This week, I want to look at the third of my three top British comic artists: Leo Baxendale.
Born in 1930, in Preston, Lancashire, Baxendale would help to redefine the look of British humour comics. Starting out in 1951 as a freelancer for the Beano, he would go on to create a number of characters for that comic, most of which still live on today. They included Little Plum (1953), The Bash Street Kids (1954) and The Three Bears (1959). Even today, more than sixty years since he picked up his pencil, Baxendale is still admired by comic artists and much imitated too. His style can clearly be seen in the modern versions of The Beano and Dandy.
What makes Baxendale shine to me is his wonderful ability to convey anarchy in his strips. Like Searle and Giles, Baxendale seems to enjoy creating anti-authoriarian characters. The Bash Street Kids are a fine example of this:
Once he hit his stride in the mid 1950's, Baxendale was no doubt one of the best humorous artists around. Perhaps his greatest ability was however was being able to pack so much detail into an image. Look at this, another one of his Bash Street Kids sets. There seems to be so much going on here, a real sense of anarchy. Note the precariously balanced Smiffy on the fly paper.
Baxendale was a skilled draughtsman who could pace a gag. Some of his best work, in my opinion being his work on Little Plum, particularly when Plum faced his greatest adversaries, the mischievous bears that plagued this version of the Wild West.
After Parting with DC Thompson (publishers of the Beano and Dandy) during 1962, Baxendale was given the opportunity to launch a new comic: Wham (1963) was the result. Characters here included Eagle Eye and Grimly Feendish*. Feendish was perhaps one of the best British comic villians created. A villian who engaged in naughtiness and badness - a sort of pantomime villain, dreaming up often complex plans for sometimes quite small gains. His appeal perhaps lay in his slightly gothic feel, a little unusual at the time, as the boom in monster comics would not arrive until the early 1970's - Feendish was assisted/hindered by his (rather doltish) minions consisting of various creepy crawlies and tentacled... er, things. Just imagine if this stuff had been animated.
*Feendish would be given his own strip in Smash, a companion paper to Wham
After a spell round at IPC, where he created Clever Dick, Baxendale decided, in 1975, to quit weekly comics, instead concentrating on his Willy The Kid and Baby Basil characters which appeared in a number of hardback books in the late 1970's.
Today, Baxendale a spry 81 years old, is still going and long may he continue.
Sources and Further reading
Leo Baxendale website
http://www.reaper.co.uk/main.htm - Baxendale's own website
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Baxendale
Images
Bash Street Kids and Little Plum images - extracts from Dandy/Beano Anniversary books - Copyright DC Thompson
Grimly Feendish image - Copyright Leo Baxendale/Odhams Press. Sourced from <<http://reprintthis.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/reprint-this-grimly-feendish.html>>
Next: Across the pond to look at a couple of my favourite American comic strip artists - first up, my favourite artist of all time: Walt Kelly.
