BORED SILLY WITH BILLY:BILLY & BUD V2 Format: Paperback

Billy has a very normal life, growing up in a typical family in a nondescript town. His dog, however, is a bit unusual: a cocker spaniel with human-or, as he often reflects himself, superior-intelligence. Buddy's got his posse of dog pals, his nemesis the neighbour's cat, and his almost-sister Caroline, the family tortoise. But it is with his best friend Billy that he gets up to the highest mischief, targeting everyone equally with love and abandon.

Jean Roba started illustrating for Spirou magazine in 1957, after a stint as an illustrator in advertising. He created the first Boule et Bill adventure in 1959, with a script by Maurice Rosy. After a complete trial story, Boule et Bill became fully established as a weekly cartoon strip, and Roba kept to this pattern for almost 20 years, giving the characters only one book-length adventure in 1982.