Beanotown’s Hugh Raine on creating for the comic he loved as a boy, the importance of this art form and really wild fun with Betty and the Yeti
Hugh Raine devoured The Beano as a child, so being admitted to Beanotown as an adult and having the opportunity to delight new generations of children by creating some of its most popular characters and strips is special. “To work for The Beano is a dream come true, it really is.”
He recalls buying The Beano whenever his parents let him, and The Bash Street Kids annual was a summer highlight. “I used to look forward to later sunsets because I could go to bed and it would still be light enough to read my annual.”
The passion for comics didn’t abate as he grew, and he got into Marvel alongside the US indie scene. After training in animation – something he says is a great fit thanks to similar storyboard principles – he began his career as a commercial artist. Then the call came from The Beano, and he’s delivered strips to D.C. Thomson’s Dundee home from his West Yorkshire studio ever since. Nowadays, of course, it’s done digitally, but he says the late great David Sutherland – who drew The Bash Street Kids from 1962 until 2023 – still hand-delivered every strip to the office.
One of the comic’s longstanding treasures – Betty and the Yeti – is Raine’s work. He’s the third person to take on this delightful duo over the years and it came about after he pitched a new idea. “I submitted an idea to them of a little girl and a blue monster. They liked it but said: ‘This will tie into a property we’ve already got, so can you make the girl Betty and can you make the monster a yeti?’. It was the best of both worlds, as I’d pitched my own idea but there was this existing property that I could use.”
“With a comic, there is a need to work out what’s going on in between the panels or in between the scenes – all this extra work goes on in the mind”
This was some nine years ago and now the first in a collection of rib-tickling strips has been published as a book. They are themed, so Betty and the Yeti: Friends at First Fart! delivers some seriously bad whiffs, alongside scary scrapes and near misses. Betty is a girl with impressive inner resources. She conceals a huge hairy beast from her unsuspecting parents and navigates every misadventure with aplomb. As Yeti puts it succinctly: “Betty clever!”
The book starts with fresh material, including the story of how this loyal partnership came about, while some strips have been cleverly tweaked to keep things pacy with a blend of shorter and longer plotlines. It’s a very funny read, introducing existing fans and the uninitiated alike to unforgettable characters and silly situations.
Comics and graphic novels are having a moment, with both Dog Man and Wild Robot now transferred to the big screen, but Hugh Raine has always believed in this art form’s range. “We’ve got people like Jamie Smarts, from the Bunny vs Monkey series. He’s done some incredible steps in pushing comics to the forefront. He’s a real ambassador in fighting for comic books to be considered as the art form that they are.
“This is Jamie’s point not mine, but we have such a rich heritage of comics in this country. I think people just associate them with their childhood, but they can be about absolutely anything. I think a lot of people don’t know about the small press scene and the American indie comic scene.”
There remains, of course, a sniffiness in some quarters about graphic novels and comics as valid reading matter for children. This, says Raine, is to misunderstand the way they tell a story. “There’s this idea that if you’re reading a novel, you’re doing the imagining, you’re doing the work. But with a comic, there is still a need to work out what’s going on in between the panels or in between the scenes. There’s still all this extra work that goes on in the mind.”
Hugh Raine is unusual in taking charge of both words and pictures (more typically on The Beano and other titles it’s a writer and illustrator pairing). It’s one of the things he loves most about his job – and the words always come first, even if it starts small. “I’ve got an app on my phone to take notes. Sometimes it will have a single word on it, like bowling. And then it’s ‘what can Yeti smash?’
“It’s like a puzzle really, and this is the bit I enjoy – the challenge. You’ve got that set-up but there’s maybe not a punchline yet. If I can tie something in at the end that references something that happened earlier on, I feel like I’m a genius.” Pacing things in the right way is vital – Raine points out that comic strips can tell stories in lots of different ways. “A three-panel strip is a set-up and a punch line normally, while a half page is a bit more than that, but if you get into two full pages suddenly it’s an epic adventure where you pepper jokes in.”
Sometimes he will test ideas on his daughter, who has perfected the eye roll and long-drawn out ‘Daaddy’ response, but he invariably trusts his own judgement. “I’ve never really grown up really so I think I’ve got a good sense of what will work.” Certainly, storylines and humour pair brilliantly – a mark of Raine’s ability on that score. “I do take it seriously – the structure of the story. I take that craft seriously, even if there is the odd fart joke along the way.”
Beano: Betty and the Yeti – Friends at First Fart by Hugh Raine is published by Farshore (£9.99). The second in the series will be published this summer.
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