Dutch Comics
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Dutch comics are
comics a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicate ...
made in the Netherlands. In Dutch the most common designation for the whole art form is "strip" (short for "stripverhaal" – "strip story" – , though the old-fashioned expression "beeldverhaal" – "picture story" – remains utilized on occasion, particularly in formal texts and treatises on the subject matter), whereas the word "comic" is used for the (usually) soft cover American style comic book format and its derivatives, typically containing translated US
superhero A superhero or superheroine is a stock character that typically possesses ''superpowers'', abilities beyond those of ordinary people, and fits the role of the hero, typically using his or her powers to help the world become a better place, ...
material. This use in
colloquial Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conver ...
Dutch of the adopted
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
word for that format can cause confusion in English language texts. Since the Netherlands share the same language with
Flanders Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, ...
, many
Belgian comics Belgian comics are a distinct subgroup in the comics history, and played a major role in the development of European comics, alongside France with whom they share a long common history. While the comics in the two major language groups and regio ...
and Franco-Belgian comics have also been published there, the latter in translation. But while French language publications are habitually translated into Dutch/Flemish, the opposite is not true: Dutch/Flemish publications are less commonly translated into French, possibly due to the different cultures in Flanders/Netherlands and France/French Belgium. Likewise and though available, Flemish comic books are not doing that well in the Netherlands and vice versa, save for some notable exceptions, especially the
Willy Vandersteen Willy Vandersteen (15 February 1913 – 28 August 1990) was a Belgian creator of comic books. In a career spanning 50 years, he created a large studio and published more than 1,000 comic albums in over 25 series, selling more than 200 million co ...
creation ''
Suske en Wiske Suske (English: Willy, Luke, Bob, Spike) is one of the main characters in the popular Belgian comic strip ''Suske en Wiske'' by Willy Vandersteen. He is the boy of the duo. History When Willy Vandersteen created his first adventure story with t ...
'' (''Spike and Suzy'') which is as popular in the Netherlands as it is in native Flanders. Concurrently, the cultural
idiosyncrasies An idiosyncrasy is an unusual feature of a person (though there are also other uses, see below). It can also mean an odd habit. The term is often used to express eccentricity or peculiarity. A synonym may be "quirk". Etymology The term "idiosyncr ...
contained within Dutch/Flemish comics also means that these comics have seen far less translations into other languages – excepting French to some extent, due to the bi-lingual nature of Belgium – than their French-language counterparts have.


History


Earliest examples

Dutch comics, like many European comics, have their prototypical forerunners in the form of medieval manuscripts, which often used sequential pictures accompanied by text, or sometimes even used
speech balloon Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a char ...
s for captions. The "mannekesprenten" ("little men drawings") are also an early forerunner, usually depicting the lives of Christian saints or
fable Fable is a literary genre: a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, legendary creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature that are anthropomorphized, and that illustrates or leads to a particular mo ...
s. In the 19th century several Dutch political cartoonists made use of sequential pictures, caricatures and humoristic situations that can be seen as the predecessors of comics. In 1858 the Swiss comic strip ''Monsieur Cryptogame'' by
Rodolphe Töpffer Rodolphe Töpffer ( , ; 31 January 1799 – 8 June 1846) was a Swiss teacher, author, painter, cartoonist, and caricaturist. He is best known for his illustrated books (''littérature en estampes'', "graphic literature"), which are possibly ...
was translated in Dutch by J.J.A. Gouverneur as ''Meester Prikkebeen'' (''Mister Prick-a-leg'') and was a huge success in the Netherlands. It was published in the
text comics Text comics or a text comic is a form of comics where the stories are told in Cartoon caption, captions below the images and without the use of speech balloons. It is the oldest form of comics and was especially dominant in European comics from t ...
format, with written text published underneath the pictures. This type of comics would remain the dominant form in the Netherlands until the mid-1960s, because Dutch moral guardians felt that these comics at least motivated children to actually read written sentences instead of merely looking at the pictures. While translations of comic strips remained popular no actual Dutch comics artists emerged until the late 19th century. One of the earliest artists to be considered a comic artist was Jan Linse. He drew several humoristic scenes in sequential form and wrote the text beneath the pictures. Another pioneer was Daniël Hoeksema, who drew a spin-off series inspired by ''Monsieur Cryptogame'' called ''De Neef van Prikkebeen'' (1909) (''Prikkebeen's Cousin'') However, most Dutch comics during the 1880s, 1890s, 1900s and 1910s were satirical illustrations and cartoons about Dutch politics and society or moralistic stories for the youth.


Interbellum: The true beginnings of Dutch comics

The first proper Dutch comic strips were published after
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. Many Dutch newspapers and magazines now imported translations of popular American, British and French comics, such as ''
The Katzenjammer Kids ''The Katzenjammer Kids'' is an American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks in 1897 and later drawn by Harold Knerr for 35 years (1914 to 1949).), ''
Rupert Bear Rupert Bear is a British children's comic strip character and franchise created by artist Mary Tourtel and first appearing in the ''Daily Express'' newspaper on 8 November 1920. Rupert's initial purpose was to win sales from the rival ''Da ...
'' (translated as ''Bruintje Beer''), ''
Perry and the Rinkydinks Perry, also known as pear cider, is an alcoholic beverage made from fermentation (food), fermented pears, traditionally the perry pear. It has been common for centuries in England, particularly in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Worcesters ...
'' (translated as ''Sjors''), ''
Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse is an animated cartoon Character (arts), character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime mascot of The Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red sho ...
'' (translated as ''Mikkie Muis'' ) and ''Billy Bimbo and Peter Porker'' (translated as ''Jopie Slim and Dikkie Bigmans'') which were all immediate successes. As a result, Dutch newspapers started hiring Dutch artists to create comic strips of their own. Among the most notable were ''Yoebje en Achmed'' ("Yoebje and Achmed") (1919) and ''Tripje en Liezebertha'' (1923) by ,''
Bulletje en Boonestaak {{italic title ''Bulletje en Boonestaak'' (later spelled ''Bulletje en Bonestaak'') was one of the first very successful Dutch newspaper comic strips, the first Dutch comic moralists, and the first Dutch comic translated into other languages. It ...
'' ("Bulletje and Boonestaak", 1922-1937) by Dutch writer and artist George van Raemdonck – actually of Flemish descent and an
ex-pat An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person who resides outside their native country. In common usage, the term often refers to educated professionals, skilled workers, or artists taking positions outside their home country, either ...
refugee from war-torn Belgium, considered to be the first Flemish comic artist though he created his comic in the Netherlands – and ''Snuffelgraag en Knagelijntje'' by Gerrit Th. Rotman and Arie Pleysier. Of all these comics ''Bulletje en Boonestaak'' had the most success in translations, becoming the first Dutch comic to see translations into German (1924) and French (1926). At the same time it also caused outrage among moral guardians because of anti-authoritian behaviour, frequent nudity, violence and gross-out humor, such as
vomit Vomiting (also known as emesis and throwing up) is the involuntary, forceful expulsion of the contents of one's stomach through the mouth and sometimes the nose. Vomiting can be the result of ailments like food poisoning, gastroenteriti ...
ing. Backer's ''Tripje and Liezebertha'' was popular enough to inspire a lot of
merchandising Merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer. At a retail in-store level, merchandising refers to displaying products that are for sale in a creative way that entices customers to purchase more i ...
. The early example of a Dutch comics magazine was ''Kleuterblaadje'' (''Toddler Magazine'') published in 1915 and had a weekly comic strip, often translations and even plagiarism from foreign language magazines. Many children's magazines began to devote one or more of their page to comics, but the first actual full-fledged Dutch comics magazine was published in 1922: ''Het Dubbeltje''. It only lasted two-and-a-half years, but other more successful ones followed in its wake, such as ''Doe Mee'' (1936-1942) (1946-1949), ''Olijk en Vrolijk'' (1937-1941) The 1930s saw P. Koenen's "De Lotgevallen van Pijpje Drop" ("The Adventures of Pijpje Drop" (1930), "Flipje" (1935) by
Harmsen van der Beek Eelco Martinus ten Harmsen van der Beek (more commonly Harmsen van der Beek or just Beek; October 8, 1897 – July 24, 1953) was a Dutch illustrator and commercial artist. Abroad, he is best remembered for his illustration of Enid Blyton's No ...
and ''Gijsje Goochem'' by Jac Grosman. In 1932
Frans Piët Frans Piët ( Haarlem, 17 February 1905 - 5 January 1997) was a Dutch comics artist, most famous as the original creator of the longest-running Dutch comics series of all time: '' Sjors & Sjimmie''. Biography He was born in 1905 as the son of a ...
also created a newspaper comic strip called ''Wo-Wang en Simmy'', which was a predecessor to his more successful series ''
Sjors en Sjimmie ''Sjors & Sjimmie'' (''George & Jimmy'') is a Dutch adaptation of the comic strip ''Winnie Winkle'', specifically the character Perry Winkle from that strip. The difference between the American original and the Dutch adaptation is that Sjors (Per ...
'' (1938). Piët based his character ''Sjors'' directly on Perry from
Martin Branner Martin Michael Branner (December 28, 1888 – May 19, 1970), known to his friends as Mike Branner, was a cartoonist who created the popular comic strip ''Winnie Winkle''. Early life Branner was born in Manhattan, New York City on December 2 ...
's ''
Perry and the Rinkydinks Perry, also known as pear cider, is an alcoholic beverage made from fermentation (food), fermented pears, traditionally the perry pear. It has been common for centuries in England, particularly in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Worcesters ...
''. ''Sjors'' also inspired a comics magazine of his own in 1936. Another influential Dutch comics artist who made his debut in 1934 was
Marten Toonder Marten Toonder (2 May 1912 – 27 July 2005) was a Dutch comic strip creator, born in Rotterdam. He was probably the most successful comic artist in the Netherlands and had a great influence on the Dutch language by introducing new words and expr ...
. He created a comic strip called "Thijs IJs", which was a substitute for ''Rupert Bear'' after the newspaper lost the publication rights. By far the most popular Dutch comic strip of this era was ''Flippie Flink (1933)'' by Louis Raemaekers and Clinge Doorenbos. A stage adaptation was produced, with the actor playing the part of Flippie greeting hundreds of children in the streets.


World War II

The
German occupation German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 an ...
in 1940 prevented further Anglo-American imports and led initially to a greater production of native material.
Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
censorship and paper shortage worked to the detriment of the comics field. At the same the embargo against American and British comic strips also meant that Dutch comics artists received more chances to publish their own material, even if it meant becoming a member of the Kulturkammer, the Nazi cultural watchdog. The most notable Dutch comic strips to debut during the Nazi occupation were
Alfred Mazure Alfred Leonardus Mazure (8 September 1914 – 16 February 1974) was a Dutch comics artist, novelist and film director, best known for his detective comic '' Dick Bos'', which was one of the most popular comics series in the Netherlands during the 1 ...
's '' Dick Bos'' (1942)"Stripgeschiedenis 1945-1950 Beeldromans"
Lambiek.net
and
Marten Toonder Marten Toonder (2 May 1912 – 27 July 2005) was a Dutch comic strip creator, born in Rotterdam. He was probably the most successful comic artist in the Netherlands and had a great influence on the Dutch language by introducing new words and expr ...
's influential ''
Tom Poes ''Tom Puss'' (''Tom Poes'' in Dutch) is a Dutch comic strip, created by Marten Toonder. Together with Hans G. Kresse's '' Eric de Noorman'' and Pieter Kuhn's ''Kapitein Rob'' it is regarded as the Big Three of Dutch comics. ''Tom Poes'' was a ta ...
'' (''Tom Puss'') (1941-1986 as newspaper comic)."Stripgeschiedenis 1940-1945 Krantenstrip"
Lambiek.net
Willy Smith and Herman Looman's ''Tijs Wijs de Torenwachter'' (1940-1942) and
Wim Meuldijk Wim Meuldijk (8 June 1922 – 27 December 2007) was a Dutch writer, illustrator, and screenwriter. He is the creator of ''Ketelbinkie'', one of the most popular Dutch comics after World War II, and of Pipo de Clown, the star of a television show t ...
's ''Sneeuwvlok de Eskimo'' (1942-1944) were popular enough at the time to be adapted into stage plays, but are completely forgotten today.


