Big Eggo

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 colorful 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[5] by Biffo the Bear.[1]

The majority of Eggo's tales would be 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[6] and another was about a monkey stealing his egg and replacing it with a crocodile egg.[4][1][7] Although a male bird, it has never been explained why Eggo is obsessed with eggs or whether he could lay eggs like a hen, however, this could have been intentional to make the stories absurdly amusing.

Other stories would have him in a wacky situation, such as eating an alarm clock which alerts a fire station he walks past,[8] or another where Eggo is caught in a hot air balloon after trying to stop a goat from eating the anchor rope.[9] In some stories, he was also a zookeeper, and there were the stories in which he would be acting anthropromorphic, such as dog sledding,[10] shopping, or walking pigs on a lead as if they were his pets.[4]

When Biffo the Bear took over as the cover star, Big Eggo would appear on the front cover's masthead,[11] but would appear inside The Beano with the other comics, such as Lord Snooty and Pansy Potter.[4] In World War Two, rationing forced comics to stop being published too frequently; The Beano would publish fortnightly until the end of the 1940s.[12] 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.[13] He would continue to have stories until 1949,[14] and his front-cover masthead appearances would drop in 1954, being replaced by Dennis the Menace.[4] The sudden disappearance of the stories was due to the death of Carter in April 1949,[15] which was not revealed until 2008,[16] 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.[17] George Drysdale took as artist for the strips after Carter's death until the series' conclusion.[2]

Big Eggo would begin to reappear sporadically after the character left the masthead. The next time Eggo made a cameo in the comic was for the 2000th issue celebration[18] at the top of the cover of the first Beano reprinted on the back page, saying "Ah! The good old days!"

A one-off strip called Lord Snooty's Day Out drawn by Ken H. Harrison[4][19] reveals that he is living in the Beano Retirement Home, along with Jonah, Lord Snooty and Jack Flash.[4] Two years later, Eggo would meet Gnasher and Gnipper for the 65th anniversary.[20]

He also made a surprise return to the Beano in issue 3925 (7 March 2018) in a three-panel strip for the start of a new miniseries, written and drawn by Lew Stringer, to tie in with the comic's 80th anniversary, which continued for 24 more issues until September.[3] In one, he was joined by Blotty and 'Enry.[21] He was also the only character from the first generation to appear on the front cover of the 2019 Beano Annual; his first story's gag was re-enacted on the back cover with Gnasher handing Walter a crocodile egg that hatches with the baby biting Walter's bottom.[22] He appeared in the inner cover artwork with 254 other characters from The Beano's history and was in the time-travelling comic feature "Doctor Whoops!"[23]