The Bad Guys 11 – Dawn of the Underlord

Aaron Blabey's Dawn of the Underlord is the eleventh Bad Guys book, a very silly (and a little bit spooky) comic for 7 year olds about Mr Snake getting far too powerful for his own good.

What happens

The gang are famous heroes now and there are no baddies left to fight. So a TV reporter called Tiffany Fluffit turns up for a tour of their headquarters. Mr Piranha shows off his record label, his fashion line and a burrito chef who has to cook 24 hours a day (it's in his contract). Mr Shark has given up disguises for meditation and tai chi.

Then there's Mr Snake. He hasn't left his lab since LAST September. The sign on his door tells everyone to go away, and it means everyone.

Inside, he's floating about with more power than he knows what to do with. A booming voice starts calling him Serpent. It wants him to open a strange white door hanging in a hole in the universe. Snake's first answer is to tell it to chill out, which is very Snake.

Outside the door, Mr Wolf is properly worried about his little buddy. Agent Fox tells him you can't control someone else's path. You can only love them and help where you can. It's a surprisingly sweet moment in the middle of all the silliness!

On the page it's pictures first and words second. There are speech bubbles, strips of panels and whole pages given over to a single SLAM! The mysterious voice comes in huge scratchy capitals that fill the page, which makes it super easy to read in a deep spooky voice. Piranha's number one hit single is called I'll Bite Yo Butt. What more do you need to know?

Worth knowing before you hand it over

There's more of a creepy edge here than in the gang's usual capers. The voice tells Snake he's been hated and feared his whole life, and once the door opens there's a lot of glowing eyes and evil cackling. It also stops on a big cliffhanger. A child who gets spooked by baddie voices might want you nearby. A child who's loved the gang's other adventures will probably be laughing too hard to notice.

What to read next

Snake and Wolf look back over everything the gang have been through so far, so this isn't the place to meet them. For a reader who's new to the gang, go right back to The Bad Guys Episode One and the same four friends.