''Bessy'' was a long-running Belgian comics series created by

Willy Vandersteen Willy Vandersteen (15 February 1913 – 28 August 1990) was a Belgian creator of comic books. In a career spanning 50 years, he created a large studio and published more than 1,000 comic albums in over 25 series, selling more than 200 million co ...

and Karel Verschuere in 1952. Together with ''

Suske en Wiske Suske (English: Willy, Luke, Bob, Spike) is one of the main characters in the popular Belgian comic strip ''Suske en Wiske'' by Willy Vandersteen. He is the boy of the duo. History When Willy Vandersteen created his first adventure story with t ...

'' and ''

De Rode Ridder ''De Rode Ridder'' (''The Red Knight'') is a Belgian Flanders, Flemish comic book series set in medieval Europe. It stars the title character Johan, the Red Knight, easily recognizable by his red tunic. It appeared six days a week in the newspaper ' ...

'' it was once one of his most popular and best-selling series, with successful translations in Dutch, French, German and Swedish. It was terminated in 1997.

Concept

Inspired by the success of ''

Lassie Lassie is a fictional female Rough Collie dog and is featured in a short story by Eric Knight that was later expanded to a full-length novel called ''Lassie Come-Home''. Knight's portrayal of Lassie bears some features in common with another fic ...

'',

and Karel Verschuere decided to make a comic strip series about a female

collie Collies form a distinctive type of herding dogs, including many related landraces and standardized breeds. The type originated in Scotland and Northern England. Collies are medium-sized, fairly lightly-built dogs, with pointed snouts. Many ...

. Contrary to the original ''Lassie'' series, though, it did not feature any child characters and was set in the

Wild West The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial ...

rather than the present time. Bessy was given an owner, Andy Cayoon, with whom she had many adventures involving cowboys and Native Americans.

Publication history

''Bessy'' was first published in the French-language Belgian newspaper ''

La Libre Belgique ''La Libre Belgique'' (; literally ''The Free Belgium''), currently sold under the name ''La Libre'', is a major daily newspaper in Belgium. Together with ''Le Soir'', it is one of the country's major French language newspapers and is popular in ...

'' on December 24, 1952, and translated into Dutch a year later, when the comics were published in ''

De Standaard ''De Standaard'' (meaning ''The Standard'' in English) is a Flemish daily newspaper published in Belgium by Mediahuis (formerly Corelio and VUM). It was traditionally a Christian-Democratic paper, associated with the Christian-Democratic and F ...

'' and ''De Katholieke Illustratie''. The series were also a tremendous success in Germany, where they were published in the youth magazines ''Pony'' and ''Felix''. So much in fact, that Vandersteen's studio had a separate team drawing new titles, many of which were never translated in Dutch. With 992 different titles, reissues included, ''Bessy'' has the most album titles of all of Vandersteen's series. 164 albums of these were Dutch, 151 were French. The series was also published in

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

under the name ''Bessie'', which spawned 92 albums. The high production unfortunately also had an effect on the quality of the stories and drawings. As a result, the German editions were discontinued by 1985. One of Vandersteen's assistants, Jeff Broeckx, then created a

reboot In computing, rebooting is the process by which a running computer system is restarted, either intentionally or unintentionally. Reboots can be either a cold reboot (alternatively known as a hard reboot) in which the power to the system is physi ...

''Bessy Natuurkommando'' ("Bessy Nature Commando") (1984-1992), where Andy and Bessy were reimagined as present-day conservators of animals and nature. Andy received a love interest, Aneka, and a little street boy named Kid, who travelled along with them on their missions. The scripts were written by Marck Meul. Twenty-three albums were drawn before the series was terminated in 1992. Broeckx tried a new reboot and redrew the first seven stories of the original series, as well as the twelfth story from the first series. By 1997 the series came to a definite halt.

References

{{Reflist 1952 comics debuts 1997 comics endings Belgian comic strips Belgian comics titles Belgian comics characters Comics about dogs Comics characters introduced in 1952 Drama comics Educational comics Fictional dogs Western (genre) comics Comics by Willy Vandersteen Female characters in comics Children's comics