasted for four.[3] In 2008, he appeared in a section about mixed-up animals in the BeanoMax. In the BeanoMAX issue for Halloween 2011, the strip from the 2005 annual was reprinted, possibly as a one-off.
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