Keyhole Kate

Keyhole Kate was a 1930s British comic strip series in The Dandy. The strip featured a nosy young girl who liked to look through people's keyholes. She first appeared in The Dandy's first issue, drawn by Allan Morley^[1] back in 1937. She continued in The Dandy until 1955 and even appeared as the cover strip of issue 294.^[2] She later appeared in the new Sparky comic released in 1965, alongside Hungry Horace another character who appeared in The Dandy''s first issue and was drawn by Allan Morley.^[1] The character was featured alongside Hungry Horace on the front cover of the Sparky book from 1970 to 1972.^[3]

The character continued in Sparky until 1974^[4] when the character was dropped and she then reappeared in The Dandy in the late 1980s and early 1990s drawn by Sid Burgon before being dropped and later revived again. The revived strip was drawn by Tom Paterson and Trevor Metcalfe in The Dandy, until it was finally dropped in 2007. However the character's legacy still remains as the character has appeared on the front cover of The Beano and Dandy books^[5] and has appeared in the longer The Bash Street Kids stories by Kev F Sutherland.^[6][7] Despite the character's supposedly limited premise she has appeared in over one thousand episodes, 1937-1955 in the Dandy is over 500, if one assumes she was in every issue, plus the almost 500 episodes in Sparky and her reappearance in The Dandy adds up to at least a thousand. She reappeared in the 2013 Dandy Annual drawn by Laura Howell.

Keyhole Kate is currently in the online version of the comic. In this version, she is a Nancy Drew-esque reporter for the school newspaper.

References