The Bad Guys 15 – Open Wide and Say Arrrgh!

Aaron Blabey's Open Wide and Say Arrrgh is the fifteenth Bad Guys book, a loud and VERY silly comic for 7 year olds with the worst dentist you could ever imagine.

What happens

It opens with Mr Wolf gagged and strapped into the chair. Doctor Drillaärgh leans over him with a needle and a grin full of spiky teeth. His business card says he's an amateur (and that he doesn't need a diploma).

He has a nurse called Nursie, a huge one-eyed lump in a little white hat. And when the needle isn't enough, out comes a drill the size of a lamppost. BUZZZZ!

Wolf gets free and runs for it through the clinic with two friends. Their guide is Abe, a bat in a tie who can't tell a lie. That's a real problem when you're hiding. He keeps shouting out exactly where they are (he does feel bad about it).

Meanwhile the rest of the gang are scattered a long way off. A velociraptor called Milt squares up to a monster with chain saws for arms, and what's hiding inside it is probably the best joke in the book. And Piranha finds out he has a brand-new power. Where does it come out? His bottom, of course.

Most pages are one big picture or a strip of panels, with speech bubbles and HUGE sound effects (DONG! SPLURT! P-TOOEY!). The dentist's lines come in scratchy horror-film capitals, which is half the fun. A confident reader can race through it in one sitting.

It's a book that knows it's a book, too. Wolf grumbles that if their life was a series, it'd be getting a lot weirder and darker than the early ones. Fans will love being in on that joke.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

It really does get darker. The dentist says he just wants to hear you scream, and a creepy heavy metal song puts a spell on anyone who hears it. It ends on a cliffhanger with the gang in real trouble. A child who scares easily might like you nearby. For most fans it's spooky in a giggly way, and there's never a bottom joke far away.

What to read next

This one sits right in the middle of a big ongoing story. It starts mid-crisis and expects you to know who everyone is, so a reader starting here will be quite lost. If yours hasn't met the gang yet, go back to Episode One, the book where the whole story starts.