After 1945: The two great Dutch comic classics come into being

After the liberation the publication of comics boomed, with many successful series being published in newspapers, such as Pieter Kuhn's ''
Kapitein Rob ''Kapitein Rob'' ("Captain Rob") was a Dutch adventure comic strip, created and drawn by Pieter Kuhn and written by journalist Evert Werkman. The series ran from December 11, 1945 until January 21, 1966. Together with Marten Toonder's '' Tom ...
'' (1946-1966),
Hans G. Kresse Hans G. Kresse (Amsterdam, 3 December 1921–Doorwerth, 12 March 1992) was a Dutch cartoonist. He was the winner of the 1976 Stripschapprijs. Biography Hans G. Kresse, born in the Netherlands in 1921, started his career as a comics artist in 1938 ...
's '' Eric de Noorman'' (1946-1964),
Phiny Dick Afine Kornélie Dik, better known as Phiny Dick (14 September 1912 - 7 August 1990) was a Dutch illustrator and writer of children's books and comics. She was the wife of Marten Toonder from 1935 until her death. Biography Afine Dik was born in ...
's ' (1946-1954, Dick was Toonder's spouse), Marten Toonder's ''Kappie'' (1945-1972), ''
Panda The giant panda (''Ailuropoda melanoleuca''), also known as the panda bear (or simply the panda), is a bear species endemic to China. It is characterised by its bold black-and-white animal coat, coat and rotund body. The name "giant panda" is ...
'' (1946-1991) and '' Koning Hollewijn'' (1954-1971),
Godfried Bomans Godfried Jan Arnold Bomans (2 March 1913 – 22 December 1971) was a Dutch author and television personality. Much of his work remains untranslated into English. Life and career Godfried Bomans was born in The Hague and grew up in and aroun ...
and Carol Voges's '' De Avonturen van Pa Pinkelman'' (1946-1952), Jean Dulieu's '' Paulus de Boskabouter'' (''Paulus the woodgnome'', which spawned a long-running 1955-64 radio show as well as two popular 1968-69 and 1974-75 puppetshows made for television), Henk Sprenger's '' Kick Wilstra'' (1949- ... ), Bob van den Born's ''Professor Pi'' (1955-1965), Willy Lohmann's ''Kraaienhove'' (1962-1972),
Peter van Straaten Peter van Straaten (25 March 1935 – 8 December 2016) was a Dutch cartoonist and comics artist. He is best known for his political cartoons as well as his satirical observations of everyday people. He also had a newspaper comic strip '' Vader ...
's ''Vader & Zoon'' (1968-1987). The most successful and productive Dutch comics studio were the ', renamed as such by
Marten Toonder Marten Toonder (2 May 1912 – 27 July 2005) was a Dutch comic strip creator, born in Rotterdam. He was probably the most successful comic artist in the Netherlands and had a great influence on the Dutch language by introducing new words and expr ...
in 1945, who both made comics as well as animated cartoons, already during the war years. They also launched the short-lived comics magazine '' Tom Poes Weekblad'' (''Tom Puss Weekly'', 1947-1951). The Toonder Studio's was not created by its namesake, but actually had its origins in the Diana Edition agency, established by the Jewish-Austrian refugee Fritz Gottesmann in the 1930s and where Toonder started to work in 1939. Gottesmann had to go into hiding during the war and left the company into the care of his by then partner Toonder from 1941 onward, but was later captured and sadly perished in the
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further ...
, ''de facto'' bequeathing the company to Toonder, who successfully made the company into what it became, starting in the war years and in the process renaming the company after himself. Incidentally and to his discredit, Toonder himself has in his lifetime never acknowledged the founding father of his company after the war, with Gottesmann's place in Dutch comic history left to be uncovered by post-war Dutch comic historians. The Toonder Studio's turned out to be a fruitful breeding ground for post-war Dutch comic talents, born before or during the war, as the majority of them started out their careers at the company in one way or another, which included such names as ,
Lo Hartog van Banda Lodewijk Hartog van Banda (4 November 1916, in The Hague – 2 February 2006, in The Hague) was a Dutch comics writer.Thé Tjong-Khing Thé Tjong-Khing (; born August 4, 1933) is a children's book illustrator based in the Netherlands. He was born in Purworedjo, Java to a large Chinese Indonesian family. As a child he was interested in the Tarzan comic strips of Edgar Rice Bur ...
,
Dick Matena Dick Matena (born 24 April 1943) is a Dutch comics writer and cartoonist. He has also published under the pseudonyms A. den Dooier, John Kelly and Dick Richards. He has made several kinds of comics, from humor comics to erotic comics, but is bes ...
and
Piet Wijn Pieter Cornelis Wijn (17 May 1929 – 6 October 2010) was a prolific Dutch comics creator. Wijn was born in Hilversum. His creations include the cartoon versions of Marten Toonder's Tom Puss and Kappie, Gloria van Goes, Douwe Dabbert, and ...
. Even Dutch great Hans. G. Kresse, while not formally working for the Studio's, started out his career during the war in close cooperation with the company. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s educators in a conservative society the Netherlands still was at the time, highly discouraged young people reading comics, because they felt it was a bad influence on them. Many magazines and newspapers went across their censorship and moral objections by publishing their series in a
text comics Text comics or a text comic is a form of comics where the stories are told in Cartoon caption, captions below the images and without the use of speech balloons. It is the oldest form of comics and was especially dominant in European comics from t ...
format. This allowed children to at least read some sentences and could guide them to "real literature". Yet, it was partly for these reasons that the Dutch text comic enjoyed its golden age in the era 1945–1960, with ''Tom Poes'', ''Eric de Noorman'' and ''Kapitein Rob'' as its standard bearers. Of these latter three, it were ''Tom Poes'', ''Eric de Noorman'' and their two creators in particular who went on to conquer a special place in Dutch popular awareness, in the process becoming ''the'' two personifications of the classic Dutch comics, eclipsing all the others, which are increasingly becoming dim memories only. Though obviously fondly remembered by the older Dutch generations, their renown have become such that even the younger native generations, even though the vast majority of them has never read a single title of these two creations, still recognize the names ''Tom Poes en Oliver B. Bommel'' and ''Eric de Noorman''. The memory and cultural heritage of its two creators, Toonder and Kresse respectively, is actively kept alive by its two respective private foundations "Toonder Compagie BV" (actually started in 2000 as the "Stichting Het Toonder Auteursrecht" by Toonder himself, as he was keenly aware of the impact his creations had made in Dutch cultural awareness), and the "Stichting Hans G. Kresse", until 2009 the only such organizations specifically dedicated to the work of individual Dutch comic artists, after which they were joined by "Stichting
Jan Kruis Johannes Andries “Jan” Kruis (; 8 June 1933 – 19 January 2017) was a Dutch comics artist best known for the family strip '' Jack, Jacky and the Juniors'' (''Jan, Jans en de Kinderen''). Biography He began creating comics as a child. Later ...
Museum". Predominately run by (family) heirs and sympathetic professionals, the two foundations in their goal of maintaining the cultural legacy of both artists – aside from safeguarding and maintaining their original art collections – organize exhibitions on a regular basis at the various cultural institutions, publish bibliographical book publications of for example biographies and rare, unknown and previously unpublished works, as well as providing information and illustrations to media interested in reporting on the two comic artists and their work. The Kresse foundation though, appears to dialed down its activities around 2018 when its official "Eric de Noorman" website went dark. Exemplary of the continued presence in Dutch popular awareness of ''Tom Poes en Oliver B. Bommel'' was Dutch collector Pim Oosterheert, who possesses one of the largest private collections of Toonder materials. Oosterheert decided to turn his home in
Zoeterwoude Zoeterwoude () is a municipality in the province of South Holland, Western Netherlands. It covers of which is water. It had a population of in . Located to the southeast of Leiden and north of Zoetermeer, the municipality of Zoeterwoude consist ...
into a bonafide museum, Museum de Bommelzolder, whose opening in 1998 was presided by Toonder's son in the presence of Dutch comic scene alumni and local dignitaries, and enjoys the full backing of the Toonder Compagnie. A well visited museum, enlarged and as of 2017 still in existence, Oosterheert expanded his activities with the publication of a semi-regular newsletter and reference books, as well as traveling lectures. For the main bodies of work of both artists, their two respective foundations closely cooperate with , a figure of note in the Dutch comic scene from the mid-1970s onward, whose publishing house Uitgeverij Panda (named after one of Toonder's creations, even though the company logo features the eponymous animal) releases bibliographical/bibliophilic limited "integrale" editions of these works, helping to keep the memory alive. While Pieter Kuhn's ''Kapitein Rob'' was everybit as renowned as its two counterparts by Toonder and Kresse were at the time, he eventually failed to become the third "Dutch great" and both he and his creation are as of 2020 all but forgotten, only fondly remembered by the oldest still living generations.


1946: Advent of the Franco-Belgian comic

''Tom Poes Weekblad'', featuring the for the Netherlands traditional text comics, had to compete right from the start with Belgian weekly competitors '' Kuifje'' and ' from publishers
Le Lombard ''Le Lombard'', known as ''Les Éditions du Lombard'' until 1989, is a Belgian comic book publisher established in 1946 when ''Tintin'' magazine was launched. Le Lombard is now part of Média-Participations, alongside publishers Dargaud and Dupuis ...
and
Dupuis Éditions Dupuis S.A. () is a Belgium, Belgian publisher of comic albums and magazines. Based in Marcinelle near Charleroi, Dupuis was founded in 1922 by Jean Dupuis, and is mostly famous for its comic comics album, albums and magazines. It is ...
respectively, which became available in the country around the turn of 1946/1947. The magazines, unaltered Dutch-language versions of their French counterparts ''
Tintin Tintin or Tin Tin may refer to: ''The Adventures of Tintin'' * ''The Adventures of Tintin'', a comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé ** Tintin (character), a fictional character in the series ** ''The Adventures of Tintin'' (film), 2011, ...
'' (1946-1993, applying for both language editions) and '' Spirou'' (1938-, the Dutch version folded in 2005) respectively, acquainted Dutch readership with the phenomenon, not much later known as the Franco-Belgian ''bande dessinée'', in the process (re-)introducing them to the speech balloon comic. As a format, these comics gradually, but steadily, gained increasing popularity, especially under readers born around, and after the war, becoming an influence of note on a new generation of Dutch comic creators, from the 1960s onward. Both ''Robbedoes'' and ''Kuifje'' far outlived all their other native contemporaries introduced in the 1945-1950 era, including ''Tom Poes Weekblad'', all of which nowadays only known unto comic historians. It were not only the new generations who were influenced by the Franco-Belgian comic, even a veteran mainstay like Hans G. Kresse, who had achieved fame in the text comic format, created his latter-day comics series in the Franco-Belgian format, and which included ''Vidocq'' (1965-1970; 1986-1988), ''Erwin, de zoon van Eric de Noorman'' (1969-1973) and most notably his acclaimed ' (''Indian Books'', 1972–2001, the last volume published posthumously), which, contrary to most of his other work, ''has'' seen multiple – as in more than one or two – translations in other languages, including English as British publisher
Methuen Publishing Methuen Publishing Ltd is an English publishing house. It was founded in 1889 by Sir Algernon Methuen (1856–1924) and began publishing in London in 1892. Initially Methuen mainly published non-fiction academic works, eventually diversifying to ...
has published the first two volumes in 1975 for the UK market. Another example was Piet Wijn who started out his career in 1947 creating text comics for the Toonder Studios – among others the aforementioned ''Koning Hollewijn'' comic – , but who achieved international renown for his '' Douwe Dabbert'' (1971-2001), created in the Franco-Belgian tradition for the Dutch Disney Studios. It was through ''Kuifje'', where the series ran from 1948 to 1959, that Dutch readership was introduced to ''Suske en Wiske'' and where the series started its journey to become one of Holland's most all-time popular comic series.


1948: Crisis

Late 1948 turned out to be a seminal moment in time for the Dutch comic world when Dutch Minister of Education Theo Rutten had his official letter, dated 19 October 1948, published in the October 25, 1948 issue of the newspaper ''
Het Parool ''Het Parool'' () is an Amsterdam-based daily newspaper. It was first published on 10 February 1941 as a resistance paper during the German occupation of the Netherlands (1940–1945). In English, its name means ''The Password'' or ''The Motto' ...
'', directly addressing educational institutions and local government bodies, advocating the prohibition of comics, or rather the below mentioned "beeldromans". He stated, "These booklets, which contain a series of illustrations with accompanying text, are generally sensational in character, without any other value. It is not possible to proceed in a legal manner against printers, publishers or distributors of these novels, nor can anything be achieved by not making paper available to them, since this for those publications necessary paper, is available on the free market," further implying that it became the civil duty of parents, teachers and civil servants, including policemen, to confiscate and destroy comic books wherever they found them, or as he had put it, "If you would like to point out, unnecessarily perhaps, to your school personnel that it is desirable to ensure that the students do not bring the graphic novels into school or distribute them to their comrades.(...) Where the circumstances make this desirable, the students are to be pointed out the very superficial nature of this literature, and the numerous books that are more worthy of their attention." Less than a month later, a 16-year-old girl was murdered in a bizarre manner on November 19 in the small town of
Enkhuizen Enkhuizen () is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland and the region of West-Frisia. History Enkhuizen, like Hoorn and Amsterdam, was one of the harbor-towns of the VOC, from where overseas trade wi ...
by her 15-year old boyfriend, who had tied her down to railroad tracks where she was killed by a passing train. An initially mystified police subsequently uncovered that both had been ravenous readers of comic books of the kind that were in concordance with Rutten's definition in his letter. Taken as validation, a moral outcry ensued, causing not only "beeldromans", but ''all'' comic books being en masse confiscated and destroyed around the country by parents and educators, with all comic publications being suspended and public libraries removing and destroying any comic books they might have had in their collections. On the occasion, and in an effort to outdo other contemporary media statements of indignation, libraries went even as far as coining comic books in a public statement, "an atrocious sickness of the times, ready for suicide of the soul in its despondency". It nearly destroyed the comic phenomenon in the Netherlands, which had only just begun recovering from the war years. The only exceptions were made for a small number of "healthy" comic productions from the Toonder Studio's, which included the by then considered literary comic strip ''Tom Poes''. Reactions to the incident were not state-sanctioned initiatives, but rather spontaneous, popular responses. Despite the upheaval the incident has caused in the Netherlands, Dutch authorities have refrained from ever passing laws or instituting agencies of the restrictive kind France, Germany ''and'' Canada – which had purely by chance experienced a near-similar comics related incident at almost the exact same time with a likewise lethal outcome – established, even though the former two countries had not experienced comic related incidents of the magnitude the Netherlands and Canada had. This was partly due to the fact that the
moral panic A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear, often an irrational one, that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society. It is "the process of arousing social concern over an issue", usua ...
surrounding the incident subsided rather quickly, as evidenced by the fact that the newspaper ''
De Telegraaf ''De Telegraaf'' (; en, The Telegraph) is the largest Dutch daily morning newspaper. Haro Kraak,Gaat Paul Jansen de crisis bij De Telegraaf oplossen?, '' de Volkskrant'', 2015. Retrieved 1 August 2015. Paul Jansen has been the editor-in-chief s ...
'' resumed comic publication only weeks after the incident – even though that newspaper had had a leading hand in the uprising against the medium at the time – , and partly due to the fact, as Rutten himself had already implied, that the Dutch constitution simply did not allow for them, contrary to the ones of France and Germany which had allowances embedded for youth publications (see: ''
Seduction of the Innocent ''Seduction of the Innocent'' is a book by German-born American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, published in 1954, that warned that comic books were a negative form of popular literature and a serious cause of juvenile delinquency. The book was tak ...
''), whereas Canada simply amended its Criminal Code, something Dutch authorities did not even consider. Not only that, but the phenomenon was not entirely without its own supporters, albeit from a freedom of expression point of view, as Dutch literary giant
Godfried Bomans Godfried Jan Arnold Bomans (2 March 1913 – 22 December 1971) was a Dutch author and television personality. Much of his work remains untranslated into English. Life and career Godfried Bomans was born in The Hague and grew up in and aroun ...
had worded at the time in his column of ''
Elsevier Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...
'', "The reading is healthy. The format in which she has been subordinated is merely flawed. This is an aesthetic flaw, not a moral one. By confusing these, we ignore the essence of the art of the novel." Still, while the Dutch comic world never went as far as their US and German counterparts did, ''i.e.'' establishing self-censuring institutions, they henceforth chose to err on the side of caution for the time being, until the advent of the comics magazine ' in the 1960s.


