Billy's Boots: The Legacy Of Dead-Shot Keen (Volume 1)

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Billy’s Boots never reached the popularity of Roy of the Rovers in terms of wider recognition but it remains one of the most fondly remembered stories of its era; its multiple relocations as comics came and went attesting to that. This first volume from the Treasury of British Comics is pure escapist, feelgood fun. Something that we could all benefit from right now!

The boots fell apart after a few matches due to their age and could not be repaired. Fearing that he would lose his new-found ability and knowing that "Dead Shot" Keen had played for the local club, Amhurst Albion, Billy went to their ground to see if any of Keen's other boots remained there. Having secretly entered the stadium, he found the boot room and discovered another pair of Keen's old boots which, much repaired, he used for the remainder of the story. Billy's Boots used to be regularly translated into Bengali and published in the popular Bengali monthly magazine "Shuktaara" as "Billir Boot", circulated mainly in West Bengal, India. Its Bengali version also appeared in Anandamela Pujo Sonkhya (Festival edition).Billy, however, has always been a survivor, the talentless little berk, so no doubt he and his sorcerous soles will continue to periodically resurface somewhere or other. Those boots just keep on walking... In the final issue of Sjors in 1975 a completely new ending was devised for the strip. In the UK version Billy's adventures continued indefinitely but in Holland Oberon decided that Sjakie's story should have a definite conclusion. Therefore Billy (or rather Sjakie) signs a contract to become a professional footballer. His hard slog over the years has finally paid off, and the story ends with him giving a toast to the memory of Dead-Shot Keen. Billy was often able to anticipate future events in his own life by reading Keen's book The Life of Dead Shot Keen. Billy's life often mirrored Keen's, such as the time when he came on as a substitute in a school match with his team losing 0-7, and scored 8 goals himself to win the match, or when he accidentally got into trouble by being selected for both sides in a schools' cup final. He had previously read about Keen's similar experiences while turning out for his teams. He was thus able to foresee events and work out solutions to problems. Not only this, Billy footwear specialist shoes are available in high-top, low-top and Ugg shoe styles, making these special needs shoes ultra-stylish. As well as shoes at SpecialKids.Company we specialise in a variety of special needs clothing , bedding, and other special needs accessories . Despite his adventures lasting for more than 20 years, Billy remained about 12 or 13 years old throughout the storyline.

This astoundingly absorbing classic is another perfect example of purely British comics sensibilities: passionate, idealistic and desperately earnest as it follows the path of a working class hero navigating a treacherous path to glory or dismal defeat. This is a welcome reintroduction: inspirational, warm, beautifully rendered and absolutely unforgettable. Another treasure-trove from Rebellion’s ever-expanding Treasury of British Comics, this tale span generations and demands to be in every family bookcase. In October 1971, John Gillatt took over the art for a 16-year run which truly defined the strip in readers’ eyes and minds, but that’s a treat for another volume… Shoot launched in 1969, a junior, comics-heavy version of adult magazine Goal (which it eventually absorbed!) and Striker in January 1970. Its lead strip would graduate to The Sun newspaper. Billy's Boots, under the Dutch title De Wondersloffen van Sjakie (The Magic Boots of Sjakie, - Sjakie being Billy) was published in Holland from 1973 to 1975 in the comic Sjors. As you can see below, some changes were necessary for a story where, in Tiger, Billy traveled to Holland on the ferry to play in a cup match. In the Dutch version, Sjakie was already living in Holland of course so UK artist John Gillatt was specially commissioned to draw a new sequence, replacing the ferry trip with Sjakie hitchhiking to the venue in Amsterdam. Story overview [ edit ] The moment when Billy found the boots, from the first issue of Scorcher in 1970.It’s also not as if he doesn’t have other problems too. At one stage he’s forced to move across the country, leaving all his friends: encountering school bullies, and teachers and trainers who think he’s troubled… Dutch: Sjakie Meulemans, Swedish: Benny Guldfot, Finnish: Benny Dane, Benny Kultajalka, Icelandic: Kalli í knattspyrnu (Kalli the footballer) The series concerned Billy Dane, a schoolboy and aspiring footballer, who was an extremely poor player until he discovered a pair of old style, ankle high, football boots while cleaning his grandmother's loft. The boots, which his grandfather had bought as a souvenir, had belonged, decades before, to a famous professional striker called Charles "Dead Shot" Keen. In a manner which was never explained in the story, the boots possess special abilities which turn Billy into a fantastic football player when he wore them. In addition to giving Billy the physical skill to score great goals, the boots also granted him the intuition to be in the right place at the time on the pitch, leading him to feel that they have a "mind of their own". However, despite the boots' obvious importance to him, he would repeatedly lose them or have them stolen.

