Boule et Bill
Boule et Bill (known in English as Billy & Buddy) is a popular comic, created in 1959 by the Belgian writer-artist Jean Roba in collaboration with Maurice Rosy. In 2003 the artistic responsibility of the series was passed on to Roba's former assistant Laurent Verron. The stories center on a typical family: a man and his wife, their young son Boule and Bill the cocker spaniel.
History
Boule et Bill first appeared in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou on December 24, 1959. The ambition was to make a sort of European Peanuts. The debut was made in a so-called mini-récit (mini-story), a story in 32 very small pages, printed on the inner spread of the magazine. Roba had until then mainly made illustrations for the magazine and had helped some other authors (including André Franquin), and now started with his own series. A few months later, a four-page comic with the same heroes appeared, and shortly thereafter Roba created a weekly one page comic. For the next twenty-five years, Boule et Bill was one of the most popular series of the magazine, and appeared mostly on the back cover. Some of the strips were even published in the rival Le Journal de Mickey, which was based mainly around Walt Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.
From 1961 to 1965, the strip appeared in British comic Valiant, renamed It's A Dog's Life. Boule's name was changed to Pete and Bill's was changed to Larry. Apart from those changes this strip was mostly the same.
21 Albums were edited by Dupuis until 1985, containing one long story and some 800 gags. Thereafter, Roba changed from editor, moving to Dargaud. In 2006, Jean Roba died, but he had announced that he wanted the series to be continued, and had appointed Verron as his successor.
