Cautious Martin, sharp-witted Vláďa, absent-minded yet enterprising 'scientist' Čajíček, and the brave twins Hanka and Eva – this is the Blue Five. Readers first encountered the adventures of this canoeing troop fifty years ago in the first issue of the new magazine Pionýrská stezka. Pionýrská stezka began publishing in January 1971 as a biweekly, and from the 5th year 1974/1975 until its demise in March 1992, it was published monthly. From 1990, the magazine was titled Stezka. Readers of Pionýrská stezka could follow the adventures of the Blue Five for a full twenty years until August 1990, specifically until issue 12 of the 20th year. The Blue Five thus holds a remarkable record for the uninterrupted publication of a single comic series, and moreover, in a single magazine. The name J. B. Kamil mentioned with each installment is a pseudonym created from the endings of the first names of both authors of the themes and scripts (Jir-ka Hromádko and Bohu-mil Kolář), who collaborated on the comic series with Marko Čermák as early as in the magazine Skaut Junák 1969 - 1970, where under the nicknames Nemo and Ouš they wrote the Družina Čápů. In its category, the Blue Five is second only to Rychlé šípy in terms of the number of installments – it reached nearly three hundred (in our edition, its stories…
