[5] Eleven years later, Hawke had appeared in over 5,500 tales, making him the most published fictional detective of all time, beating contemporaries Sexton Blake and Nick Carter.

[6][1][7] Based on that number, Sunday Post author Steve Finan speculated that more stories have been written about Dixon Hawke than any other fictional character in the English language.

[4] His police associate was Inspector Duncan McPhinney of New Scotland Yard, introduced in the very first issue of the Dixon Hawke Library [13] Following in the footprints of the Sexton Blake and Tinker, Nelson Lee and Nipper partnerships of the early Edwardian era, the adult detective/boy assistant became a popular pairing in the boys story papers from 1910 onwards.

[14] So widely known was Hawke in British popular culture of the 1930s,[14] that his name featured in W. H. Auden's long poem The Orators along with other fictional detectives, Sexton Blake, Bulldog Drummond, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Edgar Wallace's The Four Just Men.

The full mention reads: "From the immense bat-shadow of home; from the removal of land-marks: from appeals for love and from the comfortable words of the devil, O Dixon Hawke, deliver us.

They sold in millions, and DC Thomson editors deserve the highest possible praise for contributing - by thus entertaining the young - to a part of our social history.

Among them were Marko the Miracle Man[24] created by Edwy Searles Brooks[25] a criminal mastermind with super strength who matched wits with Hawke over the course of fourteen years.

[26] As he did for Sexton Blake and Nelson Lee, George Hamilton Teed created Hawke's greatest female foe, Nicolette Lazare, the Black Angel.

Jacobs, Elizabeth Smith Alexander, Lewis Carlton, George Hamilton Teed, Gilbert Chester, Frank Howe,[33] Francis Addington Symonds,[34] Rex Hardinge, Reginald Thomas,[35] Lester Bidston, Frank Howe, George Goodchild, William Edward Vickers, and W.W.