Minnie the Minx at 70

Who thought Minnie the Minx was Dennis the Menace sister? Well I certainly did. And when I first started reading about the female fury at the tender age of six, it certainly seemed that way to me. After all, there was such a striking similarity between the two of them. I have to admit that I even thought that they might be twins. (This may be because being a twin myself, and knowing the enmity between me and my sibling, it was the obvious thing to think.)

They even dressed the same, with their customary red and black stripy
jumper, and with Minnie’s trademark black beret covering her fiery red hair, it gave the impression she had a head of bushy black hair just like Dennis. Minnie’s cat Chester and Dennis’ dog Gnasher are the same colour, so you can forgive me for making the assumption at such a tender age. But where Gnasher would aid and abet Dennis, Chester the cat would simply observe from the side-lines. But their character traits, like their pets were quite different. Whereas Dennis would, forgive me, menace the target in his latest instalment, Minnie was more conniving, a trickster of sorts, and was always up to mischief, though she wasn’t scared of rolling up her sleeves in favour of a good scrap when the need called for it.

Armed only with her trusty catapult there wasn’t anyone that Minnie was
scared of taking on. Minnie was created in 1953 by Leo Baxendale at the suggestion of Beano editor George Moonie after stating that they needed a female Dennis the girl readers could get behind. D.C.Thomson the company that printed the Beano provided the scripts, but Baxendale soon made Minnie his own, imbuing the strip with his own brand of humour.

Minnie was introduced to the world as something of a wild child. Baxendale has in the past likened her to an Amazonian warrior, which explains a lot! In her premier strip we find Minnie’s mum at her wits end, unable to tame her daughter’s wild ways. Trying to find a way to direct Minnie’s energies in a more creative direction, she gives her a scrapbook in which she can write and draw. Minnie being Minnie takes the name “scrapbook” quite literally and proceeds to wreak holy havoc on her classmates, later thanking and boasting to her mum in the last panel that with the aid of the book as a weapon, she won nine scraps that day!

And with that her character as a Minx was forever sealed. Starting off as a six panel strip, it wasn’t long before her runaway popularity garnered her very own full page strip each week, in full colour to boot. She even crossed
over into the hallowed pages of Dennis, with their very first appearance together landing Dennis in hot water while Minnie and her minxing ways got off Scott free. Thus their love/hate relationship was cast.

Hailing from Beanotown it’s a foregone conclusion that Minnie would attend the Bash Street School, and having an on/off affiliation to The Bash Street Kids gang, only really getting on with Toots, the only girl in the group. For much of the time, Minnie is something of a loner…not that she needed anyone to aid her in her missions of mischief making!

When Baxendale left D.C. Thomson nine years later in 1962, young artist Jim Petrie took up the mantle of the Minx wrangler, and drew her exclusively until his retirement in 2001, racking up an amazing 40 year run on the same character by drawing some two thousand strips in that period. Only The Bash Street Kids strip, drawn by David Sutherland can boast a longer run of a single artist on one strip.

Tom Paterson and Ken Harrison carried the torch and other than a slight reinterpretation in appearance and supporting character design aside, Minnie the Minx is the same old loveable troublemaker of old, though maybe a little more politically correct in this touchy feely 21st century.
For instance, the usual target for her minxing was a lad known simply as
Fatty Fudge… and for obvious reasons once you clap eyes on him.
Not very P.C. you must agree. Totally motivated by junk food, Minnie
would often use this Achilles heel to take advantage of the large lad, and
also use his weakness as a way of making him an accomplice in some of her nefarious deeds. And though just a supporting character, Fatty would go on to star in his own strip for a while. I need not add that his strip was always food related.

Other enemies Minnie has made along the way comprise mainly of her neighbours, as well as Soppy Susan, and let’s face it, with a name like that she’s bound to end up on Minnie’s hit-list. There’s also P.C. Thyme who Minnie was often running afoul of.

The popularity of Minnie would see her image translated to other media
in her seventy year reign of terror in the Beano. She’s popped up as collectible figurines, also appeared in videos; DVD’s, plastered on the
front of Tee shirts, and even appeared in the computer game Beanotown Racing as a playable character rocketing around on her jet propelled skateboard.

But most famously of all, a statue was erected in 2001 in the city of
Dundee, alongside another of Desperate Dan from the Dandy comic.
Sculpted by Dundee artists Susie and Tony Morrow, commemorating
the characters’ association with the city, they were unveiled to the public by local schoolkids, as was only right, and they’ve been strong tourist attractions ever since.

You don’t get much better than that, and it only goes to prove the
strength and popularity of characters like Minnie, who you would
think in this technologically advanced 21st century of ours, such
characters would have long become redundant.

It just goes to prove that everyone loves a bad girl…

Martin Dallard

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