ANTHROPOMORPHIC STRIPS BY LEO BAXENDALE

Looking through my Beanos, I came across a curious example of Kat and Kanary in issue No. 770 (20 April, 1957). The curious thing about it is that the illustrator was Leo Baxendale, who to the best of my knowledge didn’t draw many anthropomorphic strips. In this case, Leo’s style is easily recognizable, don’t you think?

It is less obvious in the next episode from The Beano No. 771 – the last one by Leo before the strip was assigned to another artist:

I then found out that Leo drew another strip with animal protagonists, and it was The Katts in Knockout (second series). It ran in the first 14 issues of the comic starting from 12th June, 1971, but as it turns out, Leo only drew a few of the episodes. I stand to be corrected, but in my opinion his Katts appeared in 5 issues:

The rest were by Mike Lacey, weren’t they?:

 

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

LEO BAXENDALE'S WEEKLY OUTPUT IN 1956

In the process of posting images of landmark episodes of When the Bell Rings and The Bash Street Kids by Leo Baxendale elsewhere on the web recently, and leafing thought the respective issues of DC Thomson’s comics in my collection, I realized how extraordinarily productive the young Leo was in the mid-50s. At that that point his weekly output amounted to a full page of When The Bell Rings, a half-page of Minnie the Minx, a half-page of Little Plum for THE BEANO, and one full page of The Banana Bunch for THE BEEZER on top of that!

Here are images of all the strips by Leo Baxendale from The Beano and The Beezer, both cover cover-dated February 11th 1956. Assuming that he drew all the pages in just one week, the man is unbeatable!

THE CHRISTMASES OF SWEENY TODDLER – PART ONE

Sweeny Toddler the infamous demonic baby first appeared in the first issue of SHIVER AND SHAKE in March 1973. The paper lasted for less than two years, so there was only enough time for one X-mas episode of Sweeny Toddler. Script and artwork by Leo Baxendale:

SHIVER AND SHAKE was merged into WHOOPEE! in October 1974. It sounds quite surprising, but Sweeny didn’t make a straightforward leap to the new combined comic. It had to prove its strength by participating in a poll: WHOOPEE! editor selected 8 strips and invited readers to vote in a Pick-A-Strip competition that ran in the Autumn of 1974. Sweeny was declared victor in WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE cover-dated 22nd March, 1975, and his regular appearances recommenced a week later. This means that Sweeny Toddler would have missed the X-mas of 1974 even if WHOOPEE! hadn’t been affected by industrial action in the end of that year and the X-mas issue of the paper  had been published (WHOOPEE! missed the last week of 1974 and the first two weeks of 1975).

Leo Baxendale stopped drawing Sweeny Toddler in June 1975, and was succeeded by the excellent Tom Paterson who imitated Mr. Baxendale’s style very well indeed. Here are the next three festive episodes from the 1975, 1976 and 1977 X-mas issues of WHOOPEE! :

Come back soon for more X-mas stories featuring the little pest!

TWO VERSIONS OF THE BANANA BUNCH FEATURE

The very early installments of The Banana Bunch in The Beezer were full-pagers with a single picture. Drawn by the young Leo Baxendale, they were printed in colour on the back page of the comic for thirteen weeks starting from the very first issue (January 21, 1956). Starting from issue 14 (April 21, 1956) the feature was moved to the inside of the paper and appeared in black and red.

The reason I am writing this post is because some time ago I saw a copy of The Beezer from 1961 on eBay. One of the photos uploaded by the seller showed a reprint on one of those early full-page sets, rendered in back and red. I though my readers might be interested to see the two versions side by side. Here’s the original in full-colour from The Beezer No. 10 (March 24, 1956):

… and here’s its twin from the issue cover-dated June 24, 1961:

The colour version looks OK, but I have to say that in this particular case I prefer the reprint. What do you think? I wonder if DC Thomson reprinted other early installments of The Banana Bunch in the same way?