the scarlet pimplyneddy
It was a real joy to find this jewel. As you may have noticed, these web pages are hosted on "EnterTheStory.com" - a web site I created as home to an adventure game. That adventure game contains (or will contain) many classic stories, and it begins with Les Miserables. Les Miserables is based in Paris in the early 1800s, the aftermath of the French Revolution. And this badtime bedtime book is based in the French Revolution - the locations and topics are largely the same! For the last few years I've been immersed in this stuff so when I found this badtime book it was wonderful!
This book illustrates the talent of the artists. Look at the costumes, the characters, the buildings. They make it look so effortless. But I have been trying to do this for the past year (in a slightly more serious way) and believe me, it's not as easy as it looks. It's not easy to just sketch a street and make it look like revolutionary France. It's not easy to create characters and props and have them look authentic. In his autobiography, Baxendale notes how much time it takes to create a brand new story world and new cast of characters, and how much easier it is to just make a new story about an established character. Badtime books took much longer top make than ordinary strips, but the results are worth it. (This example isn't by Baxendale of course, but the principle is still true.)
Many of the badtime books use a title of a famous story then completely ignore the original, but this one parodies the original all the way through. I love this kind of stuff. To me, this is badtime books at their best: opening a window into a new world, introducing a genuine classic, but doing it in a fun crazy way, and all in eight tiny pages. Just brilliant!
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, philcom55 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!
