A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN FEATURES – BADTIME BEDTIME BOOKS – Part TWO

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.

A LOOK AT MONSTER FUN FEATURES: BADTIME BEDTIME BOOKS - Part ONE

Badtime Bedtimes Books is something what Monster Fun Comic is probably best remembered for. They were centre-page pull-outs which were meant to be removed from the comic, cut up and arranged into eight-page minibooks. Each book was a self-contained whacky story. Here is an example from MFC No. 3. Unfortunately, IPC printing presses often failed to do them justice (click on the images to enlarge):

Leo Baxendale wrote about Badtime Bedtimes Books at length in his book A VERY FUNNY BUSINESS, and that’s how we know it was Bob Paynter who created the concept and gave it to Leo Baxendale to develop. Mid-70s was the time when Mr. Baxendale had grown disappointed with the comics industry and was looking for an opportunity to quit because he felt it was in for a decline. He realised that times had changed and that comics humour should follow suit. Although he was excited about Badtime Bedtime Books, he had planned from the very start to use them as a “test bed” for his new ideas and a vehicle to manoeuvre his way out of the comics industry.

The first Badtime Bedtime Books received glowing reader feedback which Leo Baxendale compared with reaction to his very early Bash Street Kids, and he immediately knew he was on the right path.

As could be expected, pressing deadlines prevented Mr. Baxendale from working at a leisurely pace and producing a quality “vintage” book every time. He gradually divested himself from other strips he had still been drawing for IPC and concentrated single-mindedly on the BBBs, but he still didn’t have enough time to do them as he thought they should be done. As a consequence, he adopted a loose sketchy style, producing a vintage set only once in a while. This was also the time when Mr. Baxendale started contemplating a series of his own Willy the Kid annuals. He no longer had the time to write the BBBs, and eventually stopped drawing them too, leaving Bob Paynter with a huge challenge of finding first the writers and later the illustrators who could match Mr. Baxendale’s talent.

In all likelihood the original idea was to have a BBB in every issue (with the odd poster of a MFC star character squeezed in), and Mr. Baxendale was somehow able to keep the schedule, although we know from his book that he was working at a leisurely pace and preparing his first Willy the Kid annual at the same time. All but three of the 25 Badtime Bedtime Books that came out in 1975 were illustrated by Mr. Baxendale but the decline of the feature was very much on the horizon.

By the time he had to prepare the first MONSTER FUN COMIC issues of 1976, Bob Paynter had run out of Badtime Bedtime Books supplied by Mr. Baxendale, so he tried experimenting with a few other artists. IMHO, three of the illustrators (Artie Jackson, Leslie Harding and even Terry Bave) weren’t really up to the task, and the five BBBs that appeared in the first months of 1976 were particularly poorly drawn. Things improved considerably when Bob Paynter gave the artist’s duties to Mike Brown who was able to imitate Leo Baxendale's style to perfection, adding his own twist to it. The Editor must have been satisfied, as confirmed by the fact that towards the end of the run the frequency of BBBs was restored to its previous levels. Mike Brown proudly initialled or signed most of the sets, so he must have been pleased with his work as well.

The MONSTER FUN COMIC run of Badtime Bedtime Books falls into three “periods”: 1) the Leo Baxendale period, 2) the “grey” period when they were drawn by other artists, or when Leo Baxendale’s simplified style or ghosters’ efforts make one wonder who really illustrated them, and last but by no means least 3) the Mike Brown period.

I will cover the three periods in my next posts. In the meantime, here is the Badtime Bedtime Book poster from MFC No. 36 dated 14th February, 1976. Drawn, I believe, by Leo Baxendale.

 All Images 2014 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.

WHOOPEE! FRANKIE STEIN HOLIDAY SPECIAL 1982

The last WHOOPEE! FRANKIE STEIN HOLIDAY SPECIAL came out for the summer holidays of 1982. It had 64 pages and cost 50 p.

