Comic artist

born October 27 1930

died April 23 2017

Leo Baxendale, who has died aged 86, was one of the chief figures in the world of children’s comics and the creator of Minnie the Minx and the Bash Street Kids for The Beano. He was also involved in launching its sister paper The Beezer for the Dundee-based publisher DC Thomson and the comics Wham! and Smash! for Odhams Press.

Baxendale’s characters were so successful that there is now a statue of Minnie the Minx in Dundee and, in 2014, a street in the city’s West Marketgait was renamed Bash Street to mark the 60th anniversary of the strip’s creation. In 2013, he became only the second person (after Raymond Briggs) inducted into the British Comic Awards Hall of Fame, where he was described as “an integral and inseparable part of the history of British children’s comics” and his influence as “incalculable”.

The impact of Baxendale’s joyously anarchic material on The Beano was immediate: when he joined in 1953, it sold 400,000 copies; five years later, circulation was 2 million copies a week. It was also enduring; Minnie the Minx is the title’s third longest-running character, and the Bash Street Kids have featured in every issue since 1956.

Leo Baxendale was born on October 27 1930 at Whittle-le-Woods, a village just outside Chorley in Lancashire. He was educated at Preston Catholic College, a Jesuit grammar school, and then went to work in a paint factory, designing labels. He did his National Service as a clerk in the RAF’s catering corps, then joined the Lancashire Evening Post’s art department.

Looking around potential extra outlets for his work, he took the view that The Beano had become rather stuck in the past. Lord Snooty, for example, he thought was “all right for 1930, but in the 1950s people wanted something new”. The exception was Davey Law’s Dennis the Menace, which “captivated” Baxendale.

Baxendale submitted some ideas to the comic, and was signed up as a freelance on the strength of Little Plum, a Red Indian of the Smellyfeet tribe. He first appeared in issue 586, in October 1953, and featured until 1998; the character was revived again in 2002. Only a couple of months later, Baxendale came up with Minnie the Minx to rival Law’s Beryl the Peril, who appeared in Topper, another comic in the DC Thomson stable. Modelled on “a sort of Amazonian warrior”, Minnie and her capacity for unleashing mayhem was an instant hit.

The following year Baxendale was walking past a school in Preston when the idea for the Bash Street Kids sprang into his mind “more or less full-formed”. Initially with the title When The Bell Rings, the adventures of Danny, Fatty, Smiffy, Wilfred, ’Erbert, Spotty, the twins Sidney and Toots and, above all, the extraordinary-looking Plug, were a huge success, and by 1956 the strip was devoted entirely to them. Its incredibly detailed drawings and vigorous style won admiration from readers (though when one wrote in, describing it as “near-genius”, Baxendale took umbrage at the “near”), but the effort of producing work of this quality took its toll.

Baxendale, though he mainly worked from home, had by this time moved to Broughty Ferry, and would go into The Beano office once or twice a week to brainstorm ideas for plots, often during impromptu games of keepie-up. He was also producing, single-handed, four different full-page stories a week as well as material for The Beezer and the annuals. “In 1962,” he remembered, “I just blew up like a boiler and walked out.”

Two years later, having moved south to Gloucestershire (where he lived for the next 50 years), Baxendale returned to comics work with Odhams Press, creating General Nitt and his Barmy Army (a phrase he minted) and Eagle Eye, Junior Spy for the launch of Wham! Its success led to the launch of a sister comic, Smash! and Baxendale was soon working for it, too.

Baxendale’s style at this time evolved to include even more background detail, and bolder use of colour. In 1966, the publishers IPC took over Odhams, and Baxendale moved on to Fleetway Publications, where he came up with the magnificent Sweeney Toddler, a fiendish infant, and the insufferable Clever Dick. He continued, however, to supply work for Odhams anonymously. This allowed him to adopt a simplified style. “Backgrounds were minimal or non-existent, just a horizon line,” he said. “I drew them fast. But there was so little work in them that I was able to draw them very well. They sparkled.”

He also moonlighted on a newsletter, Strategic Commentary, which he had set up to oppose the Vietnam War, and to advance his political opinions. It did not run for long, but radical politics remained important to him, and in the 1990s he set up a website which included essays on Left-wing issues as well as promoting his work.

In the mid-1970s, Baxendale left comics and turned out a series of books featuring Willy the Kid for Duckworth’s as well as a more adult title, Thrrp!, and his memoirs A Very Funny Business (1978).

One unamusing aspect of the business was the appropriation by publishers of all rights in the characters Baxendale had created, and he spent much of the 1980s embroiled in a long-running court case against DC Thomson. Eventually, in 1987, he agreed to an out-of-court settlement; Thomson kept the rights, but paid him an undisclosed sum and agreed that he should be recognized as the creator of the characters.

He used part of the settlement to set up his own publishing house, Reaper Books, which brought out further Willy the Kid collections and an anthology of a strip he wrote for The Guardian from 1990-91 entitled I Love You, Baby Basil! In recent years, he had staged exhibitions of his work; he was inducted into the British Comics Awards Hall of Fame in 2013-14.

Leo Baxendale, who had suffered from cancer in recent years, is survived by his wife Peggy, their three sons and two daughters. His eldest son is the cartoonist Martin Baxendale.

Andrew McKie