Watkins, Dudley D.
£3,000
Auction: 8 September 2010 at 12:00 BST
Description
Oor Wullie Annual. London, Manchester & Dundee: D.C. Thomson & Co., [1940]. First annual produced, 4to, 96 pages, original printed wrappers showing Wullie sat on his trademark bucket, lower hinge torn at head, upper section of backstrip becoming loose, some creasing and short tear to outer edges, a few spots to page edges
Footnote
Note: A very rare copy of the first Oor Wullie annual produced by Dundee publishers D.C. Thomson & Co in October 1940 [priced 1/6].
The annual has 96 pages, which became the standard number, consisting of a title page illustration, a poem/song and 94 cartoon strips reprinted from Sunday Post Fun Sections.
The creator of 'Oor Wullie', Dudley Dexter Watkins was born in Manchester on 27 February 1907. In 1925, he moved to Dundee to work for D.C. Thomson & Co Ltd. the company founded by wealthy Tayside shipping boss William Thomson in 1905.
In 1935 R.D. (Robert Duncan) Low, the Managing Editor and Head of Boys Story Papers at the time, asked Watkins to help him produced a new comic book for D.C. Thomson. Low was keen to keep a degree of realism to the new characters and he encouraged Watkins to use real people as the basis for his cartoon characters. Many of the characters were based on Low's own family , Oor Wullie being modelled on his son Ron.