Unseen Pansy Potter - behind the scenes of this week's Beano

This week's Beano features another favourite Pansy Potter strip - Breath (you can have fun looking for my name hidden in the background, it's on sale till Tuesday). Above is an unpublished rough script, Back.

I say favourite as if it's an old classic that's appeared before. It hasn't, it's brand new. It's just that when I produced all these Pansy Potter strips earlier in the year, there were some that I thought were just okay and some that actually made me laugh when I wrote them. This week's Breath was in the latter camp. Whereas, above, you can see a script that didn't really make me laugh, and didn't make the editor laugh either, which is why it remains in rough form and was never finished and published. Seemed a good idea at the time.

Disturbingly the credits box has disappeared from this week's Beano so, apart from those of us who've signed our work, all the other creators are anonymous. I quite liked this week's Little Plum, for example, and have no way of knowing who wrote it. Maybe it's only a temporary move for "guest editor" Andy Murray and will return next week. A very good Dennis meets Andy lead strip this week, which I shall credit to Nigel Auchterlounie, but who really wrote it we may never know.



Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing Bananaman in The Beano, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries and art centres - email for details, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter. He's been writing and drawing comics for 25 years, he must know something.