"The Swots and the Blots" always had wit and a sense of style, but it reached a new standard of excellence when Baxendale began drawing it for the new-look "Smash!" from March 1969. (In Baxendale's hands, it had notable similarities to his earlier classroom-based strip, "The Bash Street Kids", in "The Beano".) The strip became a standard-bearer for sophisticated artwork. Baxendale began a five-year run on the strip (beginning in "Smash!" and continuing in its successor, "Valiant and Smash", with some fill-ins by Les Barton), by adopting a new style, one which influenced many others in the comics field, just as his earlier "The Beano" work had done; and in the process attaining a new, deliriously daft, high standard, one rarely approached by other strips.