Leo
Baxendale (27th October 1930 - 23rd April 2017)
'To
people who
have only seen printed comics, original artwork is a
revelation.'
"If
you are lucky enough
to possess 1957 and 1958 Beano comics, it is worth
buying a hand lens. All the Beano work was drawn
'twice up' (four times the area of the printed page). To people who
have only seen printed comics, original artwork is a revelation.
A
hand lens will double your enjoyment of these comics. It is not quite
the same thing as having the drawings - the printing process always
loses the beauty of the original ink line but the lens will let you
really see the imbecilic facial expressions and the tiny comic
details." [1]
-
Leo Baxendale, 1977
-
o
-
"Pages
for the D.C.
Thomson comics were normally drawn twice up which meant four times the
area of the printed job. This was a lot of acreage to cover. Early in
1962 I tried drawing some sets 'half up' - twice the area of the
printed page. I found that this cut working time without loss of
quality.
In
the summer of 1962 (I think it must have been May or early June) we
were spending a week in Lancashire. I decided to take the time-saving
technique a step further. I drew a Bash Street and a Banana Bunch 25%
up (i.e. just over 1 1/2 times the area of the printed jobs) and
posted
them off to the Beano and Beezer
with covering notes (I will digress here to mention that during the
fourteen years since I left D.C. Thomson, I have drawn hundreds of
pages 'half up' and 'twice up'. I vary the size according to the
nature
of the set I am drawing)." [2]
-
Leo Baxendale, 1977
Leo Baxendale
Leo
Baxendale (born 27 October 1930
in Preston, Lancashire) is legendary as being the British comic artist
who created 'The Bash Street Kids' (1953) and 'Minnie
The Minx' (1953) for TheBeano.
He also created 'Little Plum' (1953), 'The
Three Bears' (1959) for The Beano, and 'The
Banana Bunch' (1956) for TheBeezer.
After leaving publishers D.C. Thomsom in 1962 he went on to create
most
of the characters for Odham's legendary WHAM! comic
(1964-68) including 'George's Germs', 'Eagle-Eye Junior Spy', 'The
Barmy Army', and 'The Tiddlers'
(of Canal Road School). When Smash!
comic was launched in 1966, the mischievous 'Bad
Penny' was introduced, along
with'Grimly Feendish','The Man from BUNGLE'
and 'The Nervs'.
Credit
should
go to David Law for
leading Leo
Baxendale into the world of children's comics. Impressed by Davey
Law's strip, 'Dennis the Menace', Leo submitted an idea for a
character of his own, loosely based on
'Dennis the Menace', a relatively cute but cunning American Indian boy.The Beano
liked the idea and ran it as 'Little Plum - Your Redskin Chum'. When a
female version of 'Dennis the Menace' was asked for, Leo came up with
the
irrepressible 'Minnie the Minx'. However,
it was a Giles
cartoon, printed in the Daily
Express
newspaper, which inspired his most
important creation, the 'Bash Street Kids'. In fact both Giles
and Baxendale seem to have been great fans of Billy Baggs and his gang
whose comical adventures were given free rein in the busy one-pagers
of
'Casey Court' which ran in Illustrated Chips for about fifty
years.
Artworks
by Leo Baxendale are difficult to come by, but those
created
during his time at D C Thomson are particularly scarce -
why, even
Leo has had trouble getting hold of those!! Apparently,
whilst he
was attempting to settle a
long-running dispute with his former employers, D C
Thomson, he
was minded to try and get some of his artworks back from
them. Here is
a part of Leo Baxendale's account, given in his book Hobgoblin Wars:-
"The
High
Court action I carried through from May 1980 to May 1987
was a
copyright action.
Right at the beginning, my barrister told me I could not
hope to get
back any of my drawings as well.
Nevertheless, at the end, during the intense
negotiations with the
Defendant determining the terms of the out-of-court,
pre-trial
settlement they had offered; though the drawings were at
a tangent from
the heart of the copyrights case, I pressed the
Defendant to return to
me some of my drawings. I asked for fifty. They refused,
and agreed to
give me back thirty.
During
my 22 years creating and drawing for the three major
firms of the
comics industry, I had drawn between five-and-a-half
thousand and six
thousand pages. Of these, I now had thirty.
Thirty
isn’t much in the scale of things, but that thirty, all
drawn
for The Beano,
was crucial." [3]
-
Leo Baxendale
'The Banana
Bunch' artwork - 'Canary's Pet Ambition' - The Beezer issue
29, 4th
August 1956
"I
remember this drawing well, with its delightful denouement.
