Comics UK

Polly the Parrot, faithful companion of Jilly Crusoe and her "native" friend M'Lani, in 1950s School Friend

Didn't the ERIC character out of BANANAMAN have a Roger the Dodger-esque crow companion?

And let's not forget Bill Ritchie's DICKIE BIRD, whhich I think dated from early-70s BEEZER.


CUCKOO in the CLOCK from early Sparky sort of qualifies, even if the character was mechanical.

ISPYSHHHGUY wrote:Didn't the ERIC character out of BANANAMAN have a Roger the Dodger-esque crow companion?

Crow accompanies Bananaman whether he's Eric or BM, yeah. I forgot about him.

Big Fat Boko's crow was called Koko.
Then there was the Beano's Cocky Dick by Alan Morley, the Beezer's Pedro the pesky Parrot by Bill Hill and also for the Beezer Charlie Chick Bill Ritchie's first strip for the comic. And, on a more serious note the 1948 Dandy story 'The Croaker holds the Clue' in which another raven talked but this time during the Jacobite Rebellion and 'The Eagles of Kambut' and early Hornet strip drawn by Alan Pollack. And flocks more probably inc Freddie 'Parrot-face' Davies now I come to think of him in Buster drawn by Reg Parlett.

My recollection of the Bash Street Birds is from the 1970s/80s as I wasn't really reading the Beano in the 1990s. They were in the actual comic then.

...Speaking of the Bash Street Birds, I always thought it was a shame the Bash Street Vegetables never took off:



- Phil Rushton

Peter Gray wrote:The Krazy Gang had a parrot Bluey..Freaky was replaced!!

Nope... Freaky just disappeared in the end. They were both around for some years after Krazy folded into Whizzer and Chips, before Freaky just stopped being included gradually.

Love the vegtable title panel....David Sutherland did some great stuff..what year was that? maybe you can add some more title panels again in that earlier post of yours they are just great to look at..

TV Comics Busby (B.T Bird)
there was a parrot called Corky in the S.O.S Squad
http://petergraycartoonsandcomics.blogs ... twist.html

Parrots were used a lot in comics because they can talk back..

I had a quick flick through a few Beanos and found the Bash Street Birds featured in 2 consecutive issues - 09 April and 16 April 1977. I stopped looking at this point (after having checked the birds weren't in the following issue), so they may appear in other issues.

Vultures were the common theme in the 1964 Maxwell Hawke Buster strip 'MH and the Green Vulture' and the 1969 Valiant strip 'Sexton Blake and the Black Vulture' which was not surprising since the script for both was basically the same.
There was also 'The Flaming Vulture' in Wizard/Victor but in this case the bird was entirely symbolic.
Rover and Adventure in 1961 also gave us 'The Flight of the Blue Condor' and in 1963
'The Vulture with Three Heads' although the latter was again a symbolic creature and not the result of some horrible experiment in avian genetics!
Then there was the chicken Cocky Doodle who had his own strip in Buster in the early 1960's.

Those are the issues I remembered - the birds on the school roof is still fresh in my mind. And I was right about them not being friendly with the kids.

Crazy concept. (Daft I call it).

Niblet wrote:I had a quick flick through a few Beanos and found the Bash Street Birds featured in 2 consecutive issues - 09 April and 16 April 1977. I stopped looking at this point (after having checked the birds weren't in the following issue), so they may appear in other issues.

Thanks for posting those Niblet. I've never seen them before, so either they were never reprinted in the annuals or I just don't have the one with them in.

Baxendale's The Gobblers. Were they in the Beezer?

The legend of the Bash Street Birds is a (brilliant) spoof of the legend of the ravens of the Tower of London, in case anyone doesn't realise it.
Found another one in the 1989 Bash Street Kids annual:

Thanks for posting that, dishes. It looks like the Bash St Birds were a recurring element of the strips. Now I'm tempted to look through a few more Beanos to see if I can find some later BSB appearances.