For the Scottish at heart!
Straight from my box of childhood memories! My grandparents are Scottish and of course they want their grand-children to remember the 'old country' which resulted in my 'Seanair' (Grandpa) sending me lots of these Scottish comic books to me in NZ. Many didn't make it through the harsh wet, cold winters in Dunedin but some survived in good condition - this is one of those 'survivors'
Fairly easy to find in the regions of 'origin' i.e United Kingdom but not so easy to find 'Down Under' or over in 'The Land Of The Long White Cloud'
I have a couple of other comic books in a similar vein (Another The Broons) HERE
'THE BROONS' HISTORY IN BRIEF:
The Broons (for the non-Scots people, this is The Browns) is a comic strip created around 1936, published by the The Sunday Post located in Dundee Scotland. The creator of the fictional family was R.D Low, editor of the newspaper and the cartoonist was Dudley Watkins.
So what was special about 'The Broons' and this issue in particular?
Based on an 'ordinary' Scottish family living in a tenement flat (something like we might call a terrace house) comprising of Maw (Mum), Paw (Dad) and eight children ranging in age from 31 years old down to 4 years old. Frequently, Grandpaw features as well although he does not live in their house. The stories deal with misunderstandings between the generations, dealing with the everyday struggles of life (money etc) all in a humorous way. A little like a 'soapie' on paper! This was well before the days of the British 'standard' in this sort of story telling on television, Coronation Street.
The original cartoonist continued drawing until his death in the late 1960's, after which the newspaper 'recycled' previous cartoons for a period - up until around the late 1980's and since then various writers and cartoonists have been involved in the comic strip production.
Dudley Watkins passed away in this year, 1969 at the relatively young age of 62 - these would have been some of his last drawings. He died in Dundee where he had lived most of his life although originally he was a Brit from Nottingham and moved to Scotland in his early 20's
This book is a collection of The Broons cartoons as originally featured in The Sunday Post, gathered together into one book. Keep in mind that the intended market was the local Scottish readers so if you are not familiar with the 'Scottish language' you will need to think about some of the sentences to understand them!
In brief, some examples are:
Cheerio - Bye, See Yah
Ta-Ta - similar to Cheerio, bye!
Tae - To (I'm goin tae the shops)
Wee - Small (Such a wee laddie)
Whaur - Where (Whaur is he goin'?)
Lassie - (no, not the dog in the American TV show, it's a reference to a young girl)
THE BROONS - Annual Book (Not Numbered or otherwise identified on the front cover)
Slightly larger format than the other The Broons and Oor Wullie books that I have (they are much later anyway)
Front cover features the standard tag line from the original cartoons 'Scotland's Happy Family Makes Every Family Happy!'
Published by D.C Thompson (owners of the The Sunday Post)
1969
Original price is indicated: 6/- (thats UK Sterling Shillings in '1969 money - about 60 cents before currency conversion' - pretty expensive in 1969 but just look what happened to the retail price over almost 20 years when you look at the 1987 release cost of £2.35, it increased over 7 times the original price during that period (20/- equals £1) - price inflation was a big issue back then as well as in contemporary times)
ISBN: NO ISBN ISSUED AT THIS TIME
Cloth 'stitched' spine
Reasonable quality paper stock used, but there are some signs of light foxing as noted below under Cosmetic Condition
Pages are NOT numbered but I have manually counted 98 pages in total
All cartoon drawings are monochrome
Front outside & Rear outside cover are full colour print
Inside cover page is two colour print, Red & Black
Unlike the other two publications I have found, the carton strips DO have signing by the artist Dudley Watkins!
COSMETIC CONDITION:
The front cover is clean, undamaged and the same applies to the rear outside cover.
The inside front page has light foxing, same applies for the rear inside page and ALL pages show very light signs of foxing (instead of white, the paper has a slight yellow/brown appearance)
Corner curl is not a problem
NO personal writing on any pages
One page (only) has a short 1cm tear top right corner (turning the pages too vigorously!) NO other tears to any pages
My only concern is the page count (98). Although the pages are securely held into the spine and in my opinion this book is the best in regard to spine condition and the security of the pages, there is always that niggling doubt that 'maybe' a page is not there that should be.
The format is normally one page = one complete cartoon strip and looking through the cartoon storylines, I could not see story's that appeared incomplete which would indicate that there are pages missing.
To the best of my abilities I can confidently declare that NO PAGES ARE MISSING. Just handle with extreme care!
Since taking this out of my 'childhood box of tricks', looking through it one last time, it is now sealed in cello wrap (NOT shrink wrap which can damage the covers) and placed on stiff card to eliminate bending on the bookshelf while waiting for a new owner.