After I'd finished inking
the Beezer
and Beano
drawings, I would use a pencil to scribble in the speech
balloons,
which were then lettered by specialist letterers in the staff
artists'
room. Some pieces of lettering were stuck onto my drawings using
Cow
Gum, a petroleum-based adhesive that allowed
re-positioning.
With the passage of time, some of these pieces tended to drop
off, and
you can see this had happened in frames 3, 6 and 16 of the
drawing you
have."[4]
-
Leo Baxendale, November 2010
The Banana Bunch - The
Beezer issue 29, 4th August 1956
In
the published comic (Beezer
issue 29 of 4th
August 1956), the captions in frames
3, 5, 6 & 16 are presented as white lettering
on a black background which
was probably achieved photographically
simply
by 'reversing'
standard black lettering. So, the captions
would have been printed
on photographic paper, a different paper from that used for
the speech
bubbles, which might offer a clue as to why
the captions were the first materials to go adrift from this
artwork.
"The way my drawings were
dealt with using Letterpress [printing presses]
were as follows: When I had finished pencilling and
then
inking one of
my drawings and handed it in at The Beano room, it was
taken to be
photographed in its black-and-white state. Then the
drawing
was taken
next to the staff artists room. The drawing was then
painted
by a
staff artist in full colour; but this was not for
reproduction, but was
simply a visual guide for the reproduction technicians to
refer to when
applying the Ben Day tints. The Ben Day tints (of
dots and
lines and
patterns - there were a great number of different ones)
had been
invented by a New Jersey printer, Benjamin Day, late in
the 19th.
Century. There were only two colours used on the
Letterpress blocks,
red and black, printed separately of course, but by using
varied
patterns of Ben Day tints, some with red and black
separately,
but in
others with red and black patterns superimposed, it was
possible to
produce great depth and atmosphere in the printed pages."
[5]
-
Leo Baxendale
"When
the
Banana
Bunch was drawn in strip format, most of the scripts were
written by Walter Thorburn, a prolific scriptwriter on the Beezer
staff, and they moved even further from reality. The
Bunch
appeared to
live in a hut in a field - they even slept in beds in a hut
all night.
Did they actually have any parents? Were they orphans? What
was going
on? I never figured it out myself. But this ambivalence never
seemed to
diminish their popularity. Perhaps readers
liked the idea of
living in
a hut with their pals, without any adults to tell them what to
do." [6]
-
Leo Baxendale
Panels
from artwork of 'The Banana Bunch' strip (1956) - Is this an
early
beatnik?
Minnie the Minx - Leo Baxendale's original artworkfor the 1960 Beano Annual, p110
'Minnie
the Minx' - page 110 Beano
annual 1960
Details of 'Minnie the Minx'
artwork for 1960 Beano
annual
(note colour applied by the Beano
art dept. as guide to printers)
photos courtesy James
Skinner
When a'Minnie the
Minx' artwork came up for sale in February 2011, Leo was
contacted and he
responded saying:- "It's
funny enough, but not one of my vintage sets."
WHAM! comic - issue 77, 4th
December 1965, front cover
'Tiddlers'
artwork - 'Paper Chase' -
WHAM! issue 77, 4th
December 1965 Original drawing signed
by Leo Baxendale
Leo Baxendale would pop hidden images into his strips
"I
remember very clearly drawing this
Tiddlers set. This was later on in the Wham!
saga, and I
had realised
by then that with the rackety Odhams arrangement, the
comic wasn't
going to last; so I had given up on the absurdity of
working
desperately through the nights, and instead just focused
on spending
ample time on the drawings, and the satisfaction that came
from making
good drawings.
With
this drawing, you could see Odhams
cutting costs; earlier, front-and-back covers were painted
by me in
full colour alike, but by the time I was drawing this set,
Odams
had
cut printing costs by having me do the front cover page in
full colour,
while I drew the back cover page in monochrome, as you can
see.
To go
off at a tangent, I wrote all my
own scripts for my Wham!
work. I could lie down on my bed, close my
eyes while the sounds of a working day filtered in from
the outside
world, while I structured a plot in my head, until I had
it ready for
drawing. I was paid separately (and very well) by Odhams
for producing
the scripts for my drawings, and could have made an
easier, stress-free
income if that was all I did, but of course, I was an
artist, so was
expected to draw the sets as well as write them. C'est
la vie."
[7]
- Leo Baxendale, October 2010
Giles
cartoon,
9th October 1955
> Farmer
from the Tiddlers
set, 1965
The
strong influence of cartoonist Carl Giles (1916-1995) on Leo
Baxendale is very clearly illustrated in this 'Tiddlers'
artwork, by the
presence of a farmer who appears to have walked right out of one of
Giles's mid-1950's cartoons! (see above illustration of Giles
cartoon on 9th
October 1955).
