Bananaman is a parody of traditional superheroes, being portrayed as a schoolboy who is transformed into a muscled, caped adult man when he eats a banana.
The character originally appeared in Nutty as the back page strip in Issue 1, dated 16 February 1980 drawn by John Geering.
[2] The original strip, by Dave Donaldson[3] and Steve Bright,[1] written and developed by the latter, and mostly drawn by John Geering until his death in 1999, is essentially a parody of Superman and Batman with elements of Captain Marvel and his British twin, Marvelman, and occasionally other Silver Age characters, while also combining comic slapstick with a heavy dose of eccentric British humour similar to Alan Moore's contemporary work on Captain Britain.
Following the Dandy revamp of October 2010, Wayne Thompson took over drawing Bananaman in a style reminiscent of French cartoonist Lisa Mandel.
Thompson was a popular artist in The Dandy who had previously drawn Jak, Agent Dog 3-Zero and, occasionally, Bully Beef and Chips.
New Bananaman strips drawn by Wayne Thompson and written by Nigel Auchterlounie, Kev F Sutherland and lately Cavan Scott continued to run in The Beano throughout 2014.
In the strip, Eric Wimp, an ordinary schoolboy living at 29 Acacia Road, Nuttytown (later changed to Dandytown and then Beanotown when the strip moved to other comics), eats a banana to transform into Bananaman, an adult superhero, sporting a distinctive cowled blue and yellow outfit complete with a yellow two-tailed cape resembling a banana skin.
In the 1991 Dandy Annual, Bananaman's origin was changed to that of being a normal Earth baby in a maternity hospital, who obtained his powers after unintentionally eating a banana in which General Blight had hidden a stolen supply of 'Saturnium', and accidentally left it next to Eric.
Other villains included mad scientist Doctor Gloom, Bananaman's evil fruit counterpart Appleman, the mischief making Weatherman and dessert fiend Captain Cream.
He used to wear an Indian feather headdress as a visual pun on Chief, and in later strips wore a hat with a flashing blue light on the top.
Parts of the character were changed for the series: he was now called Eric Twinge, had a distinctive banana-shaped hairstyle rather than punk stubble, and had a love interest (only when transformed) in the form of Fiona, a newsreader based on Selina Scott and also a possible homage to Lois Lane.
Jill Shilling voiced Fiona and any additional female characters, including Eric's cousin Samantha (but not her mother Auntie).
Some of these episodes would eventually reappear in print form in The Dandy in 1998, coinciding with the BBC repeating the series that year, and were reprinted in the comic in the spring of 2007, now promoting the DVD.
[8] In March 2014, it was announced that DC Thomson, in conjunction with Elstree Studio Productions, would be producing a movie on Bananaman, with a release date in 2015.
The release noted that Beano Studios was formed to bring their properties to life through television, film and live performances based upon present projects which were being worked on.