Aaron Blabey

Aaron Blabey is an Australian author-illustrator best known for The Bad Guys, a graphic-novel-style chapter book series following a gang of scary-looking animals -- a wolf, a shark, a snake, and others -- who decide to become heroes despite everyone assuming the worst of them. Beginning in 2015, the series' fast visual gags, short chapters, and comic-book panel layouts made it a breakout hit with reluctant young readers, and it was adapted into a 2022 DreamWorks animated film that introduced the characters to an even wider audience.

Before Bad Guys, Blabey worked as a television actor in Australia and had already built a career as a picture-book author-illustrator with titles like Pig the Pug and Thelma the Unicorn, both of which became long-running series and, in Thelma's case, a Netflix film. His work across both formats shares a taste for broad physical comedy paired with a gentle message underneath -- usually about being misjudged, or being kind rather than cool.

A new reader should start with the first Bad Guys book to meet the gang and their reform-or-relapse dynamic, which sets the pattern the whole series repeats and escalates. The 2022 film adaptation is a reasonable entry point too, though it condenses and reshuffles material from the first few books rather than following any single volume directly.