The Numskulls - Discussion

Discussion

We can see the typical interaction between the Numskulls in the story "An Alarm clock gives them a shock" which appeared in The Beezer Book 1980. "Our Man" is pictured asleep in the first panel and in the second we see Luggy in the Ear Dept. awoken by the sound of the alarm clock next to "our Man's" bed. Using an intercom system Luggy sends a message to Brainy that the alarm clock is ringing. Brainy, in turn uses his intercom system to wake up all the other Numskulls and feeds the written message "Switch off alarm!" into the suggestion box. We then see "our Man" thinking "Noisy alarm! I'll switch it off. Where is it?" In the following panel we see Luggy informing Brainy that the alarm is still ringing whilst Brainy reads a print-out from the computer "Where is it?".

It transpires that Blinky, who is in charge of the man's eyes, has neglected his duty by staying in bed. The other two Numskulls burst into his department and force him out of bed. Grumbling, Blinky opens the man's eyes with a hand-crank whilst Brainy and Luggy stow his bedding in cabinets under the eyes. In the last panel we see "our Man" reflecting that he couldn't open his eyes this morning and now he has bags under them, caused by the bedding.

The above description is typical of the Numskull's formula. The Man (who represents 'us') is totally determined by the decisions and actions of the numskulls. He has the freedom only to reflect on what has occurred, all his decisions are made by Brainy. As all the thoughts sent from Brainy's 'suggestion box' appear to "our Man" as his own he little suspects the existence of the numskulls. Much of what he reflects on is actually a consequence of the Numskulls' free will, rather than his own. In the story above the Man notices the bags under his eyes, which he puts down to a normally bodily reaction to tiredness, when they are in fact the bulges caused by Blinky's bedding. The man has bags under his eyes, not because he chose to have a late night but because Blinky chose not to get out of bed.

The Numskulls stood out from the other comic strips in the Beezer in that it addressed the metaphysical questions that fascinate children and philosophers such as - where do thoughts come from and why do people do as they do?

'Our man' was also referred to as 'our boy' before settling on the name of 'Edd' for their human home. According to the 2008 Beano Annual, Edd's full name is Edd Case (a pun on the word Headcase).