THE BASH STREET KIDS LEARN HOW COMICS ARE MADE

Browsing through the comics that I found waiting for me at the post office upon my return from holidays, I came across this interesting set of the Bash Street Kids in which the class learn how their favourite comic is made. 

It wasn’t uncommon to see comic characters reading their own paper in their strips but a story showing the mechanics of making a comic is a rare treat so I thought you might be interested to see it.

The episode is from THE BEANO No. 2155 cover-dated 5th November, 1983.

Here is the strip in one piece for those of you who prefer to read it that way:

YET MORE DETECTIVE WORK

Lew Stringer recently wrote a blogpost dedicated to WHAM! No. 67 that came out this week in 1965, you can read it here. A sharp-eyed commentator was quick to observe that the episode of The Tiddlers on the front cover was another of Leo Baxendale’s remakes of his own Bash Street Kids stories from The BEANO. The original set of The Bash Street Kids was in THE BEANO No. 960 with the cover date of 14th May, 1960. It was also included in Leo Baxendale’s book A Very Funny Business to illustrate how the pressures of the production line were distorting his drawing style.

So that’s another ‘remake’ accounted for. Thanks to Lew Stringer for the blogpost and the commentator NP for the heads-up!

STILL MORE DETECTIVE WORK (CONTINUED)

In his book A VERY FUNNY BUSINESS Leo Baxendale recalls redrawing Little Plum and Minnie the Minx from the BEANO as Barmy Army and Bad Penny in WHAM! and SMASH! However, he forgot to mention that he also redrew at least one set of The Bash Street Kids as The Tiddlers. Check out the scans below. The episode of The Bash Street Kids is from the BEANO Book 1960 and The Tiddlers is from WHAM! No. 64 (4th September, 1965). There is nothing in The Tiddlers set to suggest that Mr. Baxendale was over-exhausted or stressed out from working under a tight time schedule: the artwork is excellent and more detailed than in the original episode of the Bash Street Kids. Quite obviously the artist himself was pleased with the quality of the work because his signature appears on both pages of the set.

It is interesting to note that the Beatles theme was incorporated in two of Leo Baxendale’s remakes: the billboard poster in the set from WHAM! No. 64 below featured the whole band and Ringo Starr appeared in panel 5 of the Barmy Army set a week later (WHAM! No. 65) for no reason at all (see my previous post here).

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: