The first, published by the Amalgamated Press (later Fleetway Publications), was launched by editor Percy Clarke and sub-editor Leonard Matthews in 1939 to compete with The Dandy and The Beano, launched by DC Thomson in 1937 and 1938 respectively. Like its rivals, it featured a mixture of humour and adventure strips and illustrated prose stories. Matthews recruited Hugh McNeill, a former Beano artist, as the title's main humour artist, and his strips "Our Ernie" and "Deed-a-Day Danny" were very popular. Two characters were imported from the prose story papers - Billy Bunter, formerly of The Magnet, initially drawn by C. H. Chapman, later by Frank Minnitt, and Sexton Blake, initially drawn by Jos Walker, later by Alfred Taylor, Roland Davies and definitive Blake illustrator Eric Parker. Aft