The central story was Frankie Stein and Three Wishes – a 12-page, three-part tale illustrated by Frank McDiarmid. Driven into despair, Professor Cube is brewing another magic anti-Frankie potion, but Frankie causes an accident and some surprise chemical reaction summons a Genie who now has to grant Prof. Cube three wishes. Guess what the first one is:

The Genie turns out to be not a very smart one:

Dad realizes that now that he can’t see where his creation is, Frankie is likely to cause even more damage so he begs that the Genie takes the spell off Frankie. That’s one wish wasted. Dad is more careful when wording his second one:

Poor Dad fails to realize that he and Frankie are ‘tied up’ and when the Genie sends Frankie to Magic Land (that’s Genie’s idea of billions and billions of miles away), the big lunk drags the parent with him. In Magic Land they nearly fall under the spell of a cunning witch but her concoction causes Frankie to sneeze hard and the two make their escape. The blast of Frankie’s sneeze sends Prof. Cube flying on a carpet as though it were a magic one. Their next encounter is with the King of Magic Land and his daughter the whimsical princess who wants the magic carpet. Dad trades it for the King’s royal spell which makes Frankie vanish. That’s when the princess realizes that it is an ordinary carpet that won’t fly so both aristocrats set after Dad who finds a hiding place in the bushes. The princess spots a croaking frog which she kisses without hesitation hoping it will turn into a handsome prince (remember, this is Magic Land). The kiss breaks the spell and it turns out it was Frankie whom King had turned into a frog. Frankie accidentally gives Dad’s hideout away and the King gets his revenge by sending them both back to where they came from. That’s the second wish bungled.

Prof. Cube realizes that lots of his problems would disappear if Frankie was tiny, and that’s what he wishes for. The Genie can now retire to sleep for the next few hundred years. Dad locks Frankie in a small cage with a hamster wheel and takes him aboard a cruise ship as he goes on holiday. Frankie breaks loose and causes havoc on the ship. Check out the last two pages of the story:

Except for the front cover and two pages of Frankie Stein gags by artists whose names I don’t know, Frankie Stein and Three Wishes was the only new Frankie Stein material. 4 pages of Frankie’s Diary (probably by Jim Crocker) and two half-pagers of Ticklish Allsorts (by Les Barton) were reprinted from MONSTER FUN COMIC, while Freaky Frankie three-panel strips without speech balloons on the back page were the work of Sid Burgon for Shiver and SHAKE weeklies.  That’s a total of 21 pages of Frankie Stein.

There were two new 4-page episodes of Monster Movie Makers by Mr. Hill who signed his MMM sets for the first time. Carlo Monte is upset because his assistant Jock has sold all their films and they are now on TV with Director receiving no royalties.  Carlo Monte orders his assistant to come up with a fresh idea so that he can make money again. Jock suggests that a film featuring a monster frog would be sensational. The filming proves to be a disaster and what’s even worse, some TV cameramen capture everything on film. Carlo Monte is furious because telly boys are now going to make another fortune out of him!

In the second episode Jock is back from his holidays and Director laments to him about a series of failures which occurred in Jock’s absence because of their incompetent props team. Jock comes up with an idea of a film about a giant jelly-fish but with the entire props department now fired, he turns for help to canteen staff who make him a giant wobbling piece of strawberry jelly. The reaction that the filmmakers get from children during filming on the mock-up beach is nothing like they had expected because instead of getting terrified with the 'jelly-fish' the kids start feasting on it. Everything turns out well in the end for Monster Movie Makers because their new monster comedy is a trendsetter.

In a 4-page set by Alan Rogers Computer Cop deals with a gang of museum robbers led by a master crook who steals pictures for his collection and doesn’t know when to stop.

A Frightfully Funny Story… is by an artist whose name I don’t know but I find his style rather interesting. The 4-page story is about a tall and lean boy named Eric who is always hungry. He decides to enter for the monster fancy dress competition at the town hall and try to win the first prize – a hamper of grub. Eric is so broke he can’t afford a costume, so he uses the stuff he can find at the local junk-yard. His disguises get him into lots of trouble and when he finally makes it to the town hall, he doesn’t even need a costume to win the prize:

5 pages were filled with new non-comic strip material, such as puzzles, jokes and gags, nothing to write home about, really.  The game on the centerspread seems somewhat out of context to me:

As many as 18 pages were reprints of various first-class IPC strips: you can find three early episodes of Terror TV by Ian Knox (from MONSTER FUN COMIC), three two-pagers of Wizards Anonymous by Brian Walker (from SHIVER AND SHAKE), three pages of Rent-A-Ghost Ltd. by Reg Parlett (from BUSTER), two pages of Tom Thumbsrew by Norman Mansbridge (from MONSTER FUN COMIC) and two episodes of The Hand - one by Frank McDiarmid and the other one by I don’t know who (from SHIVER AND SHAKE).

All Images 2014 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.

This post closes the chapter of FRANKIE STEIN publications so it’s time to bid the friendly monster farewell for now and get back to MONSTER FUN COMIC.