1954: ''Tom Poes'' becomes Dutch literature

While being considered "healthy" and thus exempted from the purge resulting from the 1948 incident, Marten Toonder was not that confident that his ''Tom Poes'' (or any other from his studios for that matter) was out of the woods yet, and as a result he too, like Bomans, took a stand against the hysteria engulfing the country at the time, expressing his concerns in the 1949 ''Tom Poes'' story "" through the words of Tom Poes' faithful friend,
sidekick A sidekick is a slang expression for a close companion or colleague (not necessarily in fiction) who is, or is generally regarded as, subordinate to the one they accompany. Some well-known fictional sidekicks are Don Quixote's Sancho Panza, ...
, companion, and all around gentleman Oliver B. Bommel ( Oliver B. Bumble). In hindsight however, Toonder needed not to have worried personally. ''Tom Poes'' actually started out as a children's comic with the first six stories being written by Toonder's wife Phiny Dick; And indeed Toonder based his characters Tom Poes en Oliver B. Bommel – who made his first appearance in the third story – on the characters his wife had created for a children's book trilogy she had written and illustrated in the period 1939-1941: the (female) kitten "Miezelijntje"', she herself considered the younger sister of Tom Poes, and the boy bear "Wol de Beer". Yet, from the moment Toonder made ''Tom Poes'' truly his own, his eloquent mastery of the Dutch language was quite early on recognized by critics as bonafide Dutch literature, only emphasized by the fact that several recurrent utterances by Oliver Bommel (who was such a popular figure, that he actually took over the series, retitled "Heer Bommel" – "Gentleman Bommel" – as the main protagonist in the later speech balloon versions) have percolated over the years into colloquial Dutch, such as "Als U begrijpt wat ik bedoel" ("If you know what I mean") and "Als U mij wilt verschonen" ("If you will excuse me"), and which was very much met with the approval of the conservative educators mentioned above, and the primary reason why his studio productions became exempt from the 1948/49 purge. Toonder's growing renown as a literary author was formalized when he was invited to become a fellow of the prestigious "
Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde The Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde (English "Society of Dutch Literature", often abbreviated ''MNL'') is a prestigious and exclusive literary society. The MNL was established in Leiden in 1766 and is still located there. At the moment, ...
" literary society in 1954, ironically the same year
Fredric Wertham Fredric Wertham (; born Friedrich Ignatz Wertheimer, March 20, 1895 – November 18, 1981) was a German-American psychiatrist and author. Wertham had an early reputation as a progressive psychiatrist who treated poor black patients at his Lafargue ...
published his comic condemning ''Seduction of the Innocent'' treatise in the United States. As of 2020, the Toonder creations are the only Dutch comic creations formally recognized as Dutch cultural heritage albeit, and this can not be stressed enough, for its texts ''only'', and ''not'' its art. Exemplary of this, is that Toonder's current literary publisher
De Bezige Bij De Bezige Bij ("the busy bee") is one of the most important literary publishing companies in the Netherlands. History The company was founded illegally in 1943, during the German occupation of the Netherlands by ; its first publication was a poem ...
, Holland's most important purely literary publisher and for decades now Toonder's literary publisher, ''exclusively'' reprints Toonder's text comics only, dismissing all his latter-day balloon comics for (non-comic) ''
Revue A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance, and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own duri ...
'' and ''Donald Duck'' magazines, including ''Tom Poes'', as being outside, what they consider, Toonder
canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western ca ...
. This stance is mirrored, and thus formalized, on the official website of the Literatuurmuseum (Holland's official, state-owned literature museum, located in
The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...
), where only his text comics are given attention. Conceived as replacement for the by the Germans prohibited ''Micky Mouse'' Disney comic, its "quasi-protected" literature status has been an important contributing factor for ''Tom Poes en Oliver B. Bommel'' to become the longest running news paper text comic in Dutch comic history, well until after the text comic format had gone out of favor by the mid to late-1960s (when different ''Heer Bommel'' text balloon stories started to run concurrently in magazines). Published exclusively in the newspaper ''De Telegraaf'', it ran almost uninterrupted – save for two short suspensions in the final six months of the war due to increased Nazi meddling with the newspaper, and a second, far shorter one in 1948 as explained above – from March 1941 until 1986. Remarkably, considering the fact that Godfried Bomans was already established as a figure of note in Dutch literature, his ''De Avonturen van Pa Pinkelman'' (all but forgotten nowadays) has not been accorded the same status. The elevation of ''Tom Poes'' into "official" literature has also sparked a decades long
tug-of-war Tug of war (also known as tug o' war, tug war, rope war, rope pulling, or tugging war) is a sport that pits two teams against each other in a test of strength: teams pull on opposite ends of a rope, with the goal being to bring the rope a certa ...
between the Dutch literary world and the Dutch comics world over "spiritual ownership" of Toonder's creations, which only seemed to have died down after the adoption of the English expression "
graphic novel A graphic novel is a long-form, fictional work of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comic scholars and industry ...
" in the Netherlands in the late-1980s as well, being deemed acceptable to both sides of the discourse. Graphic novel translates into Dutch as "Beeldroman", and the Dutch expression was originally in use during the 1940s for a typical Dutch comic format, which was precisely the format targeted by, and not surviving, the purge of 1948 (see ''
below Below may refer to: *Earth *Ground (disambiguation) *Soil *Floor *Bottom (disambiguation) Bottom may refer to: Anatomy and sex * Bottom (BDSM), the partner in a BDSM who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or ...
''), though the Dutch expression itself was resurrected as translation for graphic novel by the literary world, whereas the Dutch comics world prefers the use of the English expression. Exemplary of the tug-of-war between the two worlds as far as the Toonder comics were concerned, is, while De Bezige Bij only publishes his work according to their definition of Toonder canon, that Hans Matla's publishing house Panda Uitgeverij has proceeded with several bibliographical/bibliophilic "integrale" publications of the entirety of Toonder's main body of work, including his latter-day speech balloon creations, and thus approaching the subject matter from a comics art point of view. Yet, the literary status of ''Tom Poes'' also came at a cost; Toonder making the fullest use of the intricacies of the Dutch language – in the process actually inventing some new Dutch language – also meant that the appeal of his creations remained mostly limited to Dutch-Europe, as translation in foreign languages was bedevilishly difficult to achieve without having much of its nuances and subtleties, having become the corner stones for ''Tom Poes'' in the first place, being lost in translation. This was especially pertinent for the
Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
, including French, where very few Toonder creations are known to exist in translation, contrary to the
Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
– including English as Toonder, having acquired the language skills during his world travels before the war, had actually created some original ''Tom Puss'' stories in English for the British market – , particularly the Scandinavian ones due to their grammatical similarities. Of the two Dutch greats, Hans G. Kresse therefore became the more translated one, but who is otherwise shunned by the Dutch cultural authorities.


