Foul Fellows' Club

David Gerstein ramapith at mail.dk
Sat Aug 9 17:43:16 CEST 2003


    Hey Michiel,

>> In the Wolf/Pigs stories there is a gang of badguys called
>> The Foul Fellows' Club or The Dirty Dozen.
>
>If I remember correctly, this Club was a Dutch invention
>by storywriter Patty Klein.
>Its original name is 'de Booswichtenclub', or, when
>spelled incorrectly by those badguys: 'de Booswigte Klup'.
>
>This club had never(?) more than five members, being the
>Fox, the Bear, the Wolf, a Weasel and a Buzzard.

    Patty Klein might have invented the specific five-member version of the
club you describe here, Michiel, but as the Foul Fellows' Club, Badfellows'
Club, or Dirty Dozen it has been a regular feature of American-produced Wolf
stories since 1947. The key element is the miserable wooden shack the club
meets in, which has rarely changed over the years (except to fall apart now
and then).

    What about the club's name? The club was called the Dirty Dozen in the
1940s W-coded stories.
    The name became Foul Fellows' Club in 1951, and that name often recurred
in W-coded stories until the 1980s.
    In the 1960s, a few W-coded stories called the organization the
Badfellows' Club. S-coded stories *always* use Badfellows' Club.
    Egmont usually uses Foul Fellows, but occasionally Badfellows slips
through.

    As re: the membership, with W-coded stories it varied wildly, so
sometimes even Black Pete could appear.
    S-coded stories in the 1960s usually showed the dog and coyote Kalle and
Hotte‹ Wolfgang and Katja Schaefer creations, though they were only very
rarely addressed by name.
    With Dutch stories, you yourself described the limited membership that
the club has.
    At Egmont, the club can have a whole crowd of members if we need, but
Brer Fox, Dirty Bill and Willy Weasel are always there.
    In my D 96442 Ricky Rat first appeared when the artist, Jorge David,
simply threw a tiny rat into one panel. Kristian Højsteen liked the idea of
this character, so gave him a major role in a later story. I simply carried
this on in D 2002-140.

>You didn't have the Buzzard, whose Dutch name is Barend
>Buizerd.

    This character's English name is Brer Turkey Buzzard. He first appeared
in the Brer Rabbit newspaper strip and early comic book stories.

>The Weasel character's name is Vittorio Wezel. His skin is grey, he has a broad
>white hat and little black moustache

    And this is Brer Weasel from the Brer Rabbit newspaper strip.

>I don't know if this Weasel is the same as the Willy Weasel you
>already had, hence my description.

    It's not the same character.
    Willy Weasel (who appears in my story D 2002-140, as well as a number of
other 1990s Egmont BW and BR stories) is a slim, sneaky guy in a burglar's
cap and striped sweater. I'm not sure when he was first used, but he's based
on the weasels from MR. TOAD‹ though he's evolved to the point where he no
longer looks quite like them.

    David



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