The Broons

The Broons is a comic strip in Scots published in the weekly Scottish newspaper The Sunday Post. It features the Brown family, who live in a tenement flat at 10 Glebe Street in (since the late 1990s) the fictional Scottish town of Auchentogle or Auchenshoogle.

Originally created by writer/editor R. D. Low and artist 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 1944 due to paper rationing in World War II but jigsaws were created instead. Starting with the 2015 editions, both titles are now published annually.

The family members include:

The family surname Broon is the Scots for Standard English "Brown," as indicated by the nameplate that occasionally appears on the front door of their flat. Also, when a family member is addressed by a non-Scot (i.e. an Englishman or an American), he or she is addressed as Mister or Miss Brown.

Early strips written in the 1930s featured less dialogue where most of the pictures told the story, this was more common in Oor Wullie strips, however the occasional Broons strip did this too.

During the 1970s stories drawn by Tom Lavery, another character named Dave MacKay was regularly featured. Dave was Maggie's long-term boyfriend and later her fiancé, although the latter aspect only featured in the original Sunday Post strips, with all mentions of the engagement removed for the annual reprints. Although his father was an old school friend of Paw, his mother was upper–middle-class, much to the chagrin of Paw and Maw. (Despite the Broons' perpetual deference to their social 'betters'. Many comical premises were built on the family's attempts to impress members of the landed gentry, or the clergy. Many storylines featured Paw bringing shame on the family by being seen wearing torn trousers or working clothes by the 'Meenister' (Church of Scotland vicar).) Maggie's character also changed during this time, becoming more posh (and, unlike the rest of the Broons, spoke Standard English rather than Modern Scots). When Peter Davidson took over from Lavery, the character was dropped without explanation. The 2012 special annual The Broons and Oor Wullie: Classic Strips from the 70's reveals the fate of the character which was created specially for this book.

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