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 (Oor Wullie) 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'?
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.
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)
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)
1987
Original price is indicated: £2.35 (thats UK Sterling Pounds in '1987 money' - pretty expensive in the day)
ISBN: 0-85116-408-0
Cloth 'stitched' spine
Reasonable quality paper stock used, but there are some signs of foxing (brown marks or spots) EXCEPT as noted below under Cosmetic Condition
Pages are NOT numbered but I have manually counted 90 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
I have looked carefully at many of the cartoons and amazingly I can see no credit to anyone! Neither the writer of the strip or the cartoonist are indicated on the front cover, inside front (there is no true index or page of contents) and within the cartoons themselves - surprising!
COSMETIC CONDITION:
The front cover is clean, undamaged however the rear cover has some foxing evident (reaction with the atmosphere causing the paper to slowly spot and eventually turn a brown colour) The rear in particular has this foxing UNDER the gloss finish to the cardboard and I cannot attempt to clean it.
Inside front page also has this foxing pretty clearly evident
The remaining pages are white and NOT showing signs of foxing at all.
Corner curl is not a problem
NO personal writing on any pages
NO tears to the pages
My only concern is the page count (90). Although the pages are securely held into the spine, a couple of pages near the center have separated slightly. Meaning that you must 'turn the page' with care otherwise you COULD pull out the whole page. I find the lack of page numbering very frustrating, I am not able to reliably detect if any pages are missing, particularly in the center area of the publication. 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.
