The Bad Guys 6 – Alien vs Bad Guys

Aaron Blabey's Alien vs Bad Guys is the sixth Bad Guys book, a very silly space comic for 7 year olds with a monster that has far too many bottoms.

What happens

It opens on a TV news report about the gang. Mr Wolf is lovable, Mr Snake is brilliant and Mr Shark is powerful. Mr Piranha is "possibly a sardine".

The gang themselves are crying in the dark. They're stuck inside an alien space station on the moon with no rocket, and something enormous is hunting them. It has teeth, tentacles and a LOT of bottoms (which it uses as hands, much to everyone's horror).

Legs the tarantula finds an escape pod and hacks the alien computer to fly them home. Then Legs vanishes. Then Piranha. Then Shark, who's dressed up as a lady alien in a spotty frilly frock. Who's going to be next?

That leaves Wolf and Snake, going round in circles in the dark. Snake would very much like to get in the pod and go.

There's a lovely moment here. Snake admits that Wolf is the best friend he's ever had and begs him to come. Wolf won't leave the others. He tells Snake the choice is his. I won't say what Snake does next, but it's the heart of the book.

On the page it's a comic all the way through. Panels, speech bubbles and HUGE sound effects (SPLODGE! FOOMP! BOOM!). The big fight near the end hardly needs words at all. Lots of the jokes are in the faces and in Snake's sarcasm, and a child reading alone can get through the whole thing in one sitting.

Fair warning, it's very heavy on the bottom humour. There's a pit of dried alien snot, a floor of slippery drool, and Piranha gets called Mr Farty-Pants. It's an American edition, so they're butts rather than bums. If your reader thinks that word is the funniest thing ever, they'll be in heaven.

It ends on a TO BE CONTINUED, and the last surprise is a big one.

It picks up straight after the fifth book, so it's not the place to meet the gang. Start them on The Bad Guys Episode One, where Wolf first tries to turn his scary friends into good guys.

What to read next

If they're after another alien with big plans for Earth, try The Day That Aliens Nearly Ate Our Brains. Two best friends rig up a satellite dish from the dog's vet cone and end up chatting to an alien who's decided the galaxy would be better off without us.