The debut of BILLY THE CAT (1967)

The Beano's famous crimefighter Billy the Cat first appeared in a 1/4 page teaser ad (above) in the Easter 1967 issue of The Beano (No.1288). His strip began the following week, in The Beano No.1289, dated April 1st 1967. Although this was the April Fool themed issue, there was no mention of that in Billy's debut strip.

The artwork was by David Sutherland, who had been drawing The Bash Street Kids since 1962 (and indeed still draws those Kids today). An excellent artist who is able to adapt his style from humour to adventure. Curiously, there's no origin story. We're not told how William Grange became such a remarkable acrobat or who made his costume and the funny looking customised biker helmet with the whiskers. However, years later, a fan named David Carman wrote his own origin for the character and published it online with the permission of D.C. Thomson. You can read it here:
http://www.davidcarman.co.uk/billy.htm

Presumably The Beano had decided to feature a superhero in their pages because of the success of the Batman TV show, although Billy's premise was closer to that of Spider-Man (running at that time in rival comic Pow!). Billy the Cat became very popular with the readers and ran on and off until 1974, even joined by his cousin, Katie the Cat, for later adventures. He was later revived and rebooted as a slightly older character in Buddy comic in 1981, and you can read that story here:

https://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/buddy-no1-1981.html

The Beano has revived Billy the Cat on occasion, drawn by various artists including Wayne Thompson, Nigel Dobbyn, and Laura Howell. With the current popularity of superheroes, and this being The Beano's 80th anniversary year, it'd be nice to see him return again. My choice would be Steve Beckett as artist, as he's another creator who can switch from humour to adventure, and he has that suitable light adventure style that works well in The Beano. 

Will Billy the Cat return? I've no idea, but time will tell.

BEANO fireworks fun in 1964

Years ago, comics would celebrate Bonfire Night by giving many of their strips a fireworks theme. Visually, they livened up the pages, although some stories had a naive recklessness about the use of fireworks. Such strips are a thing of the past now of course, replaced by Halloween (an equally visual theme). 

Here are a few pages from The Beano dated November 7th, 1964 (which went on sale Nov.4th 1964), starting with a Biffo the Bear cover by Dudley Watkins. (Remember to click on the image to see them full size. I know it might be obvious to most of you, but new visitors sometimes complain that images are too small to read.)

Not every strip in this issue carried a fireworks theme, but here's Little Plum, drawn by Ron Spencer. Why would Native Americans be celebrating Bonfire Night? Anything can happen in comics...

The Bash Street Kids compete with other schools to win best Guy Fawkes. Whatever happened to Blob Street and Plonk Street? Art by David Sutherland...

On the back page, Dennis the Menace, in those pre-Gnasher days, drawn by David Law...

Wishing you (and your pets, if you have any) a safe and happy November 5th.