Saturday, August 11, 2012

The Five Greats - No. 3: Leo Baxendale

The creator of some of the most famous characters in British comics is Leo Baxendale, and that earns him a rightful place in the five greats!

Born in the early 1930's, Baxendale created his first characters for The Beano in 1953. He came up with Little Plum, Minnie the Minx and The Bash Street Kids, which was originally called When The Bell Rings.
Then in 1964 he created Wham! comic, and drew a majority of the strips inside (everything he drew for the title was signed). It would last for 187 issues before merging with Pow! in 1968.
Leo then left comics for good in 1975 after drawing the Badtime Bedtime Story Books for Monster Fun - and went on to create his Willy the Kid series, which lasted for three years!




Leo is one of my favourite artists, and his artwork is always a joy to behold.

5 comments:

Peter Gray said...

My favourite comic artist..

my second is Tom Paterson

Matthew Brannigan said...

Definitely my favourite too; hugely talented and influential.

George Shiers said...

He's also my favourite, he's a truly great artist - I really like his Willy the Kid books! He can make anything funny and cram so much detail into all his drawings!

I wonder how he'd look in new comics - would his style fit in?

Peter Gray said...

Leo's style changed a lot through the years.so he would fit in..

George Shiers said...

I'd really like to see even just a short series by him, it'd be intresting to see how he draws in a modern comic!