Billy Whizz - Physical Appearance

Physical Appearance

When the strip began, Billy simply wore a T-shirt and black shorts. In a late 1970s strip, Billy's dad sends him out to buy a new pair of trousers, supposedly to slow Billy down, but as he buys a pair of tracksuit bottoms this doesn't happen, though from that point Billy wore those trousers. A more dynamic change came in the early 1990s when he began to wear a black tracksuit marked with a lightning bolt. When depicted in colour, originally all the non-black areas of the tracksuit were in yellow, though soon all but the lightning flash was in red, and later the lightning flash turned red itself. Billy initially wore ordinary shoes but around the same time as the tracksuit was introduced he started to wear trainers, which are usually worn out very quickly by whizzspeed running, and as a result often have holes in the soles.

From the first strip, Billy sported a shaved hair cut with two long, antennae-like hairs sticking out at the top. In the 1970 Beano Annual, it is revealed that the reason why Billy, plus Dad and Alfie, always have this style is because they always get thrown out of the barber's before the last two hairs can be shaved off. After Vic Neill became artist, the two hairs morphed into a lightning flash, with no explanation given for this in the comic. This hairstyle was retained by Graeme Hall, but was later reverted to the original two hairs once Wayne Thompson took over. It has been revealed in some strips that Billy's hair is blond should it grow to full length.