Leo Baxendale- Banana Bunch from Beezer

thanks to Phil-comics for the image Beezer comic Xmas 1957. Shame its not in colour!!! See what I mean when you see the rest of this post..



I got the new Beano and Dandy collectors club by Phil-comics...joined recently..recieved issue 7 today..

http://www.phil-comics.com/collectors_club.html

Was over the moon to see an early Banana Bunch on the back page of The Beezer..
I'm always looking for early Beezers But they are very expensive and often lose on ebay..so thanks Phil for showing an early one...hope DC Thomson will show these in some kind of published way..I liked seeing the early 60's one in Best of Beezer,,,

Hi Peter, Those Banana Bunch 'colour plates' only appeared on the rear cover of the Beezer for the first 13 issues and were all completed before the first issue went on sale (the comic being produced on a schedule three months ahead of it's distribution). According to Leo's ' A Very Funny Business' it was juvenile paper supremo R D Low himself who ordered the strips removal from it's full colour, rear cover spot to a red/black, (nothing in the Beezer was published in black and white) inner page citing the strip's 'rawness' as a reason why it wasn't suitable for a cover spot, a comment with which Leo seemed to have few qualms. In truth I imagine once the Beezer went on sale and the stockpile began to be distributed Leo would have found drawing these intricate colour plates laboriously time consuming and was therefore reasonably happy to continue drawing the Banana Bunch as a more traditional, multi-panelled, strip.
BTW, from issue No 14, the rear cover spot was taken over by the adventure strip 'The Kings of Castaway Island' drawn by Peem Walker which stayed there, for over two years, till No 120.
from Kashgar thanks again!!

Next wish list is I want to see the first one with the zoo talked about in the club sheet..
Quote from comicsuk forum

Well here it is...:)

I remember reading one of your posts on comicsuk where you said you liked Banana Bunch from the early Beezers; it is Christmas time, so I will send you one more message with a scan of Banana Bunch page in Beezer issue No. 1 (Jan 21, 1956) as a small Xmas gift. I hope you will like it; keep up the good work with your blog!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2009!
Regards
CK
Thanks CK so much!!!!!!

How colour can make it look 100x better...these two firework ones prove my point!!!





Its a shame that a lot of these poster Banana Bunch pages were in black and white with red.......in colour they have so much power. He was the original Wheres Wally (US ..Waldo)!!

These poster pages should be collected together.coloured up nicely and put into a book..or even made into jigsaws..etc..

The Banana Bunch are often over looked by comic fans....The Beano characters he did and the Bash Street kids gets all the glory...well its time to look again...

the banana bunch are up there with the bash street kids in my opinion!!