The 1950s and 1960s: Recovery

In the wake of the 1948 upheaval, the Dutch comic world initially relied predominantly on "healthy" imports, apart from their own ''Toonder Studios'' productions and the already established ''Robbedoes'' and ''Kuifje'' magazines which resumed distribution after the short-lived suspension, with 1952 marking the introduction of the most popular Dutch comics magazine, when ''
Donald Duck Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is known fo ...
'' published its first Dutch-language issue. It, in initial conjunction with the Toonder Studio's, quickly became a national institution and published, apart from
Disney comics Disney comics are comic books and comic strips featuring characters created by the Walt Disney Company, including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. The first Disney comics were newspaper strips appearing from 1930 on, starting with ...
, also comic series from former Toonder Studio's artists like Thom Roep and Piet Wijn's earlier mentioned '' Douwe Dabbert'' (1971-2001) and ' (1982) by and . ''Douwe Dabbert'' went on to become one of the great success stories of Dutch comics. In the wake of ''Donald Duck'', other comics from American origin, which were immensely popular in the country in the interbellum era (as indeed they were in the rest of Europe) made their reappearance in the country as well, when National Periodical Publications (the later
DC Comics DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...
) opened a local branch in 1956 in the town of
Huizen Huizen () is a municipality and a village in the province of North Holland, the Netherlands. The name "Huizen" is Dutch for "houses" and this usage has been linked to the belief that the first stone houses, instead of the more common sod houses a ...
, , made responsible for the Dutch translations and distribution of their comic productions. With what was originally named Classics Nederland (later rechristened Williams Nederland before its final name), the Netherlands had actually received its first specialized comic book publisher, though care was taken with the sensibilities still present in the country as the company initially started out with the publication of predominantly "safe" series, the most conspicuous one having been the translated version of ''
Classics Illustrated ''Classics Illustrated'' is an American comic book/magazine series featuring adaptations of literary classics such as ''Les Misérables'', ''Moby-Dick'', ''Hamlet'', and ''The Iliad''. Created by Albert Kanter, the series began publication in 1 ...
'', and after which the Dutch subsidiary was named to begin with. Regaining the popularity they had before the war (contrary to France and Belgium, where American comics failed to make a comeback, the Disney productions excepted), particularly in mid-1960s to early 1970s era after attitudes towards the medium had relaxed when comic series of a less edifying nature were added to the array, American style comics went out of vogue in translation by the end of the 1970s, being increasingly supplanted in popularity by the Franco-Belgian style comics, both native and in translation from their originating countries, which also resulted in the demise of the company itself. Still, exemplary of the cautious course the Dutch comic scene embarked upon after the 1948 incident was the advent of the magazines ' (1953-2016) and ' (1953-) in the early 1950s – both reinventions of older, pre-war
Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
school magazines and later followed by ''Jippo'' (1974-1984) – , all of them of an educational nature and grounded in the Catholic faith, aimed at the pre-adolescent
primary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary e ...
youth, and widely disseminated in schools around the nation in the era, especially the Catholic south of the country. Like their French counterparts of the era, the publications such as ''
Cœurs Vaillants ''Cœurs Vaillants'' (''Brave Hearts''), known later as ''J2 Jeunes'' and ''Formule 1'', was a Catholic French language weekly newspaper for French children. Founded in 1929 by ''l' Union des œuvres catholiques de France'' (The Union of Catholic ...
'' and the like, the magazines featured plenty of comics, albeit of an edifying nature in the text comics format initially, but unlike the Fleurus publications, they ''did'' provide a stepping stone for native comic talents to start out their respective careers in the speech balloon format like Willy Lohmann, Piet Wijn,
Jan Steeman Jan Steeman (23 May 1933 – 24 January 2018) was a Dutch comics artist, best known for his association football comic ''Roel Dijkstra'' and ''Noortje'', a comic strip about a bumbling teenage girl published in ''Tina''. The latter runs for more t ...
,
Jan Kruis Johannes Andries “Jan” Kruis (; 8 June 1933 – 19 January 2017) was a Dutch comics artist best known for the family strip '' Jack, Jacky and the Juniors'' (''Jan, Jans en de Kinderen''). Biography He began creating comics as a child. Later ...
, ,
Gerrit de Jager Gerrit de Jager (born 1954, Amsterdam) is a Dutch cartoonist, creator of series such as ', ', ' and '. His career started in the early 1980s with Wim Stevenhagen under the pseudonym ''Prutspruts'' ("fiddle-fiddle"), which later changed to ''P ...
,
Joost Swarte Joost Swarte (born 24 December 1947 in Heemstede) is a Dutch cartoonist and graphic designer. He is best known for his ligne claire or ''clear line'' style of drawing, a term he coined. Comic series and characters by Swarte include ''Katoen en ...
and (one of the very few female comic artists who started out in the era as such after her apprenticeship at the Toonder Studio's), eventually supplanting the increasingly obsolete text format comics created by artists now forgotten. All these artist had to start out in such publications as the only original Dutch-language comic magazine publications either went out of business very quickly, as was the case with the native magazines, or were not willing to provide any space for these budding Dutch talents at the time, as was the case with the two Flemish magazines, who were very protective of their own native Belgian artists, then and later on.; Despite this early rejection, de Smet became one of the few Dutch comics artists to be later given the opportunity in 1990/91 to have two albums published at Le Lombard of his gag comic ''Viva Zapapa'' ( & ), a variation of his most famous comic ''De Generaal''. Dick Matena,
Paul Teng Paul Teng Ping Ya (born 6 March 1955) is a Dutch comic book writer and artist. He writes and draws mainly realistic historical comics. Early life Teng was born Rotterdam. After high-school he studied cultural anthropology in Amsterdam. His intere ...
and Peter de Smet are the only Dutch comic artists known to have been directly contracted by ''Kuifje'' publisher Le Lombard for direct album publications without prior magazine publication (excepting some of De Smet's ''Viva Zapapa'' short gags, which ''were'' pre-published in the magazine), whereas Gerrit Stapel, Toon van Driel, Gerrit de Jager, Geerard Lever,
Henk Kuijpers Henk Kuijpers (born 10 December 1946 in Haarlem, Netherlands) is a comics artist most famous for his ''Franka'' series. Comics *Franka, 23 comic albums *Bars, 2 albums Kuijpers' ''Franka'' comics work features a strong model-like female sleut ...
and, again, Peter de Smet are the only Dutch comic artists known to have been contracted by Dupuis to contribute to their ''Robbedoes'' magazine for a short period of time in the 1980s only, most of whom not seeing their creations issued as albums by the publisher afterwards. As of 2017, ''Okki'' is still in existence, contrary to most of their successors who followed suit in their wake, but its role in the Dutch comic scene has been all but played out. Yet, hard on the heels of these edifying publications, came the first purely Dutch initiated comic magazines aimed at an adolescent readership without the edifying nature of the Catholic magazines, which included ' (1950-1976, featuring predominantly comics from British origin initially, though from the start Dutch creations were included such as those from and in particular those of the titular hero by
Frans Piët Frans Piët ( Haarlem, 17 February 1905 - 5 January 1997) was a Dutch comics artist, most famous as the original creator of the longest-running Dutch comics series of all time: '' Sjors & Sjimmie''. Biography He was born in 1905 as the son of a ...
after whom the magazine was named, at a later point in time added upon with creations by artists who had started out for the Catholic magazines, Jan Steenman, Jan Kruis and Patty Klein in particular), ' (1959-1966; while largely a translated variant of the German source publication – itself the German answer to ''Donald Duck'' – it afforded Dutch readers one of the first opportunities to become acquainted with post-war comics of predominantly French origins as the magazine already contained comics from early volumes of French ''
Pilote Cover of the first ''Pilote'' issue #0 ''Pilote'' () was a French comic magazine published from 1959 to 1989. Showcasing most of the major French or Belgian comics talents of its day the magazine introduced major series such as ''Astérix'', '' ...
'' magazine) and ''Pep'' (1962-1975, cooperating in the early years with ''Disney'', ''Toonder Studios'', and
Le Lombard ''Le Lombard'', known as ''Les Éditions du Lombard'' until 1989, is a Belgian comic book publisher established in 1946 when ''Tintin'' magazine was launched. Le Lombard is now part of Média-Participations, alongside publishers Dargaud and Dupuis ...
– the parent publisher of ''Kuifje'' magazine – , especially featuring creations from Hans G. Kresse who had worked for both the former two). One of the most popular series that became published in ''Sjors'' was the British comic series ''
The Trigan Empire ''The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire'', later called simply ''The Trigan Empire'', is a science fiction comic series written mainly by Mike Butterworth with artwork (initially watercolours, later gouache) by Don Lawrence, among others. It ...
'', whose artist,
Don Lawrence Donald Southam Lawrence (17 November 1928 – 29 December 2003) was a British comic book artist and author. Lawrence is best known for his comic strips '' The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire'' in the British weeklies ''Ranger'' and ''Look ...
(creating his series directly in colors in the
Frank Hampson Frank Hampson (21 December 1918 – 8 July 1985) was a British illustrator. He is best known as the creator and artist of Dan Dare and other characters in the boys' comic, the ''Eagle'', to which he contributed from 1950 to 1961. Biogra ...
tradition, something hitherto not seen before in the Dutch comic world), was yet to play a role of note in the Dutch comic world. Also mentionable was ''Arend'' weekly magazine (1955-1956, where Hampson's ''
Dan Dare Dan Dare is a British science fiction comic hero, created by illustrator Frank Hampson who also wrote the first stories. Dare appeared in the ''Eagle'' comic story ''Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future'' from 1950 to 1967 (and subsequently in repri ...
'' creation had seen partial publication as ''Daan Durf''), a translated variant of the contemporary British comic magazine ''
Eagle Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, just ...
''. But it was ' magazine (1967-), likewise initially a translated version of British magazine ''
Princess Tina ''Princess Tina'' (at times known as ''Princess Tina and Penelope'' and then simply ''Tina'') was a weekly British girls' comic published from autumn 1967 to summer 1973 by the International Publishing Company, initially under the Fleetway Pu ...
'', but unlike the source publication, from the start executed in color, that has become the most notable one of the British inspired magazines as a girls' magazine which published a lot of comics, predominantly from British origin (albeit it mostly drawn by anonymous Spanish Fleetway studios artists), just like ''Sjors'' magazine had at first. And like ''Sjors'', ''Tina'' would provide a platform for Dutch talents like Kruis, Steeman and Klein to flourish, unsurprisingly perhaps as both magazines were at the time published by Dutch publishing house , contrary to ''Pep'' magazine which was published by its big competitor of the time, .


''Pep'' magazine

However, it was ''Pep'' in particular that turned out to be an emancipating force for the Dutch comic world, freeing it from the shackles of 1948 while coaching on the winds of the social and cultural changes that not only swept the Netherlands, but the entire western world in the 1960s. From the mid-1960s onward the magazine reinvented itself when it quite radically distanced itself from its Disney and Le Lombard roots, as comics from these publishing houses already appeared in the competing ''Donald Duck'' and ''Kuifje'', whereas the comics from the French magazine ''
Pilote Cover of the first ''Pilote'' issue #0 ''Pilote'' () was a French comic magazine published from 1959 to 1989. Showcasing most of the major French or Belgian comics talents of its day the magazine introduced major series such as ''Astérix'', '' ...
'' (est. 1959, and itself susceptible to the cultural changes taking place, especially from the
May 1968 events in France Beginning in May 1968, a period of civil unrest occurred throughout France, lasting some seven weeks and punctuated by demonstrations, general strikes, as well as the occupation of universities and factories. At the height of events, which ha ...
onwards), with which ''Pep'' now aligned itself with and henceforth increasingly featuring productions from that magazine, had not yet seen a wide dissemination in the Netherlands – and
Flanders Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, ...
for that matter. It was ''Pep'' which introduced Dutch readership to great Franco-Belgian comic classics from the
Dargaud Société Dargaud, doing business as Les Éditions Dargaud, is a publisher of Franco-Belgian comics series, headquartered in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. It was founded in 1936 by Georges Dargaud (), publishing its first comics in 1943. ...
stable like '' Roodbaard'' ( Charlier and Hubinon), ''
Blueberry Blueberries are a widely distributed and widespread group of perennial flowering plants with blue or purple berries. They are classified in the section ''Cyanococcus'' within the genus ''Vaccinium''. ''Vaccinium'' also includes cranberries, bi ...
'' (Charlier en Giraud; The previous introduction in 1965 of these two having failed in ''Fix & Foxi'', as that magazine targeted an entirely different age readership, thus remaining unnoticed), and most conspicuously ''
Asterix ''Asterix'' or ''The Adventures of Asterix'' (french: Astérix or , "Asterix the Gaul") is a ''bande dessinée'' comic book series about a village of indomitable Gaulish warriors who adventure around the world and fight the Roman Republic, wi ...
'' ( Goscinny and
Uderzo Alberto Aleandro Uderzo (; ; 25 April 1927 – 24 March 2020), better known as Albert Uderzo, was a French comic book artist and scriptwriter. He is best known as the co-creator and illustrator of the ''Astérix'' series in collaboration with Re ...
), which ran in the magazine from its very inception to become one of the all-time most popular comic series in the Netherlands, as indeed it became in the rest of Europe. Other ''Pilote'' comics introduced to Dutch readership concerned '' Olivier Blunder'' (
Greg Greg is a masculine given name, and often a shortened form of the given name Gregory. Greg (more commonly spelled " Gregg") is also a surname. People with the name *Greg Abbott (disambiguation), multiple people *Greg Abel (born 1961/1962), Canadi ...
) en '' Ravian'' ( Christin en Mézières), as well as the poetic comic '' Philémon'' from
Fred Fred may refer to: People * Fred (name), including a list of people and characters with the name Mononym * Fred (cartoonist) (1931–2013), pen name of Fred Othon Aristidès, French * Fred (footballer, born 1949) (1949–2022), Frederico Ro ...
and the satirical comics from
Marcel Gotlib Marcel Gottlieb (14 July 1934 – 4 December 2016), known professionally as Gotlib, was a French comics artist/writer and publisher. Through his own work and the magazines he co-founded, ''L'Écho des savanes'' and ''Fluide Glacial'', he was a key ...
at a later point in time. It was through ''Pep'', together with its ''Kuifje'' and ''Robbedoes'' contemporaries, that Franco-Belgian comics and their native derivatives started to occupy their preeminent place in the Dutch comic scene in earnest. But more importantly, and in imitation of its French example, it was ''Pep'' who provided ample opportunity – even more so than the Spaarnestad competitors – for native comic talent, not few of them having started out at the Toonder Studio's, to burst unto the Dutch comic scene with their own original – ''and'' more free-spirited – creations in the Franco-Belgian inspired balloon comics format. It was that magazine (and its successor ''Eppo'') that saw such first-time original publications of Dutch comic world mainstays, like
Martin Lodewijk Martinus Spyridon Johannes Lodewijk (born 30 April 1939) is a Dutch comics writer and cartoonist, and advertising adviser. Martin Lodewijk was born in Rotterdam. He dropped out of high school in 1957, and started drawing cartoons, notably of spac ...
's ''
Agent 327 ''Agent 327'' is a Dutch action/comedy comic series by cartoonist Martin Lodewijk. It was a regular feature from 1966 until 1983, and again from 2000 to the present. The eponymous Agent 327 is a James Bond/Maxwell Smart-like Dutch secret agent who ...
'' (1967-1985; 2000- ... ), Dick Matena and Lo Hartog van Banda's ''De Argonautjes'' (1970-1980), Gideon Brugman's ''Ambrosius'' (1970-1974), Fred Julsink's ''Wellington Wish'' (1971-1973), Peter de Smet's '' De Generaal'' (1971-2003), Jan Steeman and Andries Brandt's ''
Roel Dijkstra ''Roel Dijkstra'' is a Dutch comic book series about a fictional football player. The series was created in 1975 by Jan Steeman (1933-2018; winner of the 2005 Dutch Stripschapprijs) and Andrew Brandt. The first 21 volumes, drawn by Steeman and hi ...
'' (1977-1995), Henk Kuijpers's ''
Franka ''Franka'' is a popular Dutch comic book series drawn and written since the mid-1970s by the graphic artist Henk Kuijpers. The principal character is a strong female Dutch sleuth who solves mysteries in exotic locales. ''Franka'' has been transl ...
'' (1974-...), originally as ''
Het Misdaadmuseum {{unreferenced, date=September 2008 Het Misdaadmuseum (The Criminology Museum) is a Dutch comic by Henk Kuijpers published in 1978. It was previously serialised in comic weekly ''Pep'' in late 1974/early 1975. One of the supporting-characters, Fr ...
'') and
Hanco Kolk Hanco Kolk (born 11 March 1957, Den Helder) is a Dutch cartoonist and comics artist. He is best known for his collaborations with Peter de Wit, with who he made ''Gilles de Geus'' and '' S1NGLE' Kolk married author Isabelle Rosselin in 2016. Bi ...
and
Peter de Wit Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...
's '' Gilles de Geus'' (1985-2003), to name but a few. It was not only the young generation of Dutch comic artists who found a fruitful platform for their creations in the magazine, ''Pep'' also provided the veteran Hans G. Kresse with a venue for what can be considered his second comics career. Attached to the magazine from the very start, Kresse not only provided illustrations for the magazine's editorials and short prose stories as well as magazine covers on behalf of the other magazine artists in the early years, but also started to create his early magazine comic series in the increasingly popular speech balloon format (thereby abandoning the text comic format in which he had achieved fame) of which ''Zorro'' (1964-1967) was the best known at that time. Together with the ''Asterix'' artists, Kresse was one of the very few magazine artists who survived the radical formula change ''Pep'' implemented a few years into its existence, and major series he created for the magazine afterwards were the aforementioned ''Vidocq'' and ''Erwin, de zoon van Eric de Noorman'' (spinoff series of ''Eric de Noorman'', centered around his son Erwin). During his tenure at the magazine, Kresse started to take a keen interest in the plight of the Native-Americans and started to express this in a series of one-shot comic stories, increasingly featuring his indignation over the historical treatment of Native-Americans by the Europeans, which included ''Matho Tonga'', ''De wraak van Minimic'' (both 1970), ''Mangas Coloradas: Woestijn van wraak'' (1971–72) and ''Wetamo: De heks van Pocasset'' (1972–73). In the process, Kresse actually became one of the first comic artists anywhere who started to paint a more even-keeled, realistic and human picture of the Native-American, who was hitherto commonly depicted in comics as either an uncivilized bloodthirsty barbarian or as the equally unrealistic "
noble savage A noble savage is a literary stock character who embodies the concept of the indigene, outsider, wild human, an "other" who has not been "corrupted" by civilization, and therefore symbolizes humanity's innate goodness. Besides appearing in man ...
". In this, Kresse became the forerunner of such artists as the Swiss
Derib Derib (born Claude de Ribaupierre on August 8, 1944, in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland) is a Swiss francophone comics creator. He is most well known for creating the comics Buddy Longway and Yakari. Awards * 1974: ''Best Comic'' at the Prix Saint ...
(''
Buddy Longway Buddy Longway is a Western (genre), western comic book written by the Swiss people, Swiss comic book writer Derib. It is published under the Le Lombard publishing house. The first issue came out in 1972, and 16 issues were published until 1987. Der ...
'', '' Celui-qui-est-né-deux-fois''), the Frenchmen Michel Blanc-Dumont and Laurence Harlé (''Jonathan Cartland'') and the Dutchman Paul Teng (''Delgadito''), who later on explored the social intricacies of the Native-American world in greater detail in their creations. The increasing, more adult
social engagement Social engagement (also social involvement, social participation) refers to one's degree of participation in a community or society. Definitions Prohaska, Anderson and Binstock (2012) noted that the term social engagement is commonly used to r ...
Kresse exhibited in these works, was something new in Dutch youth comic magazines and were precursors to his acclaimed ''Indianen reeks'', one of the first mainstream Dutch comic creations which (together with his last two one-shots, ''Wetamo'' in particular) were later recognized as early Dutch precursors of what was later coined "graphic novels", as in works featuring more mature and adult themes. Kresse remained attached to ''Pep'' and its successors for the remainder of his life, one of his last creations having been a new latter-day speech balloon format addition to his most famous series ''Eric de Noorman'' he had abandoned in 1964, ''De vrouw in het blauw'' (1985), which was followed by ''De geschiedenis van Bor Khan'' (1988–89) – actually a partially redrawn speech balloon adaption of the original version he had already created back in 1952/1953 in the text comic format, and which became the last recreation he completed before his death in 1992. Despite its relatively short lifespan in comparison to its Flemish counterparts, but like its main inspiration ''Pilote'' has had on its, ''Pep'' magazine has left an indelible impression on an entire generation of young Dutch comic readers and future comic artists, but considerably less so on their Flemish contemporaries, they having traditionally been more oriented on their own ''Robbedoes'' and ''Kuifje'' magazines. A possible partial explanation of this is that several Dutch artists either worked in humorous and satirical references to Dutch current affairs in their creations (de Smet), had their creations take place in typical Dutch settings or circumstances (Kuijpers), or both (Lodewijk), which were lost on foreigners not familiar with these, therefore diminishing their appeal initially. Nonetheless, after the European Single Market came into being in 1993, the mobility of its citizens among the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
member states has vastly increased, with the younger generations in particular becoming more intimately acquainted with local cultures, and which has played a part in the delayed introduction ''and '' acceptance of some of the typically Dutch comic creations in other language areas as well. This held especially true for Piet Wijn's ''Douwe Dabbert'' and Henk Kuijper's ''Franka'' – both of them far less beholden to Dutch current affairs than the others – , which have seen translations in more European languages afterwards. Post-''Pep''-era comics artists, very popular in the Netherlands themselves, but who found the appeal of their bodies of work predominantly limited to the native market for the same reasons, included such artists as
Gerrit de Jager Gerrit de Jager (born 1954, Amsterdam) is a Dutch cartoonist, creator of series such as ', ', ' and '. His career started in the early 1980s with Wim Stevenhagen under the pseudonym ''Prutspruts'' ("fiddle-fiddle"), which later changed to ''P ...
('),
Theo van den Boogaard Theo van den Boogaard (born 25 March 1948, Castricum, Netherlands) – also known as Theo Bogart – is a Dutch cartoonist. He first came to attention as an underground cartoonist in the early 1970s for the sexually explicit comics series ''Ans ...
(''
Sjef van Oekel Sjef van Oekel was a TV comedy character created by Dutch artist Wim T. Schippers and played by Dutch comedian, singer and actor Dolf Brouwers (1912–1997). Van Oekel started as a side character in ''De Fred Hachéshow'' in 1972, but became such ...
''), Eric Schreurs ('), and ('), as remains the case with Martin Lodewijk (even though German translations of his ''Agent 327'' have been attempted) and Peter de Smet. Incidentally and concurrently, the same holds conversely true for Dutch-Belgium, whose comic artists, like
Marc Sleen Marcel Honoree Nestor ( ridder) Neels (30 December 1922 – 6 November 2016), known as Marc Sleen, was a Belgian cartoonist. He was mostly known for his comic '' The Adventures of Nero and Co.'', but also created gag comics like '' Piet Fluwijn ...
or
Jef Nys Jozef "Jef" Nys (30 January 1927 – 20 October 2009) was a Belgian comic book creator. He was best known for his comic strip '' Jommeke''. Biography Early years Jozef Nys was born in Berchem, Belgium in 1927.De Weyer, Geert (2005). "Jef Nys ...
for example, find the appeal of their work mostly limited to native Flanders.