In fact, the bull and the shed resemble ones found in an earlier
cartoon - Giles
cartoon of 25th July 1954 - why even the pigs on the front
page of Smash! issue 77 could live on Giles' farm - see Giles
cartoon 3rd April 1956.
Giles cartoon 25th July 1954
'Tiddlers'
artwork - 'Paper Chase' -
WHAM! issue 77, 4th
December 1965 Original drawing signed
by Leo Baxendale
"I long ago gave away my
Giles books
to our offspring, but your observations don't surprise me. My
drawing didn't travel along a natural progression, but was on a
ricketty roller-coaster with ridiculous highs and lows of
metabolism. My turning back to try to
refresh myself at the Giles well was a recurrent desperate feature
of
the low points."[9]
-
Leo Baxendale, January 2011
But of course, it
was a 1953 Giles cartoon, of kids tumbling out of
school and 'lamming each other', that inspired Leo to draw The Bash
Street Kids in the first place.
The kids first appeared in The
Beano on
13th February 1954 in a set entitled 'When the Bell Rings', however,
in
November 1956, the title was dropped and swapped for the now
familiar title of 'Bash Street Kids'.
Giles gives a vivid
description of life at Barnsbury Park School (Higher Grade
School) in Islington, London, where he was taught by 'Chalky'
- William
James Chalk MA :-
BACK TO SCHOOL WEEK -
by BRITAIN'S MOST FAMOUS CARTOONIST
if
i WeИt BACK to ƧchooL.
KИOWiИG WhAt i ИO ИOW
by GiLeƧ
"Back to
School" for me would not mean back to one of your modern rest
homes for unretired infants
where the children run the teachers.
It would be back to one of the old-fashioned schools that I went
to where the teachers ran the children.
Or thought they did.
Back to one of
those grey brick boxes on asphalt, where the only useful thing
you learned was the art of
self-defence during short periods between lessons misnamed
"playtime."
Playtime"
took place twice a day. Bang went a bell and out poured hundreds
of
small boys like a stream of black treacle, the bigger ones lamming
into
the smaller ones and the smaller ones lamming into the very small
ones.
Another
bang of the bell announced "playtime" over, and back you all
poured
into the grey brick box where everybody except the very, very good
ones
got lammed by the teachers.
When
the teachers grew tired of lamming they used the very, very good
ones
as examples for showing the bad ones up.
COLLABORATORS
We
never seemed able to lay hands on these very, very good ones
during playtime because they were always missing.
It
has
occurred to me since that those who were not creeping about the
grey brick box collaborating with the teachers as monitors and
prefects
were probably using the far corner of the playground as a
safety-zone, where they stayed hidden until the end-of-playtime
bell gave them the all-clear.
If I went back to school now I should pay more attention to these
fifth columnists.
As
far as the so-called lessons were concerned, in a class of 50-odd
fellow-candidates for delinquency, I expect I should still come
out
somewhere near the bottom of the exam sheet.
Lessons were
instilled into you both ends - by whacking your ear or caning the
part
you sit down with. They included things like history, geography,
singing, sums, and most of the accumulated nonsense of the past,
with
very little reference to the future.
You were reminded every
morning about the importance of punctuality by two on each for
being
late. It was so nice when I left school not to be caned for being
late
I have been late ever since.
THOSE DATES !
History
meant
remembering the dates of battles of the last two thousand years.
As I still can't remember the dates of battles for the last two
weeks I
should still flop at History.
Geography
was
the names of rivers and volcanoes. I know no more now about
(a)
rivers and (b) volcanoes than I knew then, except (a) the
river that
starts at the bottom of my garden and (b) Lord Beaverbrook.
Art.
Now
there was a subject on which my teachers really used to let
themselves go. They gave us a unique variety of things to
draw, a cone,
a cube, or the eternal green vase which stood next to the
tadpole tank
on the window sill of every classroom.
None
of
this "Draw what you like" business. The first thing I should
organise if I went back to school would be a campaign against
green
vases.
Sums. My accountant will tell you that they couldn't have taught
me
very much about sums. I would still call mental arithmetic brain
fever.
Singing. If I thought I should have to suffer another dose of
our singing lessons I wouldn't go back.
'IF
MR. GILES . . .'
The
only
information we got about the future was to be told how bad it
was
going to be if we got our name in the punishment book many more
times.
But I could go back now armed with the knowledge that they were
misinforming us on this count, for I have discovered since that
nothing
they forecast turned out to be anything like as bad as it is.
