What is a critic's role? I'm sure there are restrictions in place, such as not taking backhanders from galleries.

Don't become too close to artists, particularly those who are no longer alive. Any potential conflicts of interest should be declared (no conflict, no interest, I always say). Keep up to date, don't be late, and always wear black.

I could go on and on. The public expects certain criteria from the arbiter of taste, as well as a certain amount of aloof hauteur from the arbiter of taste — it adds gravity, and readers prefer a touch of scorn; it gives one's judgements that additional bit of critical punch.

But what if the reviewer has ended up wandering the streets of Beanotown? Dennis the Menace, right from the pages of the comic, is the artist I'm up against. My carefully crafted critical identity has been forever wrecked thanks to the Beano and artist and curator Andy Holden.

My all-too-familiar cartoon avatar, drawn by Nigel Parkinson of the Beano, has been put into the plot of a Beano comic, critiquing the same exhibition I'm currently standing in.

Holden says me, pointing to my cartoon self pondering on the wall, "We've already written your review." The circumstance is worthy of one of Jorge Luis Borges' or Paul Auster's metafictions. It's possible that I'll never get out.

It's a complete nightmare. My other real-life embellishments – fellowships and honorary doctorates, the critic of the year badge I never received, the Golden Lion at Venice I secretly long for – are nothing more than gimcrack ornaments in comparison.

At Somerset House, The Art of Breaking the Rules is a comprehensive homage and exploration of the Beano comic (which first appeared in 1938 and is still going strong), its influence on art and popular culture, and its place in the psyche of anyone who has ever picked up a copy over the last 80 years.

Beano's comic strips are all about defying authority, and Holden, like Picasso, believes that anarchic wilfulness and disobedience are the keys to creative expression. Holden has urged the Beano's artists and storytellers to incorporate different art world figures in the comic strips created just for this show.

There's art dealer Larry Gagosian, Damien Hirst, and Gilbert & George, to name a few. And here comes yours self, the famed art critic, gliding in on the back of a swan. Holden is also introduced as a character. His hand-drawn Toontown duplicate originally featured in Laws of Motion in a Cartoon Landscape, a fantastic hour-long animation from 2017.

The animated Holden makes many appearances at Somerset House, both as curator of the show and as director of Beanotown's Museum of Modern Art, where genuine Beano-esque art pieces by real artists are on display, supervised by cut-out museum guards.

The Beano's designers have also rebuilt the comic's Dundee headquarters and editor's office, opened up their archives, and helped the artist-curator in other ways. Helpful warnings warn guardians that Ed Atkins' CGI slurping, squashing, human meat-compressing sandwich-preparation animation may be too frightening for children, or alert the young to uninteresting parts of the presentation. I believe they will like it.

There's no Beano, and there's no Viz. No Beano, no Heather Phillipson's The End on Trafalgar Square's fourth pillar. Sarah Lucas's fried-egg tits on her T-shirt are gone, as is Minnie the Minx. At least, that's how the program portrays it. I'd also point readers to the cover of the Blues Breakers' 1966 record, which has Eric Clapton reading the comic, and the fact that David Bowie identified the Beano, along with Madame Bovary, as a key influence.

Beano may inspire a new generation of young readers whose artistic yearnings are being suppressed by present educational practices, much as the comics in the late 1950s shattered my own youthful docility and subservience to authority.

With its Bash Street school slackers, tomboys, and characters like Dennis (exactly the type of kids my parents wouldn't allow me play with), the Beano was never one of my favorite comics as a youngster. Beano was based in a recognizable world of tiny living rooms, suburban streets and laundry lines, domineering grownups, and intimidating authoritarian instructors, unlike American superhero books and the unending jingoistic war comics, which I never loved.

Holden's approach is historical and archival (there are many displays of defunct rival comics, as well as now-relegated Beano characters, such as Lord Snooty, the top-hatted toff, who has returned here as an art collector); sociological (there's a great promotional video of Beanotown, based on a 1960s film extolling the delights of Stevenage new town); and scatological. The Beano devotes a full section to food and food conflicts, as well as the gastronomic preoccupations of postwar, post-rationing Britain. Like St Sebastian, a mountain of mash is punctured with sausages rather than arrows.

Holden even mentions Michel Foucault in a portion of the play titled Discipline and Punish, which is named after the frightening 1975 book by the French philosopher. The domestic counterparts of the rack and the whip, the slipper and the cane, are employed to maintain order in the house and in the school.

Teacher has all the kids on their knees, naked buttocks in the air, as he lifts his cane in a scene from the Bash Street Kids. It seems like a scene from Pier Paolo Pasolini's terrible Sadean allegory Sal, which was released in 1975.

Of course, corporal punishment is no longer used in the Beano, as it is in most schools and households, and Walter the Softy is no longer tormented by Dennis the Menace in the pages of the comic since it may be seen as homophobic — and bullying is horrible in any case. This is a case of wokeness gone awry.

"Comics aren't works of art!" Walter sneers, "The curator is a moron!" Someone reminds me of him. Beano wrote to Jacob Rees-Mogg MP in 2018, urging that he immediately stop and desist from infringing on the intellectual property rights of Walter Brown, AKA Walter the Softy, whose clothing style, attitudes, spectacles, and hair parting have all been obviously copied wholesale by the MP.

Cause and effect, as exemplified by the great Leo Baxendale's Bash Street Kids drawings, is complemented by Swiss duo Fischli and Weiss's 1987 film The Way Things Go, with its studio experiment of burning tyres trundling down ramps, things whacking other things, pendulum swings, and constant round of calamitous interactions. Part-Beano, part-Buster Keaton's The General, the horrific toy-train ride in Nick Park's 1993 film The Wrong Trousers.

Beano has also influenced Steve Bell (who penned a wonderful eulogy for Baxendale in The Guardian), and cartoonist Martin Rowson has renamed Brexit as Brexo in tribute to the Beano. Everything leads to everything else, which is why Billy the Whizz leads us to Philippe Parreno's helium-filled floating speech bubbles and Richard Wentworth converts the hunt for knowledge into a compost heap of old books, studio sweepings, and a can of paint-stripper in this show.

Holden presents us the whole Beano, which he conceived during lockdown, when we were beset by ever-changing restrictions. There's a brawl going on in there. But there must be regulations, and artist Peter Liversidge has created a forest of signs with the aid of Beano readers, which visitors to the event may also add to.

They say things like "Never Go to Bed," "We Want a Future," "Visit Museums," and "No More Rules." Critics thrive on having rules, or at the very least, views. “It's a MESS-TERPIECE!” exclaims my cartoon self in the comic strip. I'm not sure how I could reasonably disagree.

Thanks to Adrian Searle at The Guardian whose reporting provided the original basis for this story.