THE LEOPARD FROM LIME STREET

More than just a copycat

RELEASED 13 JULY

Publisher rebellion

Writer Tom Tully

Artists Mike Western, eric Bradbury

If they’d had find and replace in the ’70s, you’d assume Tom Tully’s pitch for The Leopard From Lime Street was just a synopsis of Spider-Man, with the word “spider” replaced with “leopard”.

It’s about a boy who gains amazing powers after being bitten by a radioactive leopard! He makes a costume at home (where he lives with his aunt and uncle) and fights crime! He sells pictures of his own exploits to a newspaper editor who wages a campaign against his alter-ego! For heaven’s sake, he even has a tingling “leopardsense” which warns him of danger.

The strip was created for the British comic Buster by prolific writer Tom Tully and his clear, consistent and witty storytelling is perfectly aimed at the young audience. It has a breathless verve to it – one storyline often tumbles straight into the next – but at the expense of any real depth to our hero, Billy Farmer, and this involves some outrageous plotting short-cuts.

But The Leopard From Lime Street is special, and what makes it so is Mike Western and Eric Bradbury’s artwork. Their energetic style matches Tully’s propulsive writing, dragging the reader head-first through each two-page instalment – but they also add richness. The world of the strip – a provincial town in mid-’70s Britain – is vividly evoked through dole queues, derelict cinemas and sneering punks. The rooftops Billy traverses, from a modernist shopping centre to a ruined abbey, are full of atmosphere.

Despite the comic’s shamelessly derivative origins, it quickly emerges as its own, rather wonderful thing. Eddie Robson

After his final Buster appearance in 1985, The Leopard made an unofficial appearance in Grant Morrison’s Zenith.