Billy’s Boots
Don’t hate me – I was never a 2000 AD kid. My comics of choice growing up in the late ’70s and early ’80s were, besides Marvel UK titles, the likes of Roy Of The Rovers and Tiger And Scorcher, sports “papers” (as they called themselves). One strip in particular, in comic magazine Tiger, was a favourite of mine – Billy’s Boots,
You could say it was a psychological story, and perhaps it was, but the strip was definitely based in the realms of fantasy. Young Billy Dane procured a pair of football boots that had belonged to a famous player of yesteryear, Dead Shot Keen, and when he wore them he (usually) played like a demon.
Besides the footy action, the drama came from Billy regularly losing the boots or having them stolen, but he always got them back. I remember doing a complete read of my collection in the early ’80s, of perhaps around 400 comics, and it brought home to me how the basic story was recycled every year or so!
You would have thought that even when Billy didn’t have the boots he should have learnt so much about the sport when he was wearing them – about things like positioning, tactics, anticipation – that he’d still be pretty good after a while (and supremely match-fit). But that was rarely the case… The strip was completely compulsive, though, and popular: Billy was promoted to the covers permanently in 1982, which lasted until Tiger merged with/disappeared into Eagle in 1985. It stirs me now to gaze upon the mid-’70s artwork in particular, especially covers with inky black-blue skies, showing a land of Vauxhall Viva headlights shining pools of yellow over Woolworths shop fronts, or of muddy football pitches the like of which I used to trot across. I adored Tiger, but my comics were all chucked out in the late ’80s when a house move coincided with the gap between me being a child and being an adult, and hence not caring that much. A few years back I – yep, you guessed – started to re-buy them on eBay and in March 2017 I, gloriously, re-completed my collection. My plan is to do a complete re-read of the story during my retirement (which probably won’t be for another 21 years!). Billy – you, me and your boots will be reunited.