The 1970s and 1980s: Heyday

In the field of adult comics magazines ''Tante Leny presenteert!'' (1970-1978), ''Modern Papier'' (1971-1972) and ''De Vrije Balloen'' (1975-1983) were the most notable. From the 1960s on more American comics were imported, with the Dutch edition of the American ''
Mad Magazine Mad, mad, or MAD may refer to: Geography * Mad (village), a village in the Dunajská Streda District of Slovakia * Mád, a village in Hungary * Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport, by IATA airport code * Mad River (disambiguation), several r ...
'' also had a lot of success and ran from 1964 until 1996, with a brief resurrection in 2011–2012. ''Sjors'' and ''Pep'' themselves later merged into '' Eppo'' (1975-1985), subsequently renamed as ''Eppo Wordt Vervolgd'' (1985-1988), ''Sjors en Sjimmie Maandblad'' (1988-1994), ''SjoSjii'' (1994-1998), ''Striparazzi'' (1998-1999) and again as ''Eppo'' in 2009. It's notable that the Netherlands were one of the few European countries to still publish
text comics Text comics or a text comic is a form of comics where the stories are told in Cartoon caption, captions below the images and without the use of speech balloons. It is the oldest form of comics and was especially dominant in European comics from t ...
well into the 1960s, when the attitude towards comics began to change. In 1967 a center for comics fans, ', was founded, with their own specialized subject magazine '. In 1968 the oldest comics store in the world, ''
Lambiek Galerie Lambiek is a Dutch comic book store and art gallery in Amsterdam, founded on November 8, 1968 by Kees Kousemaker (, – Bussum, ), though since 2007, his son Boris Kousemaker is the current owner. From 1968 to 2015, it was located ...
'' was founded, with the country receiving its own comics museum in
Groningen Groningen (; gos, Grunn or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen province in the Netherlands. The ''capital of the north'', Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of the northern part of t ...
, "Het Nederlands Stripmuseum", in 2004.


Formats


Text comics and oblongs

A format not unique to the Netherlands but once so common there that it got the designation "Hollandse school".
Text comics Text comics or a text comic is a form of comics where the stories are told in Cartoon caption, captions below the images and without the use of speech balloons. It is the oldest form of comics and was especially dominant in European comics from t ...
consist of a series of illustrations with a block of text underneath the images telling the story. Famous Dutch series in this format are: ''
Bulletje en Boonestaak {{italic title ''Bulletje en Boonestaak'' (later spelled ''Bulletje en Bonestaak'') was one of the first very successful Dutch newspaper comic strips, the first Dutch comic moralists, and the first Dutch comic translated into other languages. It ...
,
Tom Puss ''Tom Puss'' (''Tom Poes'' in Dutch) is a Dutch comic strip, created by Marten Toonder. Together with Hans G. Kresse's '' Eric de Noorman'' and Pieter Kuhn's ''Kapitein Rob'' it is regarded as the Big Three of Dutch comics. ''Tom Poes'' was a t ...
, Oliver B. Bumble,
Kapitein Rob ''Kapitein Rob'' ("Captain Rob") was a Dutch adventure comic strip, created and drawn by Pieter Kuhn and written by journalist Evert Werkman. The series ran from December 11, 1945 until January 21, 1966. Together with Marten Toonder's '' Tom ...
, Eric de Noorman,
Panda The giant panda (''Ailuropoda melanoleuca''), also known as the panda bear (or simply the panda), is a bear species endemic to China. It is characterised by its bold black-and-white animal coat, coat and rotund body. The name "giant panda" is ...
, De Avonturen van Pa Pinkelman'' and ''
Paulus the woodgnome ''Paulus the woodgnome'' ( nl, Paulus de boskabouter) was a Dutch newspaper comic strip, which ran between 1946 and 1984. Its popularity inspired a series of children's novels, a radio series and a television puppet series. It was created by Jan ...
''. These comics were prepublished in newspapers, after which they were collected and made available in small rectangular booklets, called " oblongs" for their shape, or on occasion referred to as "Italian Format" for its laying or landscape oriented paper format (meaning the booklet is larger in width than it is in height). Oblongs enjoyed their heyday in the Netherlands in the late 1940s-early 1960s, ''Tom Poes'', ''Kapitein Rob'' and ''Erik de Noorman'' in particular. As Dutch newspapers are as of 2017 still publishing comic strips, albeit it currently in the
speech balloon Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a char ...
format only and in a far lower quantity than they used to, the oblong format is still being used as the designated book format (as is the case with the above-mentioned Toonder publications from De Bezige Bij), ''if'' it is decided to publish the comic as such after the fact, which is not always the case, though it has as a comic book format been completely eclipsed by the far more popular album format, mentioned below. As a comic format, text comics rapidly became all but defunct by the mid-1960s, the format lingering on for a little while longer in newspapers (in which the format had blossomed), due to the increasing popularity of speech balloon comics introduced to Dutch readership through post-war Flemish, Franco-Belgian, American and British imports, published in translation in such magazines such as ''Donald Duck'', ''Sjors'', and ''Pep'' in particular. Even Dutch mainstays like Marten Toonder and Hans G. Kresse had by the early 1970s switched over to the speech balloon format themselves for their work, including their respective main creations ''Tom Poes'' and ''Eric de Noorman'' (retitled ''Erwin'', the son of the titular hero, as later series outings increasingly concentrated on him), with which they had achieved fame in the text comic format.


