- Comedy
- The Bad Guys collection
- Ages 7–11
The Bad Guys
Part of the collectionThe Bad Guys→Best for children who want fast, funny, image-heavy books with villains, aliens, action and a lot of shouting.
- Books20 / 20
- Arcs3
- Span2018–2025
- StatusComplete
The series
At a glance.
The Bad Guys is Aaron Blabey's twenty-book illustrated comedy-action series. It begins with Mr Wolf trying to convince a group of supposedly scary animals to become good, then rapidly escalates into zombies, aliens, dinosaurs, evil plots, space madness, larger mythologies and a finale-scale sense of absurd danger. The books are highly illustrated and extremely friendly to reluctant readers, with almost graphic-novel pacing even though the format is usually classed as illustrated chapter books. The series is comic first, but its long-running redemption and friendship thread gives the chaos a surprisingly durable emotional core.
Best for children who want fast, funny, image-heavy books with villains, aliens, action and a lot of shouting.
Primary themes
Overall tone
- Funny
- Silly
- Absurdist
- Exciting
Read in publication order. The first book is the cleanest entry point, and the later books rely increasingly on running jokes, cast history and accumulated chaos.
Three arcs
A series that changes as it goes.
- INarrative arcBooks 1–4 · 2022–2023Moderate sensitivity
Trying to be good
The original team forms and begins trying to prove that scary-looking animals can be heroes.
The opening Bad Guys arc is the most accessible and funniest place to begin. Mr Wolf's plan to make feared animals into good guys gives the series its emotional and comic engine, while Mission Unpluckable, Furball Strikes Back and Attack of the Zittens quickly escalate the missions into ridiculous animal rescue, villainy and zombie-cat chaos. The danger is noisy and action-heavy, but the handling is so comic and exaggerated that the sensitivity is moderate only in the broad adventure-action sense. These books are superb for reluctant readers because every page works hard.
- IINarrative arcBooks 5–10 · 2018–2025Moderate sensitivity
Aliens, dinosaurs and bigger trouble
The series escalates into aliens, dinosaurs, powers, identity twists and much bigger comic stakes.
The middle arc is where The Bad Guys becomes less like a simple mission comedy and more like an escalating action-sci-fi farce. Intergalactic Gas and Alien vs Bad Guys push the team into space and alien territory; Do-You-Think-He-Saurus?! adds dinosaurs; Superbad, The Big Bad Wolf and The Baddest Day Ever deepen the team history and identity jokes while still keeping the energy extremely silly. This stretch is best after the opening books because the cast dynamics and running absurdity now do a lot of the work.
- IIINarrative arcBooks 11–20 · 2020–2024Moderate sensitivity
Underlords, others and the final stretch
The later books lean into larger mythology, recurring villains, final battles and the endgame of the team's redemption story.
The final seeded arc is the densest and most continuity-heavy part of The Bad Guys. From Dawn of the Underlord onwards, the series becomes more invested in bigger villains, secret identities, strange forces, final confrontations and callbacks to earlier chaos. The books are still extremely funny and visually accessible, but they are less clean as entry points because the reader benefits from knowing the team, the jokes and the long-running mythology. The sensitivity remains moderate: there is plenty of action and threat, but it is filtered through Blabey's exaggerated cartoon comedy rather than sustained fear.
Book 11The Bad Guys in Dawn of the Underlord
Book 12The Bad Guys in The One?!
Book 13The Bad Guys in Cut to the Chase
Book 14The Bad Guys in They're Bee-Hind You!
Book 15The Bad Guys in Open Wide and Say Arrrgh!
Book 16The Bad Guys in The Others?!
Book 17The Bad Guys in Let the Games Begin!
Book 18The Bad Guys in Look Who's Talking
Book 19The Bad Guys in the Serpent and the Beast
Book 20The Bad Guys in One Last Thing
Fit check
Right for your reader?
Where the series lands by age
- 1
- 3
- 5
- 7
- 9
- 11
- 13
- 15
- 17
- 19
- Best fit · 7–11
- Read aloud · 7–10
- Independent · 7–11
Reluctant-reader friendliness
Very high
Read-aloud quality
Strong
Adult crossover
High
Grows with the reader
Designed to
Sensitivity envelope
Moderate overall, and consistent.
Per-arc breakdown
Where it sits
In conversation with other series.
About the author