Black Bob is back!

John Freeman's Down the Tubes blog has some fantastic news today concerning forthcoming titles from Waverley Books. The most exciting of which in my opinion is that in a few short weeks, on June 3rd, The Very Best of Black Bob will be available to buy. This £9.99 hardback, compiled D.C. Thomson archivist and ex-Dandy editor Morris Heggie, will be in the same horizontal format as the Black Bob books of the 1950s.

The famous "Dandy Wonder Dog" first appeared as a text story in The Dandy in 1944. It then ran in several serials in The Weekly News as a comic strip drawn by Jack Prout, which then appeared in The Dandy from the 1940s to the late 1960s, then as reprints until the 1980s. Jack Prout died in 1978.

The strip adventures of the clever Border Collie and his master, shepherd Andrew Glenn were always presented as picture strips with text captions. (Dialogue balloons never appeared in the weekly strips, although they did appear in strips drawn for the Dandy Summer Special.) This gave the strips an old fashioned look, but it made no difference to the kids who loved the stories. In fact that was part of the charm. It was a firm favourite of mine as a child and I for one will definitely be buying this collection.

Waverley Books also have other D.C. Thomson titles scheduled for this year and details and cover images can be seen over at the Down the Tubes blog:
http://downthetubescomics.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-dc-thomson-books-from-waverley.html