'The Beano's' Lord Snooty (Part 2 of 4) by Dave Miller
/The Lord Snooty comic
‘Lord Snooty and His Pals’ made their first appearance in issue No. 1 of the Beano, in a story titled “Son of a Duke But Always Pally - With the Beezer Kids of Ash-Can Alley” (published on July 30th, 1938).
‘Lord Snooty and His Pals’ (The Legend of Lord Snooty and His Pals, 1998, p.6)
Marmaduke, the young Lord of Bunkerton, is known to his friends and to generations of comic readers as Lord Snooty, the newest member of the House of Lords. He goes to Eton (a private school), lives in a castle, and has servants. He's a very ordinary boy who just happens to be a Lord and one of the richest people in the whole world, lives with Aunt Matilda, and is assisted by his butler, Albert.
Early version of Lord Snooty
The responsibilities of being a peer of the realm weigh heavily on Snooty’s young shoulders and he often slips into disguise to mix with his street urchin pals from Ash Can Alley. He finds his posh friends too soft and boring (and snobby), and prefers to play with his urchin pals - who he considers to be his “real pals in Ash-Can alley”, and where he has real fun. Snooty is rebellious and full of mischief, acting against his privileged life which he finds strict and oppressive.
The Ash Can Alley kids regularly face their most bitter rivals, the Gasworks gang, and adventures often revolve around this. Other adventures involve the eccentric Professor Screwtop and his wacky inventions. Although everything in Bunkerton Castle was fun and games, world events soon provided the scriptwriters with a new theme, as Snooty and pals entered the propaganda battle in the early stages of the Second World War. Over the following years, the pals would repel many a Nazi assault on Bunkerton Castle and Lord Snooty often personally took on Hitler (Watkins, 1998).
Lord Snooty & WW2 - 1941 (The Legend of Lord Snooty and his Pals, 1998, p.31)
The Lord Snooty strip was drawn by Dudley D. Watkins until his death in 1969, but Leo Baxendale and Albert Holroyd occasionally filled in for Watkins. Watkins drew Desperate Dan in the Dandy and Lord Snooty in the Beano, and the enduring celebrity of these stand as testimony to his observant eye and witty draughtsmanship. “In Watkins, DC Thomson had found their inhouse genius. He was a devout Christian who kept a Bible near his drawing board, and in his spare time drew cartoon strips for evangelical newspapers. His great ambition, barely begun when in 1969, he keeled over his drawing board with a fatal heart attack, was to convert the Bible into what would now be known as a graphic novel. He drew the Lord Snooty strip until April 1968.”
The Lord Snooty strip was discontinued from the Beano in 1991, but it was the only remaining strip left from the first issue when it was withdrawn.
Analysis of the stories
Lord Snooty is a strip that taps into class differences with a comedic, satirical bent. Lord Snooty is a ‘toff ‘, a derogatory stereotype for someone with an aristocratic background or belonging to the landed gentry. His Lordship preferred to hang out with the poor urchin Ash-Can Alley gang, and he himself was not snobbish at all. He identifies with his poor friends, more than with kids of his own privileged class. Below is the theme of the first episode, where he rejects his posh friends who he is supposed to play with:
Lord Snooty - first comic - July 1938 (The Legend of Lord Snooty and his Pals, 1998)
The original Ash Can Alley gang were Scrapper Smith, Hairpin Huggins, Skinny Lizzie, Rosie, Happy Hutton, Gertie the goat and later Snitch and Snatch. The sworn enemies of the Ash Can Alley were the Gasworks Gang, a group of ill-favoured yobs.
Snooty was an aristocratic ragamuffin, a good guy, benevolent, who identifies with the ordinary people, and they are very fond of him. He was kind to the ordinary kids, looked after them, was generous, and mischievous with them. Snooty was a popular hero, because he shared the sufferings of his comrades while adding the gentlemanly virtues which they lacked (Moore, 2019). On the other hand the story appears to follow a Dandy and Beano stereotype, i.e. the ‘lovable benevolent aristocrat’ versus the uneducated poor/ lower orders.
