February 14th, 2013

Danish book collection

by Brian Walker, Greg Walker and Chance Browne

In 2008, Michael  Nielsen from Copenhagen, Denmark, informed us that his company, Egmont, had secured rights from King Features to publish a collection of Hi and Lois daily strips from 2001 and 2002.  He asked if I would be willing to write a short introduction and if Chance could illustrate a special cover.

The foreword I wrote was a brief history of Hi and Lois and ended with the following words: “Mort, Greg, Chance and I are very pleased that the feature remains so popular in Scandinavia and, on their behalf, I would like to especially thank our Danish readers for continuing to follow the adventures of the Flagston family!”

Michael asked Chance to use a summer theme for the cover.  Here’s the original pencil and ink layout drawing.

Chance decided to do the final cover illustration with watercolors and did a number of different versions.  Here is the one that was finally used.

Egmont maintains very high production standards and all of the daily strips in the 128-page book were reproduced in color.  The cover was a relatively faithful reproduction of Chance’s original watercolor illustration.

The dialogue in the Hi and Lois strips reproduced in the book, as well as my introduction, was translated into Danish.  This book is not available in the United States, so this is a unique opportunity for American readers to see one of our foreign products.

­ – Brian Walker