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The Broons |
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The Broons
The Broons is a comic strip published in the weekly Scottish newspaper, The Sunday Post. It features the Brown (Broon in Scots) family, who live in a tenement flat at 10 Glebe Street, in (since the late 1990s) the fictional Scottish town of Auchentogle or Auchenshoogle (a possible variation of the Auchenshuggle district of Glasgow. They are also shown as living on Glebe Street: - Glasgow's real Glebe Street has no residences and only a church, school playground and small area of parkland on it.Originally created and drawn by Dudley D. Watkins, the strip made its first appearance in the issue dated 8 March 1936.
Since its inception, The Broons have had their own biennial, alternating each year with Oor Wullie. No annuals were published during 1943 and 1945 due to paper rationing in World War II.
The Broons Annuals
The annuals alternated years with Oor Wullie, another D. C. Thomson product. Books pre-1965 were not dated. After that they had a copyright date with annuals normally published in Autumn.The early editions of The Broons annual are highly sought-after collectors' items, fetching in excess of four-figure sums at auction. A facsimile of the very first Broons annual was released on 25 November 2006.
Watkins drew the strip from his Broughty Ferry home until his death in 1969. For five years after Watkins' death, D.C. Thomson recycled old strips in the newspaper and annuals, fearing no adequate replacement could be found to match Watkins' unique style. In these repeated strips, some particularly Scots words were replaced (e.g. 'ahint' became 'behind') and the pre-decimal coinage was updated.
Peter Davidson is the current artist, succeeding Ken H. Harrison. This is Davidson's second stint as artist, the first being in the early 1980s. BBC Radio Scotland presenter Tom Morton is the current scriptwriter.