The Perishers
The Perishers was a long-running British comic strip about a group of neighbourhood children and a dog. It was printed in the Daily Mirror as a daily strip and first appeared on 19 October 1959. For most of its life it was written by Maurice Dodd (25 October 1922 – 31 December 2005), and was drawn by Dennis Collins until his retirement in 1983, after which it was drawn by Dodd and later by Bill Mevin. When Dodd died, the strip continued with several weeks' backlog of unpublished strips and some reprints until 10 June 2006. The strip then returned to the Daily Mirror, again as reprints, on 22 February 2010, replacing Pooch Café. Many Perishers strips are polyptychs—a single continuous background image is divided into three or four panels and the characters move across it from panel to panel. The story is set in the fairly drab fictional town of Croynge (sometimes spelled Crunge), which is apparently a South London borough. The name is a portmanteau of Croydon and Penge. The location as depicted often resembles an industrial Northern town and may have its roots in how Croydon appeared in the 1950s. Collins's artwork in particular gives the town detailed, realistic architecture and a consistent geography. Thematically, the strip draws upon nostalgia for childhood experiences and often has a static, almost limbo-like atmosphere, in a similar manner to its companion strip in the Daily Mirror, Andy Capp. The main characters largely exist independently of 'the real world' and adults are only rarely seen; for example, every year the Perishers go on holiday but always get thrown off the train home, forcing them to walk and arrive home several weeks late (a joke on how a short scene in comic book time can take several weeks when told in daily instalments), yet with seemingly no repercussions. Main characters Wellington An orphan boy who lives alone with his large dog, Boot. In the early days of the strip they lived in an approximately 10-foot (3 m) diameter concrete pipe section in a seemingly abandoned builder's yard. In 1966 he and Boot moved into a small railway station that had been closed by the Beeching Axe, and they have lived there ever since. Wellington takes his nickname from his trademark wellington boots – he cannot afford proper shoes. He named his dog Boot to go with Wellington. Wellington is quite a solemn intellectual and given to philosophical trains of thought. He can also be quite resourceful – he appears to support himself by selling handmade wooden buggies (or "boobys" as Maisie calls them) and pilfering food from sympathetic local shops, or convoluted schemes to create sudden crowds in order to celebrate his birthday on 25 October (which also happened to be Maurice Dodd's birthday). Wellington can also be something of a worrier, always concerned that the world is going to rack an' rooney (rack and ruin). Over the years he has worried that the world is becoming clogged up with dirt, that