Bananaman

Origin

His origin involves Eric as a baby rocketing from the moon to Earth. He gained his amazing powers from the crescent shaped moon which resembled a banana. In the 1991 Dandy book his origin was changed however when Eric gets his power as a baby from eating a Saturnium laced banana.

Creation

Bananaman first appeared in Nutty No.1 on February 16th 1980 written by Steve Bright and drawn by John Geering and published by D.C. Thomson & Co. Bananaman became a regular character in The Dandy after it merged with Nutty in 1985. In 2012, he started appearing in reprints in The Beano, while new stories continued in the Dandy. He's the only character ever to have an ongoing strip in both comics at the same time. The strip parodies the super-hero genre. After the Dandy's demise at the end of 2012, and the digital Dandy's quick failure in 2013, Bananaman's run in The Beano switched to new stories, drawn by Wayne Thompson and written by Kev F Sutherland and Nigel Auchterlounie.

Character Evolution

Eric Wimp seems to be an ordinary kid living at Acacia Avenue but whenever he eats a banana he becomes Bananaman. With a direct line to Eric's bananaphone, Chief O'Reilly can call for the help of Bananaman (totally unaware that Eric is indeed Bananaman). Bananaman is a parody of Superman. He can boost his powers further by eating more bananas. He even has a Kryptonite-like weakness to moldy bananas. Bananaman's trusted sidekick, Crow, keeps him well supplied with fresh bananas whenever he needs them. Bananaman's similarities with Superman end there though since he is clumsy, bumbling and quite dim, often capturing the bad guy by accident.

The enemies of Bananaman continue the super-hero parody theme. His two main rivals are General Blight and Doctor Gloom (a parody of Hitler and Doctor Doom respectively). Other regular super-villians are Weather man, Skunk-woman (a homage to Catwoman), and Appleman who is a reference to Superman's Bizarro (being the opposite to Bananaman...).

After his transfer to the Dandy, Bananaman began a rivalry with Dandy's resident strongman, Desperate Dan, even visiting Dan's home town (and comic strip) to challenge him to a fight.

Other Media

The Bananaman cartoon ran from 1983-86 on the BBC and was aired in the United States on the Nickelodeon cable network. All the characters were voiced by the Goodies.

The cartoon varied slightly from the comic strip with Eric Wimp now being known as Eric Twinge and Bananaman having a love interest. Some of the variations in the cartoon were adapted to the comic strip. Eric no longer had a skinhead and now had thick black hair with 2 banana shaped tuffs and Bananamans gloves changed from red to yellow.