Leo Baxendale

Along with Ken Reid, LEO BAXENDALE is widely-regarded as one of the most important artists in the history of British humour comics. Starting his professional career with Dundee-based publisher DC Thomson, Baxendale created Minnie the Minx and The Bash Street Kids for The Beano – both strips featuring anarchic adolescents, which would become a staple of his work. In the mid-sixties he started working for Odhams Press and made another significant contribution when they launched Wham! And Smash!, creating the characters Eagle Eye, Junior Spy, Bad Penny and Grimly Feendish. Towards the latter half of the decade, Baxendale started working for DC Thomson’s main rivals, the London-based Fleetway Publications. Most of his strips were created for Fleetway’s flagship humour title Buster, including The Cave Kids, Big Chief Pow Wow, Clever Dick and Snooper. His most popular creation for Fleetway, Sweeny Toddler, first appeared in the pages of Shiver and Shake in 1973. Such was the popularity of Sweeny that he would survive mergers with Whoopee! (where he became the cover star), Whizzer and Chips, and Buster. Baxendale received the Cartoon Art Trust Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003, and in 2013 was the second artist to be inducted into the British Comics Awards Hall of Fame. He sadly passed away in 2017.