For over half a century, Margaret Ahern crafted Beano comic strips for The Waifs’ Messenger, a monthly publication of Chicago’s Mission of Our Lady of Mercy and their Mercy Home for Boys. This selection of over a hundred strips from the 1950s and ’60s (originally published in 1966 as The Best of Beano) features the spirited, impish Beano, his close friend and occasional victim Pablo, and the long-suffering Father Kelly and Sister Leo.
Margaret Ahern (1921–1999) used the name “Margarita” when she created the strip Little Reggie for mainstream newspapers in the 1940s. It was in 1948 that she started cartooning for Catholic publications, which would prove the larger part of her career. She drew both Beano and the shorter-lived Angelo for The Waifs’ Messenger. She took over An Alter Boy Named ‘Speck’ when creator Tut LeBlanc died, doing a quarter-century run on that weekly panel. Under the name “Peg O’Connell” she also drew the weekly Our Parish.
Note: The character Beano predates, and is in no way related to, the British publication The Beano Comic.
- 136 pages, black and white, 8.5″ x 6″
- ISBN-10 : 1949996506
- ISBN-13 : 978-1949996500