MORE DETECTIVE WORK...

Writing a detailed account about COR!! specials and annuals published after the demise of the weekly and the strips that only appeared in COR!! specials and annuals is taking a bit longer than I hoped but rest assured I will publish them sooner rather than later.

In the meantime the last blogpost about recycled strips inspired me to do some more detective work. Those of you who have been following my football blogposts in June may remember the post about a strange case of Leo Baxendale redrawing an episode of his Little Plum from the BEANO as General Nitt and His Barmy Army in WHAM! You can refresh your memory by revisiting the blogpost here. There was also a small discussion on Comics UK Forum about the possible mechanism used by Mr. Baxendale in producing the near carbon copy of his original artwork with a slightly different finishing. You can read the discussion here.

In his book A VERY FUNNY BUSINESS Leo Baxendale openly confesses he was so exhausted working for WHAM! that he did a “loony thing” of picking out the very best Minnie the Minx and Little Plum sets from old BEANO comics and redrawing them as Bad Penny and Barmy Army sets. He also recalls that as soon as these sets appeared in WHAM! and SMASH! “…D.C.Thomson erupted and spouted molten lava everywhere”.  

Let us look at the ‘evidence’: the Barmy Army football set appeared in WHAM! No. 63 (28th August, 1965) and was so close to the original Little Plum set from the BEANO No. 929 (7th May, 1960) that it was indeed impossible for D.C.Thomson not to “lose their cool”. After Mr. Baxendale witnessed the wrath of his former employer, it is unlikely he ever repeated the ‘carbon copy’ exercise (although this remains to be checked) but the temptation to re-use some of his old material must have been too strong to be resisted. Some panels of this Bad Penny set in SMASH! No. 9 (2nd April, 1966) are suspiciously similar to those of Minnie the Minx in the BEANO No. 943 (13th August, 1960). Was this set of Bad Penny the one that Mr. Baxendale referred to in his book or were there others too? I will see what else I can find…

From SMASH! No. 9 (2nd April, 1966)

From THE BEANO No. 943 (13th August, 1960)