Writer Fred Baker ably mixes the soap opera elements (Billy’s problems at school with other pupils and teachers, his worries for his gran who he lives with) with the sporting action (both the school teams and other clubs Billy goes on to represent). Those coming in to the strip afresh will need to accept that it was structured for weekly, incremental delivery – a constant rhythm of resolving the previous week’s cliffhanger, moving the action onwards, and then setting up that week’s cliffhanger. And, of course, collected in one place the repetitive elements that young readers will not have noticed over two years stand out all the more noticeably. Billy’s “magic” boots are regularly in jeopardy (something that would be a feature of the comic throughout its history), frequently needing to be rescued after being lost, thrown away, damaged and so on. By the early 1980s, Billy was playing as centre forward for Groundwood School, alongside pals such as Jimmy Dawson, Reg Wood, Marvin Soames and Harvey Crisp. The strip regularly involved mishaps involving his boots, which were periodically lost, stolen or damaged, resulting in Billy underperforming and thus being dropped from the school team. In several instances, he turned out for opposing sides such as "Merlin" or "Brand X", scoring against the school first team, thus embarrassing the sports teacher, Mr Harris. Billy’s Boots was a popular British comic strip by writer Fred Baker and artist John Gillatt, later continued by Mike Western. The original Billy’s Boots was an earlier humorous series, written and drawn by Frank Purcell, which appeared in Tiger between 1961 and 1963, with a similar premise to this later series. The later more serious Billy appeared in the first issue of Scorcher in 1970, and later moved to Tiger when the two comics merged in 1974. In 1985 Tiger in turn merged with Eagle and the strip moved again, however just a year later Billy’s adventures relocated once more, this time to Roy of the Rovers. New adventures were included in the weekly comic until May 1990 (later followed by reprints), before he switched to Best of Roy of the Rovers Monthly. The strip also appeared in annuals, including annuals for comics which had themselves ceased publication, and is still fondly remembered by fans of the “golden age” of British boys’ comics. In Finland and Sweden, Billy’s Boots was published in Buster magazine. In the UK, stories based on Billy’s earliest adventures appeared in Total Football magazine until it closed in 2001, and Billy’s story was also reprinted for a few months in the defunct Striker comic. In February 1971 Billy sat his 11+. Despite his gran forbidding him to play football so he could concentrate on his schoolwork, he failed to qualify for the Grammar School, but achieved a good enough grade to attend the local Secondary School, Kenwood Technical.

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Billy's Boots also was published in Turkish in the 1970s as comic series under the name "Sihirli Ayakkabılar" (Translation:Magical Shoes) in a children magazine called " Doğan Kardeş". "Dead Shot Ken" was named "Bombacı Ken" (Ken the Bomber). He’s also an international star, having been translated into Finnish, Swedish, Icelandic, Dutch, Bengali, Turkish and more… Billy loved football but was unfortunately one of the worst players in his school. However, when clearing out his grandmother’s attic he came across a battered old pair of footie boots that once belonged to ‘Dead-Shot’ Keen, a legendary player of yesteryear who had also been part of the England international team. When Billy put them on he discovered he could suddenly play in the style of Dead-Shot, with the boots having a seemingly supernatural power to improve his skills and guide his actions on the football pitch… The boots endowed Billy with sufficient ability to make regular appearances in schoolboy representative matches, appearing for Southern Schools against their Western, Northern and Eastern counterparts, and the full England Schoolboys team, with whom he travelled on tours to France and Germany. During the strip's run in Eagle, the football element of the story was downplayed somewhat, focusing instead on Billy's exploits whilst on the run from a council home where he had been placed when his grandmother (with whom he lived) had been taken ill. There would often be no football action for several weeks, which was odd given that the central premise of the strip was football-based. When the strip moved to Roy of the Rovers, football once again became the central element in the strip. These years focused on playing for Groundwood School, with the emphasis often placed on whether he could help them win cup competitions rather than needing the boots to be successful.