The Swots and the Blots
Leo Baxendale, Rebellion Publishing, £24.99

“WHAT!” I hear you cry, “A review of a comic strip?”

That’s correct. But what a comic strip and what an artist! The godfather of British comics, Leo Baxendale, the creator of the original Bash Street Kids and the female version of Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, has been given a new lease of life with the publication of his 1969-1971 comic strip for SMASH! The Swots and the Blots.

Baxendale was always political. With The Bash Street Kids and Minnie the Minx — not forgetting the terror that was Sweeny Toddler — children would just not conform. Even when punishment was given out by a teacher or some other boring adult in the form of the slipper or the cane (which has thankfully gone from the strips) it didn’t mean anything to them, and the next week they were back for more anarchic antics.

The strip he drew for The Guardian between 1990-1992, I Love you Baby Basil!, he had already used in his support for the miners’ strike by working with Women Against Pit Closures to publish, along with other cartoonists, Deep Digs, with all the benefits going to the miners’ families.

I have a framed signed copy of this strip with Baxendale kindly using colour for the most important point he wanted to make: in this case a soiled green nappy being thrown directly towards a group of marching policemen chanting “Overtime! Overtime! MacGregor! MacGregor! Sink the Belgrano!”

Baxendale was the first to use the cartoon in the same way that Steve Bell and Martin Rowson use them now — laughter as a weapon.

By the time Baxendale came to The Swots and the Blots it had already been running for three years, illustrated by other artists: Ron Spencer and Mike Lacey. What Baxendale brought to his clash of class within the classroom was anarchy. The wonderful sight gags allowed Baxendale to run wild.

Teacher (still with Mortar Board on head) tends always to have an arrow in his back, or a saw cutting away a perfect circle around the floor he is standing on or the desk he is leaning on. Nothing comes of it! Nobody (apart from the reader) even notices! The sounds of the kids eating “Chomp! Chomp! Chomp!”, or when someone is being attacked with peas from a peashooter “Puff! Ping! Ping!”, are wonderfully evocative.

Readers of the Morning Star will be happy to know that the Swots rarely win, and it is the Blots that are triumphant. Yes, there are characters that have been developed from The Bash Street Kids: Plug is now Alf Wit Blot; Beryl Blot, with her bowler hat that is always at a tilt, looks like a cross between Minnie the Minx and a Droog from Clockwork Orange. Fatty Blot is the original Fatty from The Bash Street Kids (who, thankfully, is called Freddy in the Beano today), Cythia Swot looks like a girl that even St Trinians would find hard going.

Yes, some of these characters are stereotypes, but no more so than those in Dad’s Army. But, like those characters, you care for them (especially the working-class Blots) and you want them to win, and to celebrate the fun and craziness, where anything goes.

We have Irmantas Povilaika to thank for saving these works of comic art, along with Rebellion Publishing Ltd. So go onto the Kazoop web site and order yourself a copy of this and other Baxendale and Ken Reid classics. And when they arrive (and if you are of a certain age) thrill in the memory of those Christmas mornings (say 3am?) when the first present you opened would be your Christmas Annual and you would laugh out so loud your parents would call out and tell you to go back to sleep.

Or as George the mighty Blot leader might say “Titter! Titter! Smirk! Splutch!”