They used to prepare comics well before their cover date and Mr. Baxendale submitted as many
as seven of the Badtime Bedtime Books before the release of the 1st issue of Monster FUN Comic. Here is the gallery
of covers and bits of information which can be found in Mr. Baxendale’s book A
VERY FUNNY BUSINESS:
1)
Jack
The Nipper – MFC No. 1, 14th June, 1975. After Bob Paynter okayed the
script, he asked Leo to draw up a pencil rough the same size as printed comic “to
show to the top brass”. Five days later he got back to tell Mr. Baxendale that
they were starting printing, and asked him to ink in the rough layout. Leo
commented that inking in print-size jobs would be a good recipe for going blind
if done regularly, but he agreed to do it for just one time.
2)
Robinson
Gruesome – MFC No. 2, no date on cover. Having finished this one, Mr.
Baxendale went to London on 8th April, 1975 and persuaded Bob Paynter to cut Sweeny
Toddler to a half page.
3)
Punch
and Chewday – MFC No. 3, no date on cover. Mr. Baxendale finished this
one on 16th April, 1975 and was very satisfied with the job. The Editor was
delighted as well: Mr. Baxendale remembers him saying “You’ve thrown in
everything but the kitchen sink”.
4)
Dr.
Jackal and Dr. Snide – MFC No. 4, no date on cover. Having completed
the BBB, Mr. Baxendale went to London on 29th April and told IPC editors he
would no longer be able to draw Snooper for BUSTER and Sweeny
Toddler for WHOOPEE!
5)
Red
Riding Hood – MFC No. 5, no date on cover. It took 10 days to complete –
one day for the script and 9 days for the artwork. Mr. Baxendale thought the
book was as good as any of his best Bash Street sets – and the humour
had an extra loony tilt to it. Here it is in full:
No.
6 Jack and the Beans In Tomato Sauce
Stalk (MFC No. 6, 19th July, 1975) and No. 7 Little Boy Glue (MFC No.
7, 26th July, 1975) took 9 ¼ days each to complete:
The
first issue of Monster FUN Comic came
out in the first week of June, 1975. Mr. Baxendale spent an average of 10 days on
each book and he soon realised he was beginning to run out of time. As a
result, BBB No. 8 (Trouser Island) was his second one after No. 1 drawn in actual
printing size. The centre pages of MFC No. 8 were given to Kid Kong poster, so the
eighth BBB can be found in MFC No. 9 (9th August, 1975):
9)
Davey
Jones (MFC No. 10, 16 August, 1975). Having finished this one, on 26th
June, 1975 Mr. Baxendale travelled to London once again to tell Bob Paynter he
no longer had the time to write scripts for BBBs and left with the Editor’s promise
to put his writers on the job.
10)
I
Spy with my Little Guy appeared in MFC No. 11 (23rd August, 1975) but
you won’t find it mentioned in A VERY FUNNY BUSINESS. The book is somewhat
peculiar – it looks like Leo Baxendale’s artwork but something just isn’t
right. The name of the main character – Mervyn – rang a bell: Mervyn’s
Monsters was a strip by Leo Baxendale which ran in Buster in the late 60s, so I though
what if the two things were connected? I did some detective work and indeed – I Spy
with my Little Guy turned out to be a serious cut-and-stitch exercise on
behalf of IPC in-house “surgeons” who pieced it together from individual panels
of the four last episodes of Mervyn’s Monsters (BUSTER 17th
August – 7th September, 1968). The last panel of the BBB was a quickie by Artie
Jackson, I believe. Here are all 8 pages from BUSTER. If you have the BBB, you
can have some fun comparing the two stories:
Mr.
Baxendale refers to BBBs No. 11 - Little Miss Stuffit (MFC No. 12, 30th
August, 1975), and 12 - Oliver Twister (MFC No. 14, 13th
September, 1975) as “quickies”, which he both wrote and illustrated.
13)
Sherlock
Bones (MFC No. 15, 20th September, 1975). This one is not mentioned in A
VERY FUNNY BUSINESS and looks like it has been drawn by someone else. My “theory”
is that it was the work of the young Tom Paterson:
14)
Ghoul
Dilocks and the Three Scares (MFC No. 16, 27th September, 1975) – not mentioned
in A VERY FUNNY BUSINESS and I am unsure if it was drawn by Mr. Baxendale. The
two “clues” which suggest it may be his work are bits of hand-written text in
two panels and Don Martin noses of some of the characters (Leo imitated Don
Martin in a few of his drawings in the first Willy
the Kid book). The story itself is also very “Baxendale” but the artwork
looks rushed.
15)
Marzipan
and the Japes (Mr. Baxendale refers to it as Marzipan of the Apes in his book) (MFC No. 17, 4th October, 1975).
This one took Mr. Baxendale 11 days to write and draw. It is one of the vintage
sets that he intended to draw from time to time in order “not to lose it”, and the
last one that he wrote himself. This was the time when the amount of incoming
fan mail confirmed Mr. Baxendale’s gut feeling that he’d hit the jackpot.
16)
Star
Truck – (MFC No. 18, 11th October, 1975) – signed by Leo Baxendale. Not
mentioned in A VERY FUNNY BUSINESS. Like all the subsequent ones, it was drawn
to the script of an IPC writer. Having completed it, Leo paid yet another visit
to Bob Paynter to break the bad news that he no longer wanted to carry on
drawing a BBB every week (let us pretend that he had not already missed four or
five weeks by then). He recalls how the news plunged Bob into deep gloom…
The
next five books – No. 17 Moby Duck (MFC No 19, 18th October,
1975), No. 18 Little Bo Creep (MFC No. 21, 1st November, 1975), No. 19 King
Arthur and the Nightmares of the Round Table (MFC No. 23, 15th
November, 1975), No. 20 Dick Twerpin (MFC No. 24, 22nd
November, 1975) and No. 21 The Underwater World of Jacques Custard
(MFC No. 25, 29th November, 1975) are unsigned but all look like Leo’s work.
They are not mentioned in A VERY FUNNY BUSINESS but the book says that
throughout August and September, 1975 he drew BBBs in a loosely drawn ‘naïve’ style.
He spent a lot of time resting, and watching the Test Match.
22)
Babes
in the Woad (MFC No.
26, 6th December, 1975) – the last one mentioned in A VERY FUNNY BUSINESS that
tells us it took 5 days to finish. Mr. Baxendale described the IPC script as “chaotic”
which he rewrote completely, and thought that the finished feature was
absolutely barmy.
23)
William
the Conk (MFC No. 28, 20th December, 1975) - Not mentioned in A VERY
FUNNY BUSINESS, unsigned and in all likelihood the last one by Leo before he
left comics in the end of October, 1975.
Humpty
Dumpty Special Story (a two-pager in MFC No. 20
dated 25th October, 1975) and Badtime Bedtime Book pull-out poster
in MFC No. 36 dated 14th February, 1976 were also drawn by Mr. Baxendale, I
believe. This rounds up the account of the Leo Baxendale period of Badtime
Bedtime Books in MONSTER FUN COMIC weeklies.
All Images 2014 © Egmont UK
Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with
permission.
