Big Eggo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Issue 1
- (30 July 1938)
- Issue 3950
- (1 September 2018)
| Big Eggo | |
|---|---|
| Character from The Beano | |
 | |
| Publication information | |
| Star of | Big Eggo |
| First appearance |
|
| Last appearance |
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| Appearance timeline | Issues 1 – 358, 3093, 3185, 3925 – 3950 |
| Creator(s) | Reg Carter and R. D. Low[1] |
| Author(s) | Uncredited Lew Stringer |
| Illustrator(s) |
|
| Also appeared in | |
| Beano works |
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| [2][3][4][5] | |
Big Eggo was a British comic strip series about an eponymous ostrich, published in the British comic magazine The Beano. He first appeared in issue 1, dated 30 July 1938, and was the first cover star.[6] His first words in the strip were "Somebody's taken my egg again!" It was drawn throughout by Reg Carter.[6]
When creating a new comic in his "big five" series, R. D. Low wrote a newspaper advert in The Daily Telegraph for new artists.[1] He was certain that his new character would be a black-and-white animal which would stand out in a colourful world; an idea he similarly used for Korky the Cat in The Dandy.[1] Reg Carter (who had originally published Mickey Mouse comics throughout the 1930s) responded in January 1938 with a few ideas and sketches.[1] Carter and Low's eventual idea would be an ostrich that misplaced his eggs. In an exchange of letters, they planned to name him Oswald the Ostrich,[1] but eventual editor George Moonie suggested the name should be changed to Big Eggo.[note 1] The ostrich became the first front cover star of the comic until he was replaced in 1948[7] by Biffo the Bear.[1]
Common plots
The majority of Eggo's tales were about him looking for an egg he had misplaced, which would lead to a situation in which he would either discover that the egg was not an ostrich egg; in one story, he stole an egg from a zoo and a penguin hatched out[8] and another was about a monkey stealing his egg and replacing it with a crocodile egg.[6][1][9]
Other stories would have him in a wacky situation, such as eating an alarm clock which alerts a fire station he walks past,[10] or another where Eggo is caught in a hot air balloon after trying to stop a goat from eating the anchor rope.[11] In some stories, he was also a zookeeper, and there were the stories in which he would be acting anthropromorphic, such as dog sledding,[12] shopping, or walking pigs on a lead as if they were his pets.[6]
Declining appearances
When Biffo the Bear took over as the cover star, Big Eggo would appear on the front cover's masthead,[13] but would appear inside The Beano with the other comics, such as Lord Snooty and Pansy Potter.[6] In World War II, rationing forced comics to stop being published too frequently; The Beano would publish fortnightly until the end of the 1940s.[14] Big Eggo, like many Beano strips, dedicated stories to encouraging young readers to help with the war effort, such as recycling paper; one story was about Big Eggo, bothered by flies, creating fly paper out of sheets covered in glue after he accidentally knocks the recycling into some glue baths.[15] He would continue to have stories until 1949,[16] and his front-cover masthead appearances would drop in 1954, being replaced by Dennis the Menace.[6] The sudden disappearance of the stories was due to the death of Carter in April 1949,[17] which was not revealed until 2008,[18] although rumours surfaced weeks before that readers had fallen out of love with the character because he was a bird, not a mammal, and therefore did not relate to the audience, unlike Biffo, a bear.[19] George Drysdale took over as artist for the strips after Carter's death until the series' conclusion.[20]
On the 7th March 2018 Big Eggo returned, illustrated by Lew Stringer, to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Beano. These comics were shorter, being 3 or 4 panels long. The strip ran throughout the year and finished when the anniversary was over.[21]
