badtime bedtime books

This is another of my personal favorites, this one drawn by Mike Brown. My copy was generously provided by "SteveZodiac" of comicsuk.co.uk. Thanks Steve! It's included here in full so you can compare and contrast a classic non-Baxendale strip to classic Baxendale strips. Like all geniuses, Baxendale is more chaotic. This non-Baxendale strip is more even, with clean borders, no wasted space, and a pleasing supply of jokes, one after the other. A very professional job. But to me it lacks some of the lunatic layouts and off the wall ideas of the best Baxendale stuff. And some of the secondary gags and dialog seem forced or clumsy, as if the writer doesn't naturally have this sense of humor but is trying to copy the style of someone they admire. But that is a minor quibble. The sheer volume of good stuff more than makes up for it. A classic.

Stories that appear in annuals, especially after the original comic has folded, are often nothing special. But this one (from Monster Fun Annual 1980) is a real gem. It has all the elements I look for in a Badtime book: strong characters, exotic locations, wide-ranging ideas, contact with the reader (the artist even appears in the strip!) and lots of fun, all squashed into 8 glorious pages! Note that the pages were designed to be full size, so they don't appear as squashed. as other stories, and they have better lettering. Also (a trivial detail) since they weren't intended to be removed, page 1 faces page 2, page 3 faces page 4, and so on.

I love stories that pay homage to classics of literature (or classic movies) and take in vast ideas and cosmic scales. Stories like this one, in fact. :)

All comic art copyright IPC magazines (1970s) and Egmont International (today).

Thanks to Irmantas, Muffy, the Hornet, Toonhound, Peter Gray, John Pollock, and Andy & Sharon Laney-Davis for most of the scans. Thanks to Kashgar, Lew Stringer, Bustercomic, o55 and SteveZodiac of comicsuk.co.uk for general help and information. And of course thanks to Leo Baxendale and all the writers, artists and editors who created these gems in the first place!