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A guide to all the BTBTBs ever made. Based on Baxendale’s autobiography, A Very Funny Business, plus whatever other details I can find.
- Jack the Nipper. A parody of Jack the Ripper. Crazy toddlers have been Baxendale’s hallmark over the years. Jack the Nipper started as a rough pencil idea, the same size as the comic, produced to show the publishers what it should look like. They liked it so much they decided to put it in the first issue, and gave Baxendale TWO DAYS to finish it! So he only had time to ink in the small size rough version. Normally these things were drawn at a much larger scale, with maybe a day spent on each page, and then the finished result is inked, colored, lettered, and shrunk to fit the comic. But Baxendale had to do everything on the tiny comic-sized rough draft to meet the deadline. As he said, this was “a good recipe for going blind if done regularly.”
- Robinson Gruesome. A parody of Robinson Crusoe. This appeared in Monster Fun issue 2.
- Mister Punch. based on Punch and Judy. This is one of Baxendale’s personal favorites, and shows his work at its best, with a strong central character and panels full of extra fun, or “everything but the kitchen sink” as his editor enthusiastically observed.
- Dr Jackal and Mister Snide. At this point Baxendale had finally managed to persuade his editors to let him drop his other strips and concentrate all his energy on the BTBTB.
- Red Riding Hood. This, the fifth BTBTB was another classic. It took ten days to complete: one day for the script and nine for penciling and inking. The comic came out every week, so you can see why the BTBTB sometimes missed an issue. As a kid reading the comic I thought the editors just didn’t bother with a BTBTB those weeks. But now I realize that they knew perfectly well how important they were.
- Jack and the Beanstalk. Baxendale had a short rest after Red Riding Hood, then this new classic took over nine days to complete. It was worth the wait. I should maybe comment that American readers may be amazed that a four page comic can take ten days to write and draw, especially when the finished result looks good but nothing stunning. But you have to remember that this is an entire story. There is more pleasure and satisfaction to be had in those four pages than in a typical twenty page superhero comic. After seeing these I never got over my sense of disappointment that twenty page American comics seemed so empty. (With a few notable exceptions of course.)
- Little Boy Glue. This one also took over nine days to complete. In those days the weekly comics took about six weeks from finished art to the title appearing on the newsstands, so all the previous stories were finished before the first issue went on sale. But from now the pressure was really on. Any title that took more than a week would mean an issue of Monster Fun with no BTBTB! Sure enough, after Little Boy Glue appeared in issue 7, there was no BTBTB in issue 8, replaced by a center page poster and readers’ letters and art instead.
- Treasure Island. I think this one was actually called Traffic Island. It’s my all time favorite BTBTB. It may have been the first one I ever read, I’m not sure. The idea of a street roundabout containing a jungle that is literally packed full of amazing stuff, with always something new to discover by hacking through the undergrowth... that really appeals to me. It sums up everything I want from comics and games. Because of the pressure on time this one was drawn actual size, rather than being drawn extra large and shrunk down.
- Davy Jones. This is the last of the initial “vintage” run, as Baxendale puts it. He asked his editor to find someone else to write them so he could concentrate on the art. The reply: “But I don’t think anybody else will be able to write scripts like yours.” But Baxendale insisted. This is a great plus in my book for Baxendale’s humility. Those early stories were indeed classic, but he recognized that there were other good writers out there. To many great artists think that they are automatically great writers as well. because they are fan favorites they have the leverage to force editors to accept their scripts, when they would produce better work if they concentrated on just their art. While Baxendale produced first rate scripts for the BTBTB, he was processional enough to recognize that art was his greatest strength, and other professionals might be equally talented in the writing department.
- Little Miss Stuffit. The tenth and eleventh BTBTBs were produced quite quickly. After twenty years of working late nights against deadlines, he was well aware that his work (and personal happiness and even sanity) could easily suffer. In his autobiography he often comments on the crushing pressure of deadlines. Nearly all great comic artists felt the same, at least in the 1970s when comics were still essentially a production line with high output and relatively low pay. After all those years Baxendale was determined to be in control from now on, even if it meant spending less time on certain strips. Even an artist needs weekends off, and even the occasional holiday.
- Oliver Twister. This was another “quick” BTBTB. Baxendale realized he couldn’t produce his very best work in just seven days, and he didn’t want to compromise on his best work. So his plan was to produce maybe two or three merely “good” books then one “vintage” classic, then two or three good, then one classic, and so on.
- Marzipan of the Apes. This was a real classic, and took eleven days. By this time, fan mail had been coming in for five or six weeks, even from adults. British comics almost never got adult fan mail. IPC magazines, one of the big two British comics publishers (the other was DC Thompson, publisher of the Beano) had never seen adult fan mail for its comics. So when Monster Fun started to generate adult fan mail, they were intrigued. This was a first. Although Baxendale had planned to do some merely “good” stories to make time for the “classic” stories, it made more sense for him to concentrate on just the classic, and let others do some BTBTBs as well. He asked his editor, who of course was plunged into despair. BTBTBs took much longer to write than other stories, and would take much longer to draw. But they had little choice, and so other artists started to take on some BTBTBs.
the next few BTBTBs were produced more quickly, allowing him to recharge his creative batteries and spend some days actually not drawing comics (Shock! How dare he!). He also began work on Willy the Kid, his next great project. But he still created the occasional real classic BTBTB, such as Babes in the Woad, featuring Roman armies and all the usual gags.
TO BE CONTINUED! Work in progress...
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