I'm very grateful to an unknown blog-reader for informing me last month that the "Baby-Face" Finlayson comic libraries I so admire were the work of Henry Davies and not, as I had blithely assumed for all these years, Ron Spencer. It's nice to give credit where it's due, at least eventually!
And now, thanks to my brother, I've just got my hands on the Beano (No. 2338, May 9th, 1987) with Baby-Face's final weekly appearance, in which he tangles with a conspicuously off-model Dennis the Menace and the Beano editor, and gets himself posted back to America.
I wouldn't like to offer an opinion on who drew this one, under the circumstances, but it's not a very thrilling end to Baby-Face's Beano career. I grew up with the Britain-based "cutest bandit around" incarnation, tangling primarily with British-uniformed policemen, and the notion of him as an American bandit was by this point strictly confined to the comic libraries, so the idea of sending him back where he came from didn't really resonate with me as a fitting ending. I did always like those captions at the end of a final strip for a character who'd been dropped - things like "Well, that feast will keep The Three Bears busy for a while! Next week you can see [whoever replaced them] on this page!"
Back in May 1987, there's a trailer in this one for the two stars who'd be making their debut next week - Little Monkey and Karate Sid. As I recall, Little Monkey didn't last long at all, and though Sid had a bit more staying power, he never really made the big time. Not even when he acquired a fire-breathing dragon sidekick!
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