Picture novels ("Beeldromans")

A format born out of paper scarcity in WW II. The booklets are small (about the size of a box of cigarettes) and have usually one picture on every page. The first, most famous, longest running and last series in this format is '' Dick Bos'', which explains that "Dick Bos boekje (=booklet)" became a synonym for the format. Several of these stories were action-packed detective stories, full with people beating villains up. Actually, it was precisely this format Minister Theo Rutten targeted in his letter of 19 October 1948, and which inspired the
media frenzy Media circus is a colloquial metaphor, or idiom, describing a news event for which the level of media coverage—measured by such factors as the number of reporters at the scene and the amount of material broadcast or published—is perceived to ...
after the November 1948 incident in Enkhuizen, with people being outraged over the violent content, searching for, and finding a scapegoat in "violent" Dutch comics, in the process targeting almost the entire comic scene. Though the Dutch comic scene managed to recover from the incident eventually, the "beeldroman" did not survive the pursuant purge, which effectively meant the end of the genre. There was one exception though, as the publisher of the alternative namesake of the genre, ''Dick Bos'' managed to convince authorities to make an exception for Mazure's creation, using the argument that his hero used his martial art skills exclusively in service of the authorities, and was thus a "good guy". Being granted a stay of execution, ''Dick Bos'' managed therefore to hold on to live for quite some time, but did not make it into the 1970s eventually, thereby relegating the genre ''and'' format to history permanently. As a result, from the 1948/49 purge, few copies of series other than ''Dick Bos'' have survived, with copies in pristine condition being exceptionally rare as schoolboys had to continuously hide them from their parents and teachers. The Dutch name of the format has been resurrected in the 1980s as translation for the English-derived "
graphic novel A graphic novel is a long-form, fictional work of sequential art. The term ''graphic novel'' is often applied broadly, including fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work, though this practice is highly contested by comic scholars and industry ...
" expression in the literary world as explained above. Mazure's ''Dick Bos'' has been given a temporary second lease on life, when Panda Uitgeverij form Hans Matla, who considers the series a Dutch comic classic (as did his clientele apparently, as his expensive deluxe edition had rapidly sold out), reissued the entire series in a limited bibliophilic 19-volume edition in the period 2005–2014."Dick Bos - Alle Avonturen"
Uitgeverij-Panda.nl ; official site


Comic Magazines ("Strip bladen")

Dutch comics magazines used to have covers of the same paper as the rest of the magazine, they tended to be rather anthology like, with several short stories and/or episodes from long ones. Many of those stories were collected and reprinted in the below-mentioned album format. It was rather common for the magazines to contain a mix of Dutch material and imported stories, though the few surviving ones, such as ''Tina'', (new) ''Eppo'' and ''StripGlossy'' currently almost exclusively feature native creations. As it has in the rest of comic reading western Europe, the comic magazine format, started to wane in popularity from the second half of the 1970s onward after the heyday of the format in the 1950s-1960s, made visible by steadily decreasing circulation numbers experienced by ''all'' comic magazines. The breakout success of the album format from the early 1970s onward was actually one of the reasons of the decline, as readers increasingly preferred to have their titles presented to them in whole, with fans more and more unwilling to pay for their favorite series twice, as they were by now invariably released as albums after magazine publication, or as editor-in-chief Dirk Snoodijk has worded it in 1999, when his magazine ''Striparazzi'' – the penultimate reincarnation of ''Eppo'' magazine – went defunct, "The youth is more preoccupied than ever. However, the biggest competitor of the comic magazine is the comic album. We have in effect dug our own grave. Over the years, more and more albums were being published; Readers rather want to spend their money on albums than on magazines." Furthermore, the entire comic phenomenon had to increasingly compete with an ever-expanding alternative range of pass-time options, most conspicuously television and home media formats, later augmented with the various products and services of the digital age. A series of economic crises in the last four decades only aggravated the situation for the comic magazine format. Exemplary of the trend was not only the very short lifespan of such magazines as ''Wham'', ''Titanic'', ''MYX'', the various revitalization attempts of the original ''Eppo'' magazine and others conceived in the late 1970s-1990s, but also the demise of one of the longest surviving Dutch-language comic magazines, ''Robbedoes''. When the magazine finally threw in the towel in 2005, circulation had dwindled to a mere 2000-3000 subscription only copies for both Flanders and the Netherlands, with the publisher not even been able to find a distributor for newsstand sales in its final years, having even been removed from their selections by the Dutch "leesmap" companies as explained below. Of the older Dutch-language comic magazines, it has been ''
Donald Duck Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is known fo ...
'' that has best managed to hold its own during the decades of decline, not in the least due to its continued place in the selections of "leesmap" companies, though it too has started to show sharply declining circulation numbers from 2000 onward, which is, aside from the growing availability of digital pass-times for the very young as well, also partly due to the changing demographics of the country (declining birthrate) and partly due to the diminishing popularity of the "leesmap". The other long-time survivor, ''Tina'', was sold by publisher Oberon to Finnish media conglomerate
Sanoma Sanoma Corporation (, formerly SanomaWSOY) is Finland's largest media group. The company has media business in Finland and a learning business in Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Norway and Spain, among others. The company is headquarte ...
who changed the formula of the magazine from a purely comic magazine to a hybrid, featuring articles and editorials of interest to the teen-age girl target group with comics now occupying a subordinated place, and succeeded in making the magazine more relevant for modern girls. However, like ''Donald Duck'', ''Tina'' too is faced with a declining circulation for the same reasons.


The "Leesmap" phenomenon

The early-1960s saw the advent of a typical Dutch dissemination phenomenon called the "" or the "Leesportefeuille", which in English loosely translates as "Reading portfolio". Vaguely reminiscent of the public library system, the phenomenon concerned a lending format, entailing a number of weekly magazines, collected in a folder – hence the "portefeuille" or "map" (both translating into "portfolio") designation – that could be borrowed on subscription basis for a week from a company providing the service, of which there were many in the country. Home delivered and collected by a dedicated "Bladenman" ("Magazineman", effectively a newly invented job), employed by the magazine lending company, the typically one to two dozen magazines included in the portfolio, were composed with the at the time typical composition of the average Dutch household in mind, to wit, father, mother and children. The format turned out to be immensely popular in the Netherlands, becoming a staple in Dutch households and waiting rooms for decades to come, as it meant that households could take out a simultaneous subscription on a substantial number of magazines at a hugely reduced rate when compared to individual magazine subscriptions, and turned out to be a solution for those households not able or willing to take out individual magazine subscriptions. The subscription fees were highest for the most current magazine issues, but diminished as they became older – subscribers being offered the age option – with the oldest ones (typically when they were three months or so in circulation) offered for keepsake at a sharply reduced rate to the last borrowers in line. With the children of a household in mind, there were as standard in all reading portfolios, regardless which company they originated from, four comic magazines included; ''Donald Duck'' for the very (pre-adolescent) young, ''Tina'' for the girls, and either ''Robbedoes'' and ''Kuifje'' (typically for the Catholic south of the country) or ''Pep'' and ''Sjors'' (typically for the Protestant north of the country) for the boys, but ''never'' any other combination of the latter two pairings for copyright reasons. That being said and often overlooked by Dutch comic scholars themselves, the "leesmap" phenomenon, because of its widespread dissemination, ''has'' been of critical importance for the Dutch comic scene as it had introduced entire generations to the world of Franco-Belgian inspired comics, a market penetration it would not have achieved had it had been solely reliant on individual magazine subscriptions and/or newsstand sales only, and in the process negating much of the lingering negative impression of the medium the 1948 incident had left on popular awareness as a happy aside by ''Pep'' in particular, as related above. The phenomenon is still quite popular in the country, though not as much as it had been in the 1960s-1980s, and an important reason why ''Tina'' and ''Donald Duck'' magazines still exist in the Dutch language and the primary reason why ''Kuifje'' and ''Robbedoes'' magazines held out for so long as they did, the general downward trend from the 1980s onward notwithstanding, ''because'' of the assured turnover from the "leesmap" companies. The latter two magazines actually enjoyed an extended lease of life, when ''Sjors'' and ''Pep'' were merged into ''Eppo'' in 1975 because their publishers themselves had merged three years earlier. As most "leesmap" companies were loath to break the mold of having four comic magazines included for the children in the household, they henceforth decided to proceed with ''Robbedoes'' and ''Kuifje'' for the most part, until ''Kuifje'' became defunct itself in 1993, resulting in the removal of ''Robbedoes'' – which managed to linger on until 2005 on its own – from the magazine selections as well. Illustrative of the Dutch magazines losing their place in the "leesmap", were their circulation numbers; ''Sjors'' and ''Pep'' had circulations of 156,172 and 128,824 copies respectively in 1974, ''Eppo'' featured a sharply reduced circulation of 197,069 copies in 1977 one year into its existence. Currently, ''Tina'' and ''Donald Duck'' magazines are the only comics magazines still included in the "leesmaps", which goes a long way explaining their longevity, despite being confronted with a sharply diminishing circulation as well, in effect keeping pace with the gradual diminishing popularity of the "leesmap".


Comic books

"Comic book" translates into Dutch as "stripboek", and has as such been in use in colloquial Dutch in the 1960s through the 1970s for the standard US format derived comic book format. It however has as translation become obsolete for the format thereafter as the Dutch expression is currently exclusively reserved for the hereafter mentioned album format and the aforementioned, albeit less common, oblong format. The directly from the US format derived comic book, came into being in the late 1950s for Dutch comics when the picture novels had disappeared as a result of the craze against them. It lasted for some time, enjoying its heyday as a translated format in the early 1970s – the publications of Classics Lektuur having been ''the'' prime example, with Juniorpress coming in second to a lesser extent – , but has all but disappeared in translation since then, supplanted by the more popular native and Franco-Belgian comic albums. Aside from this, there was actually a second reason for the demise of the translated versions; After the war, English became increasingly the preferred choice as second language in the Netherlands (exemplified by the fact that many primary schools and colleges in the country currently offer their students bi-lingual courses), replacing German and especially French as such, and with the vast majority of the population having nowadays at least a basic understanding of English, readers prefer to read their American (and British) comic books in the original language. Consequently, comic books, the adopted English expression now exclusively in use for the original format, are therefore still being read and sold in the Netherlands, but these are predominantly untranslated US and, to a lesser degree, British imports. Translations on behalf of younger readers are still in vogue for the comic adaptations of popular movie franchises, the ''
Marvel Comics Marvel Comics is an American comic book publishing, publisher and the flagship property of Marvel Entertainment, a divsion of The Walt Disney Company since September 1, 2009. Evolving from Timely Comics in 1939, ''Magazine Management/Atlas Co ...
'' and ''
Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera multimedia franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop-culture Cultural impact of S ...
'' franchises in particular, as currently released by publishers
Standaard Uitgeverij Standaard Uitgeverij is a Belgian publisher, and the leading publisher in the Dutch language market of Flanders. History In 1919, the Standaard group was created, mainly consisting of a chain of bookshops (Standaard Boekhandel), a newspaper (''De ...
and relative newcomer Dark Dragon Books (Dutch despite English name) respectively. But, while the dimensions of their releases approximate those of the classic US comic book the page count invariably far exceeds the traditional 32 page format, aside from lacking any and all forms of advertising, and should therefore be considered as translations of what is currently understood the US graphic novel format.


Comic pocket books ("Strip pockets") and pulp comics

A format that was particularly popular in the Netherlands in the 1970s were the so-called "strip pockets", introduced in the late 1960s and originally conceived in Great Britain and Italy. As the name already implies it was a
mass market paperback A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, lea ...
softcover format with its dimensions located between the picture novel and comic book. Typically, these pockets were printed in black and white on low-grade paper, reflected as such in their relatively low retail prices, with the
panel Panel may refer to: Arts and media Visual arts * Panel (comics), a single image in a comic book, comic strip or cartoon; also, a comic strip containing one such image *Panel painting, in art, either one element of a multi-element piece of art ...
count limited to 1-4 per page and predominantly sold as newsstand sales with series volumes released on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. One of the most popular mainstream series in the format became the monthly Italian ''
Tex Willer Tex Willer is the main fictional character of the Italian comics series ''Tex'', created by writer Gian Luigi Bonelli and illustrator Aurelio Galleppini, and first published in Italy on 30 September 1948. It is among the most popular characters ...
'' Western series, published by Classics Lectuur, which ran for 128 volumes from 1971 until 1980. However, it was as equally a popular format for the publication of pulp comics ("pulp strips") as released by not only Classics Lectuur, but also by such publishers as De Schorpioen, De Vrijbuiter and Baldakijn Boeken, particularly in the Crime, War, Western, and, for the girls and to a lesser extent, Romantic genres, which were predominantly created by anonymous Italian, Spanish or British studio artists. Pursuant the cultural changes of the 1960s and in an ironic turn of events, violent, often sadistic comics laced with gratuitous sex like ''Bloederige verhalen'', ''Hessa'' or '' Wallestein het monster'' of mostly Italian origin (such as those as released by publisher
Edifumetto Edifumetto was an Italian publishing house of comics, founded by Renzo Barbieri. It was started in 1972 and folded in 1993. The majority of their publications were digest- or pocket-sized adult comics known in Italy as '' fumetti''. Popularity peak ...
whose releases featured cover art by such artists as
Fernando Carcupino Fernando Carcupino (23 July 1922 – 22 March 2003) was an Italian painter, illustrator and comics artist. He was most widely known for his female nudes, but he also painted landscapes, still lifes, historical subjects, and portraits of mothers ...
or
Alessandro Biffignandi Alessandro Biffignandi (8 October 1935 – 22 January 2017) was an Italian illustrator, mostly known for his covers for digest-sized, adult comics whose themes were sex, violence, and horror. Biography Alessandro Biffignandi was born in 1935 ...
) and published by the same publishers alongside their more mainstream releases – sharing the same measure of popularity – , also made a comeback with a vengeance in the format, being far more graphic and explicit than the picture novels had ever been, and which had the country in such an uproar back in 1948. The pulp mainstream comics went out of vogue in the early 1980s, followed a few years later by the more gratuitous ones after their novelty factor had worn off upon the arrival of the VHS video tape on which similar, more "lively" fare was offered, and the format as such has all but vanished from the Dutch comic scene, along with their publishers. ''Tex Willer'', whose original release run was executed in a slightly larger dimension with slightly sturdier softcovers for the express purpose to differentiate them from the pulp comics, has made a recent come back nonetheless, but now in the bonafide album format. As a book format though, the comic pocket book has, and is, also been occasionally used by all major comic publishers for some of their publications, invariably in a higher quality and in color, though they remain rarities in comparison to the album format, excepting such releases by the Dutch Disney Studios. No native artists are known by name to have specifically created original comics for this particular format, again excepting those (anonymous) artists working for the Dutch Disney Studios.