Perhaps the only sensible thing they tried to teach us was that
it is wrong to smoke.
At 3s.
7d. for 20 they were dead right.
I could tell them they were quite wrong in chastising us for
occasionally tarring and feathering the weaker fellow pupil,
such
things being looked upon nowadays as "self-expression."
Having read enough Hemingway and Dr. Kinsey to know most of the
answers, I should know how to come back at that sarcastic old
tyrant
who lorded it over us for a couple of terms.
When he addressed me with his "If Mr. Giles would kindly come to
the
front of the class, place the gob-stopper he is sucking in the
wastepaper basket, and hand me that intriguing piece of
literature he
is composing under his desk, I shall be delighted to read it
aloud to
the rest of the class while he goes upstairs and fetches the
cane and
book."
Knowing what I know now, I should just sit back and wait for the
roar
of laughter from my associate scholars to subside and then reply
in the
modern fashion, without removing my gob-stopper:-
"And if my clever substitute for a teacher doesn't watch his
step he
will leave me no option but to report him to the education
committee
and have him flung out on his ear."
It would be interesting to see how the old tyrant reacted to
this treatment. I've a pretty good idea.
My
sympathy
But,
apart from the fact that I know I could make it a lot hotter
for them now, I don't want to go back.
And
lest
the teachers of today should think me a trifle biased on the
side
of the pupils, I hasten to say they all have my deepest
sympathy.
Strange
as
their methods were for passing on the wisdom of the
universe, I
wouldn't have fancied their chances of coping with the
scholars in my
part of the world had they not been armed by the authorities
with
canes, T-squares, bits of chalk to throw at us, and an
ability to
detect and stamp out any sign of originality before it got
serious.
Next:
I'm
coming over to join the enemy by presenting on the following
pages
an Alphabetical Guide for Teachers. You needn't buy the
paper unless
you want to."
Giles
continued
to entertain the nation with his 'family', and there were some
wonderful cartoons - a
personal favourite being one published on 2nd
December 1955 by
the Daily Express, on the topic of woodwork in
schools - see image
of original
Giles 'woodwork' artwork (use the
'Zoom on' control and slider below the image to get
close detail, which takes a moment or two to come into focus).
In 1978, Leo
Baxendale wrote a letter to Carl Giles
to acknowledge his 'heavy debt' to him and to present him with a copy
of his recently written autobiography. In this letter Leo states his
desire to write Giles' biography, and to that end asks to meet with
him. Apparently, Giles declined his offer but thanked him for his kind
and encouraging comments.
Comparing these two gifted artists, Giles and Leo, it seems that
for the most part, they were both presenting their kids as
freewheeling
anarchic nutters with no respect for authority! One wonders how much
the likes of Giles'
'family',David Law's Dennis the
Menace, and Leo
Baxendale's Bash Street Kids and Minnie the Minx, opened
up
the minds of a younger generation to the possibilities of breaking
out? In a way, it seems these artists helped usher in the 1960's youth
rebellion in Britain, resulting in a whole
bunch of anti-establishment behaviour. Popstars such as The Beatles,
The Who and the The Rolling Stones must surely have been influenced by
the comics they
enjoyed as children.
John Mayall's Bluesbreakers
featuring Eric Clapton & The
Beano
A
former
guitarist of The Yardbirds, 21-year-old Eric Clapton, was
famously pictured reading a comic on the record cover of a John Mayall's Bluesbreakers
LP (the comic
wasThe Beano,
issue No. 1242, published
7th May 1966).
'Grimly Feendish' -Smash! issue 7 page
26 - 19th March 1966 Original drawing signed
by Leo Baxendale
On
5th February 1966
Odhams launched a sister comic to Wham!
called Smash!.Of the new strips to
feature in the first issue of Smash!
was 'Grimly Feendish', a
character already familiar to readers of the 'Eagle-Eye Junior Spy'strip in Wham!.
'Bluebottle
and Basher' artwork - 'Trolly' - Valiant20th
July 1968
'Bluebottle and
Basher' artwork - 'Baby' - Valiant3rd
August
1968
'Fat Fraud'!
Basher seems to be a not-too-distant relative of Billy Bunter,
The Fattest Schoolboy on Earth!',the famous fictional character
drawn byFrank
Minnitt, who turned the foolish greedy Bunter into a cartoon
character soon after taking over the strip from Magnet
artist Charles Chapman
in 1939. Of interest is the letter sent to the artist by Bunter's
creator, Frank Richards. Bunter's popularity meant that
Minnitt would keep on drawing the Billy Bunter strip for Knock-OutComic until
shortly before his death in 1958. Frank Minnett was succeeded by Reg Parlett and so the regular episodes of
Bunter foolery continued, even after Knockout
merged with Valiant
in 1963.
