Comics UK

Searching my collection for interesting examples of British humour comics with a football theme to show on my blog, I found two sets by Leo Baxendale. One is Little Plum in the Beano and the other one General Nit and His Barmy Army – printed 5 years later – in Wham! Produced for two competing publishers, both sets are drawn to an identical script. Any ideas how this might have happened? Do you know of more examples? Check my today’s blogpost for the full version of both strips:

http://kazoop.blogspot.com/2012/06/foot ... cs_27.html

Here is a taste:

In his 1978 autobiography A Very Funny Business Leo revealed that he was so overworked he redrew some old Minnie the Minx and Little Plum sets as Bad Penny and Barmy Army strips. He admits it was "a loony thing to do" and that DC Thomson "erupted" when they found out.

Not surprisingly, because surely all artwork he did for Minnie and Plum is © DC Thomson. Leo had no right to reuse it. I guess that burned his bridges, and is a (but not the only) reason why he'll never do new material for Thomsons now.

I recall when I wrote my college thesis on comics I found an example among my sister's annuals and comics of an identical theme - a girl in a wheelchair feigning not recovering because she thinks her father is having an affair after overhearing a telephone conversation. Some dialogue was virtually identically, although the comic version was serialised and the annual version a complete story.

While researching the Space Family Robinson strip for the Gerry Anderson Complete Comic History site, Kim Stevens found the 'Tam versus the Trygans' story in the annual was reused for The Space Girls in a Princess Tina annual. The full comparison can be found here: http://www.technodelic.pwp.blueyonder.c ... eGirls.htm

Angus Allan reused the 'Koenig tested by aliens to see if the Alphans are suitable to join us' line in the strip 'Mindprobe' (Space:1999 Annual ©1976) in the untitled Space:1999 strip in the ©1977 Look-in Annual, and spun the same story over thirteen instalments for a Battlestar Galactica strip in Look-in, replacing Koenig with Apollo.

I'm sure these are not isolated incidents, as I think writers often recycle story ideas a great deal, if not entire scripts.

The artwork in those two examples is almost identical - as if the artist has drawn over the original page - not possible with an inked page so maybe he photocopied the original and traced over it?

I think Leo and DC Thomson finally arrived at some sort of legal settlement a few years ago. Presumably this dealt with any outstanding copyright disputes and would, theoretically, enable Leo to work for them again - though it doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon.

- Phil Rushton

stevezodiac wrote:The artwork in those two examples is almost identical - as if the artist has drawn over the original page - not possible with an inked page so maybe he photocopied the original and traced over it?

That's exactly my impression.

stevezodiac wrote:The artwork in those two examples is almost identical - as if the artist has drawn over the original page - not possible with an inked page so maybe he photocopied the original and traced over it?

That was also not possible; once the original artwork for the Beano is accepted by the editor, the artist never sees it again.* And in 1958 there were no photocopiers, not in the cheap and easy sense there were in the 70s and after.
There were several examples of this in WHAM and SMASH in 1965-6, totally redrawn Minnie as Bad Penny, Bash Street as Tiddlers and at least one other Plum and bears as Barmy Army (the one where they're all hiding behind big rocks with bazookas at the end).
In the 1990s a script I had drawn for Grange Hill in Fast Forward written by someone else turned up as Byker grove in some other comic. Or Fast Forward again. Or it was Byker Grove first. Anyway I hope the writer got paid twice.

*Of course Mr Baxendale has since been given many of his Beano pages back following the legal settlement alluded to here, but that wasn't until the 1990s.

A rather older example: http://blog.crystal-knights.co.uk/2010/ ... -going-on/

Sexton Blake in Valiant was also basically re-drawn and slightly changed scripts from Maxwell Hawke: Ghost Hunter in Buster. No doubt leading some people (including somebody I found on Deviant Art) to think that Sexton Blake was all about "spooky" stories.

It happens sometimes. I started that thread after a triple transplant - from annual to comic, from Dandy to Beano, and from Winker Watson to Bash Street Kids. There are a few other examples mentioned there as well.

felneymike wrote:Sexton Blake in Valiant was also basically re-drawn and slightly changed scripts from Maxwell Hawke: Ghost Hunter in Buster.

According to Niblet in that same thread, Maxwell Hawke has also been repurposed as James Bold in Cheeky Weekly. Versatile character, that! Any idea if any specific scripts were recycled more than once?

Can't understand what all the kerfuffle is about. Ask any creator and they will tell you that Plagiarism is rife in the comics media and any other other media for that matter. In fact it is the very life blood of the industry. Only a few truly good original ideas proffer themselves and then they are imitated ad nauseam.

The Cap.

Captain Storm wrote:Can't understand what all the kerfuffle is about. Ask any creator and they will tell you that Plagiarism is rife in the comics media and any other other media for that matter. In fact it is the very life blood of the industry. Only a few truly good original ideas proffer themselves and then they are imitated ad nauseam.

The Cap.

It really isn't the life blood of the industry you know. In fact that case of the Plum/Barmy Army cloning is very rare indeed. Unless you have plenty of other examples to show how rife it is?

There's a difference between taking inspiration from something (Tom Brown's Schooldays led to Billy Bunter which led to Harry Potter, all great tales on thier own) and straight-up copying!

DC Thomson did recycle their own scripts quite often, as when Ken Hunter totally redrew Ron Smith's 1960 version of 'Back from Zero' for Topper.

- Phil Rushton

Of course, there is nothing unusual about publishers recycling their own scripts but what makes the two Baxendale sets extraordinary is that they were produced by the same artist for two rival publishers and that’s the reason I decided to show them. I will try to find more of those Bad Penny/Minnie the Minx, Plum/Barmy Army and Bash Street/Tiddlers sets when I have time.
As for the art of the two sets being almost identical, I still believe Baxendale used some sort of a copying machine or technique because otherwise the coincidence in detail would be impossible to explain.