The majority of Beano readers would identify with these playful working-class kids and fully understand why Snooty liked them. Life at the castle looks like a life of discipline that lacked freedom and fun. Dudley Watkins (who drew the comic) caught this contrast beautifully; everyone connected with life at the castle had an expression of severe aloofness, whereas the gang playing in the Ash-Can Alley had happy animated faces full of energetic fun.
It seems the story was revised early on - Lord Snooty wasn’t initially a nice person, and the story didn’t quite work, as some of these forum comments point out:
“Marmaduke, Earl of Bunkerton (Lord Snooty) is a right nasty piece of work in the first few episodes. A forerunner of Dennis the Menace in some ways, but with added money and power. He also likes to have it both ways- slumming it in Ashcan alley but making full use of his castle and seemingly unlimited wealth. Fortunately, the writers must have realised this flaw as he becomes the good-hearted soul we're more familiar with very quickly. In comics, it's OK to be rich and OK to be a bully, but not both...One particularly nasty moment is in the fifth ever strip (fourth in the collection) dated 27/8/1938, where in revenge for the cook telling tales on him, he frames the cook so the cook is not only fired, but literally fired at with guns by the castle's hunting party.”
There are theories that the Ash Can Alley gang idea was “borrowed” from a 1930s film gang featuring Mickey Rooney, as some of the character names seem to be the same.
Over the years 1938-1991 there were different versions of Lord Snooty. He changed with the times, the themes changed, his gang members changed, to try to cater for changing tastes and a changing world, and to try to keep him relevant to his audience.
10/9/1938 was the last strip with Snooty in his ‘street urchin’ disguise. It's not clear at what point his pals in Ash Can alley stopped being a secret to his Aunt Matilda and when they started being welcome visitors, and eventually residents, at Bunkerton Castle. From there onwards, this seems to have changed the story into less of an ‘us and them’ scenario.
In no. 10 the crazy eccentric Professor Screwtop and his inventions was introduced. From no. 13 onwards, Snooty was masterminding freelance operations against the Nazis - for example, dropping germs on them, and a desperate Hitler had to write to Snooty and beg for mercy.
The first series of Lord Snooty came to an end in July 1949, but then Snooty returned at the end of 1950. There were character changes in the 1950s - some characters were dropped and others introduced, such as ‘Doubting Thomas’, ‘Swanky Lanky Liz’, Lord Snooty’s twin classmates ‘Snitch’ and ‘Snatch’.
In the later years Lord Snooty’s personality took a turn for the worse. The character was eventually axed because it became outdated and difficult to write strips, readers could no longer relate to him, and in 1991 Snooty was dropped by the Beano .
But years later Lord Snooty re-appeared in a different format (in 2008), though this time the comic was about Lord Snooty III (Marmaduke's grandson), who has inherited his fortune and his Bunkerton Castle. The plot is similar: he is a mischievous boy who is extremely rich and lives in a castle; he has a butler (called Parkinson); and forms his own gang. However, there are major differences - his character is almost the total opposite of Marmaduke as he wallows in his wealth. He’s a ‘repulsive’ boy who laughs at those less fortunate. His butler is long-suffering and sarcastic. His gang consists of an adolescent named Naz, a young black girl named Frankie, Emo, and One and Three the triplets. The strip wasn’t popular and the comic series officially ended in 2011.
Lord Snooty III - 2008
Dave Miller is a designer and artist who makes mostly satirical works through combinations of comics, graphic novels, interactive and non-linear storytelling, especially in the context of computation, the Internet and emerging media. He has taught courses in both Design and Interactive Media at London South Bank University and Bournemouth University. He currently works at the Cartoon Museum in London, and is writing a political graphic novel. This is his first writing about comics.
The ‘Remembering UK Comics’ series is curated and edited by Dr William Proctor and Dr Julia Round, both of whom are Principal Academics at Bournemouth University, Dorset, UK.