Comic albums ("Stripboeken" or "Stripalbums")

The " stripalbum" was conceived as a roughly
A4 paper ISO 216 is an international standard for paper sizes, used around the world except in North America and parts of Latin America. The standard defines the "A", "B" and "C" series of paper sizes, including A4, the most commonly available paper size ...
-sized format – with a traditional page-count of either 48 pages or, less commonly, 64 pages – in the world of
Belgian comics Belgian comics are a distinct subgroup in the comics history, and played a major role in the development of European comics, alongside France with whom they share a long common history. While the comics in the two major language groups and regio ...
in the early 1930s with the first '' Les Aventures de Tintin'' (''Kuifje'') albums from publisher Casterman, and introduced in the Netherlands shortly after the war, initially as Flemish imports, particularly those from Casterman and Dupuis. Dutch publishers Spaarnestad and De Geïllustreerde Pers (under its Amsterdam Boek imprint for the translated import comics) started to chime in from the mid-1960s onward with comic album publications of their own, both translated imports as well as native productions as published in their respective magazines ''Sjors'' and ''Pep''. Album production gathered steam when Le Lombard entered the fray around 1969–1970 with their Dutch-language album releases, for over a decade licensed to Dutch printer/publisher for the Netherlands (in-between for a very short 1973-1975 period of time to the unsuccessful Dutch branch of Swedish
Semic Press Semic Press is a Swedish comic book publishing company that operated from 1963 to 1997. Known for original comics as well as translated American and European titles, Semic was for a long time the country's largest comic book publisher. For many y ...
), and really took off when the comics divisions of the two Dutch publishers upon their merger in 1972 were concentrated into the newly established specialized comics publishing house Uitgeverij Oberon BV, the first of its kind for mainstream European comics in the Netherlands, akin to their Franco-Belgian counterparts, and the country's second specialized comic publisher after Classics Lectuur. In the process Oberon also became the Dutch licensed publisher for the French Dargaud albums (Le Lombard for Flanders), after their own short-lived 1973-1975 dalliance with Semic Press, due to the fact that their ''Pilote'' comics were already being published in ''Pep'' magazine – actually retracing their steps as they had already licensed album publication to Amsterdam Boek previously. That Lombard and Dargaud had to align themselves with Dutch, or Dutch-based publishers for their album releases, instead of releasing them directly themselves, had partly to do with the then applicable copyrights laws as the European Single Market was not yet in place at the time, and partly to do with the fact that neither as relative newcomers had yet their own international distribution networks in place, explaining their close cooperation in the era on the Francophone market as well. The far older and more established publishers Dupuis and Casterman (both originally book publishers) on the other hand, had already circumvented legalities by establishing local subsidiaries in the Dutch towns of
Sittard Sittard (; ) is a city in the Netherlands, situated in the southernmost province of Limburg. The town is part of the municipality of Sittard-Geleen and has almost 37.500 inhabitants in 2016. In its east, Sittard borders the German municipali ...
(Uitgeverij Dupuis NV) and
Dronten Dronten () is a municipality and a town in the central Netherlands, in the province of Flevoland. It had a population of in . History Plans for the municipality of Dronten were made in the early half of the 1950s; real plans for the town of Dr ...
(Casterman Nederland BV) respectively, which were made defunct as soon as the single market came into being at the start of 1993. Previously, Lombard and Dargaud had already severed the ties with their respective Dutch partners a decade earlier, by making use of the provisions embedded in the
Benelux The Benelux Union ( nl, Benelux Unie; french: Union Benelux; lb, Benelux-Unioun), also known as simply Benelux, is a politico-economic union and formal international intergovernmental cooperation of three neighboring states in western Europe: B ...
treaty, a localized preamble of the single market, comprising Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (hence the Benelux acronym), with Dargaud establishing a subsidiary in the Belgian capital Brussels as Dargaud Benelux NV (Dutch)/SA (French, and thus circumventing the fact that Dargaud was a French publisher), already the seat of Lombard, currently known as Dargaud-Lombard NV/SA after both companies were acquired and subsequently merged by French holding company
Média-Participations Média-Participations is a French media concern, controlled by a Belgian holding concern, specialized in Franco-Belgian comics. It has some forty publishers in its portfolio, including Dupuis, Dargaud, Le Lombard, Fleurus (publisher), Fleurus, La ...
. Nonetheless, the four Franco-Belgian publishers were alongside Oberon, the predominant album publishers in the country in the 1970s-1980s era, at the time occasionally referred to as "The Big Five" by the reporters of comic journal ''Stripschrift''. Yet, the earliest known releases recognizable as modern comic albums, as in modeled after the early ''Tintin'' albums, were neither imports from Casterman nor those from Dupuis, but rather those of Spaarnestad who already started to release native ''Sjors & Sjimmie'' comic albums from the mid-1930s onward. Spaarnestad incidentally, released its albums predominantly as hardcovers before becoming Oberon, unlike De Geïllustreerde Pers, after which the softcover format became the Dutch album norm for decades to come. Most published comics are nowadays published in the album format, like their Franco-Belgian counterparts, the majority of album titles currently released in the Netherlands actually still being translations of the latter. And while the 48 page-count is still the norm, aberrant page-count publications, especially for the European-style graphic novels, have become more commonplace as well, again like their Franco-Belgian counterparts. Having become the dominant publication format for comics, albums came to be considered the equivalents of books from the late 1970s onward when comic albums too started to receive
ISBN The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency. An ISBN is assigned to each separate edition and ...
numbers, their status a decade later reinforced with the slowly increasing acceptance of the hardcover comic album format, the Franco-Belgian album standard, alongside the hitherto Dutch album norm, the softcover format, as customer option. Unlike magazines, they have no cover date and are often reprinted. They, when part of a series, also follow a specific chronological order and are thus collectable. Like it has in the originating world of Franco-Belgian comics, the vast majority of new titles are currently released directly in album format without prior magazine publication, as the serialized magazine publication format has sharply waned in popularity due to changing tastes and preferences of readership, as well as for other socio-economic reasons. It has been observed by European
comics studies Comics studies (also comic art studies, sequential art studies or graphic narrative studies) is an academic field that focuses on comics and sequential art. Although comics and graphic novels have been generally dismissed as less relevant pop c ...
scholars that Americans originally used the expression "graphic novel" to describe everything that deviated from their standard, 32-page comic book format, meaning that as a format, all European larger-sized, longer comic albums, regardless of their contents, fell under the heading as far as Americans were concerned.


Current status

Nowadays the Dutch market is fragmented: there are always the imports, the small press circuit, the reprints, the online comics and
Donald Duck Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is known fo ...
and whatever is the latest rage for kids. With the several of the 1960s-1980s great names still active, the art form remains alive and kicking, with kicking merely to be understood as being engaged in politics and society in a rather outspoken way, though comics of this kind are currently predominantly reliant on the small press circuit for their publication.Ron Rijghard: "Nederlandse strip beleeft schrale jaren"
''NRC'', June 2, 2016
As an art form, the comic phenomenon in the Netherlands was never able to fully escape from under the long shadow the 1948 incident had cast (''see
Hanco Kolk Hanco Kolk (born 11 March 1957, Den Helder) is a Dutch cartoonist and comics artist. He is best known for his collaborations with Peter de Wit, with who he made ''Gilles de Geus'' and '' S1NGLE' Kolk married author Isabelle Rosselin in 2016. Bi ...
's below quoted 2016 remark'') – even though the specifics of said incident, both cause and fall-out, are nowadays all but forgotten by contemporaries. It therefore has neither achieved the revered status of "'' Le Neuvième Art''", the medium has in its southern neighbors Belgium and France, nor has it been accorded the formal recognition as such by cultural authorities – the creations of Marten Toonder and
Joost Swarte Joost Swarte (born 24 December 1947 in Heemstede) is a Dutch cartoonist and graphic designer. He is best known for his ligne claire or ''clear line'' style of drawing, a term he coined. Comic series and characters by Swarte include ''Katoen en ...
excepted to some extent, as both men have received royal knighthoods, albeit only for (illustrated) literature and visual arts (its ''strips'' origins notwithstanding) manifestation respectively, instead as being awarded for comics – , or seen as such by Dutch society at large. Exemplary of the latter, was the television series ' (not affiliated in any way with the 1980s-1990s graphic novel magazine of the same title), which ran from 1983 through 1993 on Dutch television. Intended by its conceivers (which included Dutch comic scholar Kees de Bree) to become a serious, mature program on comics, it was quickly whittled down by broadcaster
AVRO AVRO, short for Algemene Vereniging Radio Omroep ("General Association of Radio Broadcasting"), was a Dutch public broadcasting association operating within the framework of the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep system. It was the first public broad ...
, that aired it, into a children's program, changing the focus from comics to cartoons. Also, the Stripmuseum – conceived as Holland's answer to Brussels' prestigious Belgisch Centrum voor het Beeldverhaal – already ran into trouble in 2014, threatened with bankruptcy and closure, date of closure already fixed on May 1, 2014. The Stripmuseum has never come close to the visitor numbers its Belgian counterpart achieved (less than 50,000 and dwindling ''v.s.'' a steady 200,000 annually ). The museum's demise was temporarily averted for three years with eleventh-hour emergency funding from local authorities, though the museum has been notified to move in 2017 to smaller premises, having to share it with other institutions. Additionally, after the 1970s-1980s boom years, the number of both comic magazines as well as comic book outlets started to dwindle noticeably from 2000 onward – seriously curtailing the development of, and publication opportunities for, Dutch comic talent as comic creators Hanco Kolk and
Jean-Marc van Tol Jean-Marc van Tol (born 6 July 1967, Rotterdam) is a cartoonist. He is the winner of the 2004 Stripschapprijs for '' Fokke & Sukke'', with John Reid and Bastiaan Geleijnse Bastiaan Geleijnse (born 8 March 1967, Utrecht) is a Dutch cartoonist a ...
warned for in an urgent open letter, published in the newspaper ''
NRC Handelsblad ''NRC'', previously called ''NRC Handelsblad'' (), is a daily morning newspaper published in the Netherlands by NRC Media. It is generally accepted as a newspaper of record in the Netherlands. History ''NRC Handelsblad'' was first published on 1 ...
'' of September 27, 2008 – , though socio-economic factors were mostly in play for that trend, the 2007-2011 Great Recession becoming the most obvious one. Despite the reluctance of cultural authorities to become engaged with comics – who in effect have never formally rescinded Rutten's 1948 missive, meaning that it is, legally at least, still in force as an official ministry directive and actually still adhered to by some communities located in Holland's small but discernible
Bible Belt The Bible Belt is a region of the Southern United States in which socially conservative Protestant Christianity plays a strong role in society and politics, and church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's aver ...
– , the letter from Kolk and van Tol ''did'' initiate some action from a latter-day successor of Theo Rutten, Minister of Education and Culture
Ronald Plasterk Ronald Hans Anton Plasterk (; born 12 April 1957) is a Dutch scientist, entrepreneur and retired politician of the Labour Party (PvdA). He has earned a PhD degree in biology, specialised in molecular genetics. Being a former Minister of the Du ...
. Plasterk appointed comic scholar and journalist Gert Jan Pos as the "stripintendant" (=comics intermediary) for his ministry in 2009, with a relatively modest annual budget of €250,000 to advance the medium as a cultural phenomenon. A somewhat half-hearted attempt and with the country in the throes of a severe economic recession, it was from the start intended as a two-year temporary measure only, though Pos (in conjuncture with Kolk) did manage in the window of time allotted to him to get the Netherlands its first and only "Comic Design" learning course at the "" art academy in the city of
Zwolle Zwolle () is a city and municipality in the Northeastern Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of Overijssel and the province's second-largest municipality after Enschede with a population of 130,592 as of 1 December 2021. Zwolle is o ...
(though it has remained a modest affair compared to the prestigious "Beeldverhaal" course of the Belgian "
Hogeschool Sint-Lukas Brussel Hogeschool Sint-Lukas Brussel, based in the Schaerbeek municipality of Brussels, Belgium, is an independent flemish art school. It is a predominantly Dutch-speaking institution located on the Paleizenstraat/Rue de Palais, and at another site, withi ...
"), but failing at the same time to change the attitudes of other agencies and institutions that concerned themselves with the advancement of printed media, unable to get "''strips''" on their agendas, most notably that of Holland's most important book organization "
Collectieve Propaganda van het Nederlandse Boek The Collectieve Propaganda van het Nederlandse Boek (CPNB, "Collective Promotion for the Dutch Book") is a Dutch organization that includes representatives of bookstores and publishers, whose goal is to promote Dutch literature. History and activi ...
". By 2012 all state support had ceased; "The government is a fickle partner," Pos sighed after he was let go from the ministry, with Kolk, indirectly referring to the 1948 incident, adding, "The comic had already in the 1950s been the ugly duckling n the cultural landscape It has always remained so," contrasting it to the radically different situation in France and Belgium where the medium receives ample ''and'' continuous support from their respective cultural authorities. In 2016, ''NRC'', the same newspaper that had published Kolk's and van Tol's letter eight years earlier, took stock of the situation in the Dutch comic world and found the authors' then assessment validated by concluding, especially in comparison with the comic scene in southern neighbor Belgium, that the Dutch comic world had indeed become barren, to an extent only kept afloat by veteran mainstays such as
Peter Pontiac Peter Pontiac (born ''Peter J.G. Pollmann''; 28 April 1951 – 20 January 2015) was a Dutch cartoonist, comics artist and illustrator. He was the winner of the 1997 Stripschapprijs. Pontiac died on 20 January 2015, after a lengthy battle with seve ...
and
Dick Matena Dick Matena (born 24 April 1943) is a Dutch comics writer and cartoonist. He has also published under the pseudonyms A. den Dooier, John Kelly and Dick Richards. He has made several kinds of comics, from humor comics to erotic comics, but is bes ...
. The career of Matena in this respect was illustrative for the downturn the Dutch comic world had experienced after the 1990s; had he been an influential and innovative creator in the field of Dutch graphic novels in the 1980s-1990s, by 2000 he had all but abandoned his own creations, instead, and despite receiving acclaim for them, concentrating on pouring the biographies of historical figures from the worlds of art and literature, as well as works of Dutch literature into the comic format. Matena has voiced his frustration over this in the hereafter mentioned 2014 television documentary, aptly titled "Dick is boos" ("Dick is angry").


