STILL MORE DETECTIVE WORK

Some time ago I said I was going to try and find more examples of Leo Baxendale’s remakes of his own Little Plum sets from the BEANO into General Nitt and His Barmy Army sets in WHAM! that he mentions in the book A VERY FUNNY BUSINESS.

Putting my findings into a time sequence, here is the first instance in WHAM! that I managed to spot. It was a rather cautious one with only a couple of ‘incriminating’ panels while the stories themselves have little in common (I prefer the one in WHAM!). The Little Plum set is from the BEANO Book 1960 and Barmy Army is from WHAM! No. 61 (14th August, 1965). It is interesting to note that Leo Baxendale's signature is absent in the set although he is said to have singed most of his ODHAMS work.

The Barmy Army set in WHAM! No. 62 was by another artist so it is of no interest to us in the context of this blogpost. The set in WHAM! No. 63 was the scandalous ‘carbon copy’ remake of the Bears v. Injuns football match set that Mr. Baxendale mentions in his book (you can view it here). In WHAM! No. 64 Barmy Army was again illustrated by another artist. Fast forward to WHAM! No. 65 (11th September, 1965) and, lo and behold, there is another remake! The original Little Plum one-page set was printed in the BEANO No. 936 (26th June, 1960). If I had to choose, the Barmy Army set would again be my favourite: