Thursday, July 18, 2019

034 - The bear necessities - PART I



“Words and pictures are yin and yang. Married, they produce a progeny more interesting than either parent.”  - Dr. Seuss

Song of the day:
"Does the noise in my head bother you
Something's gotta give
Comic books are comin' true."
- "Something's Gotta Give" - Aerosmith


As part of a new series of blogs, I thought it would be nice to look back at some of the comic books in my bookcase. The ones that have been important to me over the years. One book that jumped out at me was POL ALS DUIKER (translation: "Pol as diver"). I remember having more of these books of Pol at a very young age. This one is the only one that has made it across the world. The Casterman copyright dates the book back to the year 1962. That's five years before I was even born.
There's sticker in the front of the book, with its price: 2.25 guilders, with I believe is roughly a Euro. So, that would have been NZ$1.67. It's probably not worth much more now. 
But the book IS extra special to me, because my father at the time wrote my name and our address in the front of the book. This also dates it because we moved from there in 1979. For a 57 year old comic book, it's still in pretty good condition, even though the staples have rusted over the years. But than, so have I.



The books, like the daily strip, did not have word balloons (speech bubbles) but text written below. This was a fairly common way of making comics at the time. Having the text under the pictures was supposed to make the series easier to read for kids. In the case of POL, they used the heads of the characters to show who was saying what. Like little avatars!



Above is an example of the actual Danish comic strip series that was created by the Danish wife and husband team Carla and Vilhelm Hansen in 1951. The books tell tells the adventures of the bear cub, that I knew as POL and his friends: Pingo (a penguin), Pel (a pelican) and many others. Later in life I found out their original names... the main character wasn't even called POL. It was originally called RASMUS KLUMP!

(TO BE CONTINUED...)
 

1 comment:

  1. Mooi zeg. Die had ik ook �������������������� aldus Jeroen��

    ReplyDelete