Johnny Hawke!

While America gave us heroes who could do such magnificent feats as flying, running at the speed of light and bending things, the comics of 1970s' Britain gave us their own brand of heroes. I've already looked at Billy the Cat and Katie. And who can forget the adventures of Bella Barlow belle of the bar, who, if memory serves me right, managed to win a gymnastics bronze medal at every Olympics for about forty years?

I do like to feel there was an endearing Britishness in her tendency to win bronze medals instead of the gold ones her American comic book equivalent would no doubt have won while simultaneously dealing a death-blow to communism.

Then again, in fairness to the girl, she did usually have to compete with both legs in plaster after having them smashed by her evil coach just days before competition.

Another such low-key hero was Johnny Hawke. I must admit I have no memory of him from the weekly Beano comics, so I assume he was created specially for the 1973 Beano Annual in which he appears.

Which of us wasn't thrilled to hear that next year's London Olympics (at which Bella, in traction, will no doubt win a bronze medal) will have surface-to-air missiles on stand-by just in case they're needed? What a fun event it threatens to be. But one person who won't be thrilled by news of surface-to-air missiles is Johnny Hawke, because all his friends are airborne.

That's right. Johnny Hawke isn't like other boys. Other boys can't talk to birds.

In this story, an anaconda escapes when a crane drops the crate it's being transported in. Luckily Johhny's on hand to save the day by summoning his avian allies to pick it up - before it can eat any children at the local school - and drop it off at the nearest zoo.

I don't have a clue who drew the thing but has there ever been a more stirring comic panel than the double-page spread below?

Despite it all, there are certain worries. Such as why isn't Johnny Hawke in school at the tale's outset? Instead he's down the local docks, fishing.

I'm also worried about Mr Hicks the cop with the gun. Since when does what appears to be barely more than a local village bobby happen to carry a rifle around with him? Since when does British law permit him to just start shooting it at will? And just why is he so keen to use it? My God, I hope they don't stick him in charge of those surface-to-air missiles, or I suspect we'll all be in trouble.

Billy the Cat and Katie. Beano Book 1973.

As we all know, the American comic book industry's always been the natural venue for the super-hero yarn. Maybe it's the brashness of American culture, or the epic scale of New York but somehow super-heroes have always felt more at home there.

However, in the 1970s, British comics did give readers the occasional chance to see some home-grown super-heroics. I've already mentioned the late lamented Vulcan comic and its oddball battlers, in this post from June, and now it's time to acknowledge the existence of The Beano's very own stab at the form, in the shape of Burnham Academy's answer to Daredevil and the Black Widow - the crime-fighting pair of youngsters known as Billy the Cat and Katie.

Billy the Cat and Katie were William and Kathleen Grange, two cousins who fitted in fighting crime around their school work. How they got their incredible powers of agility and athleticism, I don't know. Where they got their leather costumes and crash helmets from, I don't know. Who wrote them, I don't know. Who drew them, I don't know. I only know that with them around no crook was safe.

In The Beano Book of 1973, Billy the Cat and Katie tackle a pair of escaped convicts by the name of Wat Graham and Jake Carson who hijack the local school bus.

Well, those crooks might think they're being smart in taking on a bunch of kids but what they don't know is it's none other than the bus that Billy the Cat and Katie use to get home on. Within mere pages, after much bouncing round on the rooftops, our heroes have the crooks all tied up and helpless, with no one any the wiser as to their true identity.

It has to be said that, compared to the life-or-death, angst-ridden adventures of Marvel's heroes, it's all rather pleasant stuff, packed with a sense of cosy Englishness and drawn in a way that evokes little sense of drama or urgency, even when the bad guys start waving guns around.

This is a good thing. This is The Beano after all, a comic noted for its feel-good escapism, not its nail-chewing melodrama.

Most of all, what the story does do is make you want to be Billy the Cat and/or Katie. If only I too could leap around on the rooftops. If only I had one of their metal cat claws attached to a piece of line. If only I had a crash helmet with a set of whiskers on it.

Oh well. Maybe one day. Maybe one day.