The Beano comic, which gave life to Dennis the Menace, celebrated its 60th birthday yesterday.
A bumper anniversary double issue of the comic, which also brought readers the Bash Street Kids and Minnie the Minx, appeared on newsagents' shelves, as well as on a special Internet site, to mark the publishing milestone.
At its peak, the comic sold more than two million copies a week, although it now sells only 250,000. A recent British survey put it ahead even of football magazines as the favourite reading matter of boys aged nine to 14.
It is not only youngsters who appreciate the Beano's sometimes anachronistic world, however. Fans include the footballer Paul Gascoigne, the playwright Tom Stoppard and even a smattering of bishops. Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and, last August, Tony Blair, have all made appearances in Beano comic strips.
Dennis the Menace, who has terrorised the comic's pages with his faithful Abyssinian wirehaired tripe-hound Gnasher since 1951, even boasts a 1.5 million-member fan club.
Since the Beano was first published in July 1938, the comic's publisher, D.C. Thomson of Dundee, has consciously resisted change and only three characters have ever graced the comic's cover, Biffo the Bear, Dennis the Menace and the original cover star, Big Eggo, an ostrich with an appetite for anvils and unexploded bombs.
The first issue cost 2d. Surviving copies, especially complete with the Whoopee Mask given free with it, are now worth thousands of pounds. The Beano was the first British comic to use the American technique of putting speech bubbles to characters' mouths, rather than using captions below the pictures.
The Beano's editor, Mr Euan Kerr, said: "We are very careful to make changes only gradually. It is our readers who decide which characters stay and which go. We have a stock of new characters waiting in the wings, but they don't get their chance very often."
But the future for the quintessentially British comic is becoming more international, with Dennis the Menace already speaking German, French and Gaelic in an animated TV series.
"He's on his way to becoming an international terrorist," he said.