"I
created Bluebottle and Basher for Valiant
at the beginning of 1968. This was the most 'cartoony' page
I ever
drew. A huge fat burglar, Basher, was locked in weekly
conflict with a
tiny policeman - Bluebottle. I enjoyed writing the scripts,
because I
found I could work a vein of zany humour from the weekly
ding-dong
battle. I enjoyed drawing it too. Basher's big bladder shape
gave a
bold look to the page."
"When
I
was drawing all these features for Fleetway comics, I was
also
producing a massive amount of 'undercover' work for Oldhams.
My last
'official' work for Odhams was the Eagle Eye episode in Wham
no. 96 for
16 April 1966 (a lovely drawing)." [10]
* A Bad Penny Always
Turns Up! *
- a saying thought to date back to the 15th
century when counterfeit coins abounded
'Bad
Penny' turned up in
February 1966, in the first issue of
Smash!.
'Pages
6 and 7 featured the first appearance of Bad Penny with
artwork by Leo
Baxendale. Penny was essentially Odhams' version of
Minnie the Minx,
even down to the black beret, but somehow I always
preferred Bad Penny.
Perhaps it was the Odhams house style of dafter and more
unrestrained
humour that appealed to me.'
Bad Penny Blues 'Bad
Penny' drawing -
Smash! issue 151 - 21st
December 1968 - Odhams Press
Several months after the
launch of Smash! Leo
Baxendale left Odhams Press to join rival Fleetway Publications
but apparently he still continued to supply a'massive amount of
undercover material to Odhams.'[10] Leo
recalls the set-up;
"I
was
now in full spate for Fleetway. But I was reluctant to
give up the
lucrative Odhams market. Their rates of pay were
better than
Fleetway's. I channelled large quantities of pages to
Odham via
Mike Brown, a cartoon-film animator. I pencilled the
drawings and Mike
inked them in. One series we did in this manner was
the Eagle Eye
adventure which ran from 30 July to 7 September 1966.
We turned out
large numbers of Grimly Feendish pages and Bad Penny
sets in this way.
That was not all. With the help of Irene Rooum, wife
of cartoonist
Donald Rooum, I set up Hampstead Studio, through which
I funnelled
drawings to Odhams. I didn't work with anybody
else on these
pages - I pencilled and inked them myself.
I was in a delightful situation.Working
under my own name, a lot was expected of me. Publishers expected me to cram my
drawings with funny detail. Working
undercover, I was able to reduce the layouts to the simplest
terms.
Backgrounds were minimal or non-existent - just a horizon
line. And
there was no ancillary comic detail - just the characters
acting out
the story line against an empty backdrop.
I was able to pick and choose the easiest sets to draw,
avoiding the
difficult ones. So I concentrated on Barmy Army and Bad Penny
(both
double-page features). Those Barmy Army sets were delightful.
I drew
them fast. But there was so little work in them that I was
able to draw
them very well. They sparkled. I drew the sets very large, to
allow
myself a free wrist movement
I also sold scripts to Odhams (for other artists to
illustrate) via a
friend in Edinburgh University, Sandy Hobbs.
I supplied this undercover work to Odhams, alongside my full
production for Fleetway, from 1966 to 1969."[11]
Image of page 1 of 'Bad Penny' artwork
-
Smash! issue 151 - 21st
December 1968 - Odhams Press
Image of page 2 of 'Bad Penny' artwork
-
Smash! issue 151 - 21st
December 1968 - Odhams Press
References
[1] A
Very Funny Business - 40 Years of Comics, Leo Baxendale,
Duckworth, 1978; p42
[2] ibid.,
p70
[3] Hobgoblin Wars,
Leo Baxendale, Reaper Books, 2009 pp17-18
[4]
email
from Leo Baxendale to Paul Mason, dated 15th November 2010
[5]
email from Leo Baxendale to Paul Mason,
dated 14th February 2012
[6]
A Very Funny
Business - 40 Years of Comics, Leo Baxendale, Duckworth,
1978; p32
[7] email
from Leo Baxendale to Paul Mason, dated 17th October 2010
[8]
email
from Leo Baxendale to Paul Mason, dated 1st December 2010
[9] email
from Leo Baxendale to Paul Mason, dated 2nd January 2011
[10]
A Very Funny Business - 40
Years of Comics, Leo Baxendale, Duckworth, 1978;
p90
[11]
A Very Funny Business - 40
Years of Comics, Leo Baxendale, Duckworth, 1978;
p90-91
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