BILLY BUNTER - THE HEAVYWEIGHT CHUMP OF GREYFRIARS
William George Bunter (known as Billy Bunter) is a fictional schoolboy
created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards. He
features in stories set at Greyfriars School, originally published in
the boys' weekly story paper The Magnet from 1908 to 1940.
Subsequently, Bunter has appeared in novels, on television, in stage
plays, and in comic strips.
He is in the Lower Fourth form of Greyfriars School, known as the
Remove, whose members are 14-15 years of age. Originally a minor
character, his role was expanded over the years with his antics being
heavily used in the stories to provide comic relief and to drive
forward the plots.
Bunter's defining characteristic is his greediness and dramatically
overweight appearance. His character is, in many respects, a highly
obnoxious anti-hero. As well as his gluttony, he is also obtuse, lazy,
racist, inquisitive, deceitful, slothful, self-important and conceited.
These defects, however, are not recognized by Bunter. In his own
mind, he is an exemplary character: handsome, talented and
aristocratic; and dismisses most of those around him as "beasts".
Even so, the negative sides of Bunter are offset by several genuine
redeeming features; such as his tendency, from time to time, to
display courage in aid of others; his ability to be generous, on the
rare occasions when he has food or cash; and above all his very real
love and concern for his mother. All these, combined with Bunter's
cheery optimism, his comically transparent untruthfulness and inept
attempts to conceal his antics from his schoolmasters and
schoolfellows, combine to make a character that succeeds in being
highly entertaining but which rarely attracts the reader's lasting
sympathy.
Charles Hamilton invented the character for an unpublished story in
the late 1890s. He claimed Bunter was derived from three persons: a
corpulent editor, a short-sighted relative, and another relative who
was perpetually trying to raise a loan.
The identity of the fat editor is unclear: various sources suggest
either Lewis Ross Higgins, editor of a number of comic papers and
who is described as resembling the author G. K. Chesterton; or Percy
Griffith, the original editor of The Magnet. The short sighted
relative was Hamilton's younger sister Una, who had suffered poor
sight since childhood, and who had been wont to peer at him
somewhat like an Owl; while the other relative was his older brother
Alex, who was described as "generally anxious to borrow a pound or
two" on the strength of the anticipated arrival of a cheque that
never materialized.
After The Magnet closed in 1940, Bunter appeared in children's
comics, as a strip cartoon character: initially, from 15 June 1940, he
appeared in Knockout (which, like The Magnet, was published by The
Amalgamated Press). Although Knockout had begun only in 1939, it
already had a circulation several times that of The Magnet. C H
Chapman, the last illustrator for The Magnet, drew the first nine
Knockout strips in 1939 ,[31] after which several artists were tried,
before Frank Minnitt established himself with a beaming and bouncy
Bunter, which at first followed Chapman's style, then later branched
into a style of his own, concentrating on slapstick humour. Soon the
Famous Five vanished from the strip, replaced by Jones minor, who
had all the good qualities Bunter lacked, but who was prone to being
led astray by Bunter. The form-master, Mr Quelch, stayed (at least
in name), but he lost his dignity and aloofness.
Minnitt continued producing the strip until his death in 1958. Reg
Parlett then took over until Knockout ceased publication in 1961, when
the strip transferred to Valiant comic, and then to TV Comic, where
it ran until 1984. Bunter also appeared in many Knockout annuals,
even on some covers.
C. H. Chapman drew a strip for The Comet comic in 1956, which
featured the classical old Bunter of The Magnet and the Famous Five,
consisting of twelve weeks of 2-page strips (24 pages in all).
Altogether, Bunter's appearances in Comet lasted from March 1950
until June 1958, with picture stories from February 1952.
From 1955, Billy Bunter comic strips were published in the
Netherlands, in the Dutch-language comic Sjors, with the character
renamed "Billie Turf". Bunter thus became one of the house
characters of that comic and its successors, and so continued
appearing in anthology-style collections in Dutch until the end of the
20th century. "Billie Turf" comic strip albums were published from
1963 onwards, and have continued into the 21st century. Three Billie
Turf movies were made between 1978 and 1983, mostly spelling the
name of the main character as "Billy Turf".
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192 Pages
Compiled and edited by H. C.
We thank H. C. for his courtesy in offering our reader
this magnificent compilation.
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