Recent developments

In this light, Dutch television has made amends for ''Wordt Vervolgd'' by on occasion broadcasting mature documentaries on Dutch comic creators such as Peter Pontiac (VPRO, January 8, 2003 and Avrotros, June 1, 2014), Dick Matena (NPO, November 13, 2014) and Martin Lodewijk (NTR, April 23, 2015). Yet, it was Jean-Marc van Tol himself who to a large extent fulfilled the vision the conceivers of ''Wordt Vervolgd'' originally had for their television production with his own 2011 ''Beeldverhaal'' series, he produced and presented for public broadcaster
VPRO The VPRO (stylized vpro; originally an acronym for , ) is a Dutch public broadcaster, which forms a part of the Dutch public broadcasting system. Founded in 1926 as a liberal Protestant broadcasting organization, it gradually became more soc ...
as a spin-off of their own literary ''VPRO Boeken'' series. The series, which aired from 17 October to 17 December 2011, consisted of fifteen 35-minute weekly episodes, exploring the comic phenomenon in the Netherlands, including the outside influences it had undergone, in particular from US, and Franco-Belgian comics in two separate episodes. Still, the number of these comic related documentaries are still in no comparison with the numbers as aired in France and Belgium. There was even a second Dutch comic museum in the making, which opened its doors on September 3, 2016 as "" in the city of
Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte'') is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the province of South Holland, part of the North Sea mouth of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, via the ''"N ...
with Rotterdam native Martin Lodewijk presiding the opening ceremony. February 2016 saw the launch of the quarterly magazine ''StripGlossy'' from publisher Uitgeverij Personalia. As the name already suggests, the magazine is executed as a glossy lifestyle-like publication with space exclusively reserved for Dutch comic talents, both old and new, and the first of its kind in decades, somewhat alleviating the concerns Kolk and van Tol had expressed back in 2008. While these developments are in themselves hopeful, it is as of 2017 still too soon to speak of a resurgence in the Dutch comic world, only exemplified by the Rotterdam comic museum already having to file for bankruptcy on July 25, 2017, less than a year after its opening."Wegens faillissement van ''Stichting Strips'' is het museum tot nader bericht gesloten."
official museum site
"Stripmuseum Rotterdam failliet"
Rijnmond.nl


Famous series and artists

* ''
Agent 327 ''Agent 327'' is a Dutch action/comedy comic series by cartoonist Martin Lodewijk. It was a regular feature from 1966 until 1983, and again from 2000 to the present. The eponymous Agent 327 is a James Bond/Maxwell Smart-like Dutch secret agent who ...
'' (
Martin Lodewijk Martinus Spyridon Johannes Lodewijk (born 30 April 1939) is a Dutch comics writer and cartoonist, and advertising adviser. Martin Lodewijk was born in Rotterdam. He dropped out of high school in 1957, and started drawing cartoons, notably of spac ...
) * ''De Argonautjes'' (
Dick Matena Dick Matena (born 24 April 1943) is a Dutch comics writer and cartoonist. He has also published under the pseudonyms A. den Dooier, John Kelly and Dick Richards. He has made several kinds of comics, from humor comics to erotic comics, but is bes ...
) * ''Barbaraal'' ( Barbara Stok) * ''Baron van Tast'' ( Jan van Haasteren) * ''Bernard Voorzichtig'' (
Daan Jippes Daniel Jan "Daan" Jippes (born 14 October 1945) is a Dutch cartoonist who's known for his work on Disney comics. In the 1980s and 1990s he drew many covers for Gladstone Publishing's Disney magazines. In the 1990s he redrew for Egmont (media grou ...
) * ''Birre Beer'' (
Phiny Dick Afine Kornélie Dik, better known as Phiny Dick (14 September 1912 - 7 August 1990) was a Dutch illustrator and writer of children's books and comics. She was the wife of Marten Toonder from 1935 until her death. Biography Afine Dik was born in ...
, Ton Beek, Andries Brandt, Eiso Toonder) * ''
Boes Boes ("Ox Tales") is a Dutch newspaper gag-a-day comic strip created by Wil Raymakers and Thijs Wilms. It was created in 1980 and spawned a popular anime television series between 1988 and 1991 called ''Ox Tales'' in the English-speaking world. ...
'' ( Wil Raymakers, Thijs Wilms) * ''Burkababes'' (
Peter de Wit Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...
) * ''Claire'' ( Wilbert Plijnaar, Jan van Die, Robert van der Kroft) * '' Dick Bos'' (
Alfred Mazure Alfred Leonardus Mazure (8 September 1914 – 16 February 1974) was a Dutch comics artist, novelist and film director, best known for his detective comic '' Dick Bos'', which was one of the most popular comics series in the Netherlands during the 1 ...
) * ''
DirkJan DirkJan is a Dutch comic strip series, created in 1989 by Dutch author and artist Mark Retera. It is also the name of its main character. The series is a gag-a-day comic. Description DirkJan is an underachiever who stumbles through life in mostly ...
'' (
Mark Retera Mark Retera (born 16 May 1964, Eindhoven) is a Dutch cartoonist, best known for his absurd gag comic '' DirkJan''. He is the winner of the 2004 Stripschapprijs. He also draws caricatures for the Dutch weekly ''Panorama''. Retera studied cognitiv ...
) * '' Douwe Dabbert'' (
Piet Wijn Pieter Cornelis Wijn (17 May 1929 – 6 October 2010) was a prolific Dutch comics creator. Wijn was born in Hilversum. His creations include the cartoon versions of Marten Toonder's Tom Puss and Kappie, Gloria van Goes, Douwe Dabbert, and ...
, Thom Roep) * '' Eric de Noorman'' (
Hans G. Kresse Hans G. Kresse (Amsterdam, 3 December 1921–Doorwerth, 12 March 1992) was a Dutch cartoonist. He was the winner of the 1976 Stripschapprijs. Biography Hans G. Kresse, born in the Netherlands in 1921, started his career as a comics artist in 1938 ...
) * ''F.C. Knudde'' ( Toon van Driel) * '' De Familie Doorzon'' (
Gerrit de Jager Gerrit de Jager (born 1954, Amsterdam) is a Dutch cartoonist, creator of series such as ', ', ' and '. His career started in the early 1980s with Wim Stevenhagen under the pseudonym ''Prutspruts'' ("fiddle-fiddle"), which later changed to ''P ...
) * '' De Familie Fortuin'' (
Peter de Wit Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...
) * ''Flipje'' (
Harmsen van der Beek Eelco Martinus ten Harmsen van der Beek (more commonly Harmsen van der Beek or just Beek; October 8, 1897 – July 24, 1953) was a Dutch illustrator and commercial artist. Abroad, he is best remembered for his illustration of Enid Blyton's No ...
) * '' Flippie Flink'' (
Clinge Doorenbos Clinge is a village in the Dutch province of Zeeland. It is a part of the municipality of Hulst, and lies about 28 km southwest of Bergen op Zoom. Clinge is located on the Dutch-Belgian border and joins with the Belgian town of De Klinge, in ...
, Robert Raemaekers) * '' Fokke & Sukke'' (
Bastiaan Geleijnse Bastiaan Geleijnse (born 8 March 1967, Utrecht) is a Dutch cartoonist and comics artist. He is the winner of the 2004 Stripschapprijs The Stripschapprijs is a Dutch prize awarded to comic creators for their entire body of work. It is awarded ann ...
, John Reid, Jean-Marc Tol) * ''
Franka ''Franka'' is a popular Dutch comic book series drawn and written since the mid-1970s by the graphic artist Henk Kuijpers. The principal character is a strong female Dutch sleuth who solves mysteries in exotic locales. ''Franka'' has been transl ...
'' (
Henk Kuijpers Henk Kuijpers (born 10 December 1946 in Haarlem, Netherlands) is a comics artist most famous for his ''Franka'' series. Comics *Franka, 23 comic albums *Bars, 2 albums Kuijpers' ''Franka'' comics work features a strong model-like female sleut ...
) * ''De Generaal'' ( Peter de Smet) * '' Gilles de Geus'' (
Hanco Kolk Hanco Kolk (born 11 March 1957, Den Helder) is a Dutch cartoonist and comics artist. He is best known for his collaborations with Peter de Wit, with who he made ''Gilles de Geus'' and '' S1NGLE' Kolk married author Isabelle Rosselin in 2016. Bi ...
,
Peter de Wit Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...
) * ''Gutsman'' (
Erik Kriek Erik Kriek (born 18 November 1966, Amsterdam) is a Dutch artist and the winner of the 2008 Stripschapprijs. He writes and draws the comic book, ''Gutsman''. In addition to his work he collects banjos and plays in a bluegrass band. Some of the most ...
) * '' Haagse Harry'' ( Marnix Rueb) * ''Heinz'' (
René Windig René Windig (born 1951 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch cartoonist, best known as a frequent collaborator with Eddie de Jong. Together they created the comic strip ''Heinz'', about a grumpy sarcastic cat. They won the 1991 Stripschapprijs The Stripsch ...
,
Eddie de Jong Eddie de Jong (born 1950, Amsterdam) is a Dutch cartoonist, best known as a frequent collaborator with René Windig. Together they created the comic strip ''Heinz'', about a grumpy sarcastic cat. They won the 1991 Stripschapprijs The Stripschappr ...
) * '' Holle Pinkel'' ( Andries Brandt,
Piet Wijn Pieter Cornelis Wijn (17 May 1929 – 6 October 2010) was a prolific Dutch comics creator. Wijn was born in Hilversum. His creations include the cartoon versions of Marten Toonder's Tom Puss and Kappie, Gloria van Goes, Douwe Dabbert, and ...
) * ''Jan, Jans en de kinderen'' (English: '' Jack, Jacky and the Juniors'') (Jan Kruis) * ''Johnny Goodbye'' (
Martin Lodewijk Martinus Spyridon Johannes Lodewijk (born 30 April 1939) is a Dutch comics writer and cartoonist, and advertising adviser. Martin Lodewijk was born in Rotterdam. He dropped out of high school in 1957, and started drawing cartoons, notably of spac ...
, Patty Klein (art by Italian-Belgian artist
Dino Attanasio Dino Attanasio (real name Edoardo Attanasio, born 8 May 1925) is a Belgian author of comics. Biography Attanasio was born in Milan. After studies at the Academy of Arts of Milan, Dino Attanasio started to work in illustration and animation in ...
) * ''Joop Klepzeiker'' (Eric Schreurs) * ''
Kapitein Rob ''Kapitein Rob'' ("Captain Rob") was a Dutch adventure comic strip, created and drawn by Pieter Kuhn and written by journalist Evert Werkman. The series ran from December 11, 1945 until January 21, 1966. Together with Marten Toonder's '' Tom ...
'' ( Pieter Kuhn) * '' Kappie'' (
Marten Toonder Marten Toonder (2 May 1912 – 27 July 2005) was a Dutch comic strip creator, born in Rotterdam. He was probably the most successful comic artist in the Netherlands and had a great influence on the Dutch language by introducing new words and expr ...
,
Phiny Dick Afine Kornélie Dik, better known as Phiny Dick (14 September 1912 - 7 August 1990) was a Dutch illustrator and writer of children's books and comics. She was the wife of Marten Toonder from 1935 until her death. Biography Afine Dik was born in ...
, Harry van den Eerenbeemt,
Paul Biegel Paulus Johannes "Paul" Biegel (; 25 March 1925 – 21 October 2006) was a successful and prolific Dutch writer of children's literature. Biography Paul Biegel was born in Bussum in 1925. His father, Hermann Biegel, was of German descent, and ow ...
, Andries Brandt,
Lo Hartog van Banda Lodewijk Hartog van Banda (4 November 1916, in The Hague – 2 February 2006, in The Hague) was a Dutch comics writer.Joop Hillenius, Dick Vlottes, Ton Beek, Fred Julsing, Jan van Haasteren,
Piet Wijn Pieter Cornelis Wijn (17 May 1929 – 6 October 2010) was a prolific Dutch comics creator. Wijn was born in Hilversum. His creations include the cartoon versions of Marten Toonder's Tom Puss and Kappie, Gloria van Goes, Douwe Dabbert, and ...
, Terrt Willers, Richard Klokker) * ''Ketelbinkie'' (
Wim Meuldijk Wim Meuldijk (8 June 1922 – 27 December 2007) was a Dutch writer, illustrator, and screenwriter. He is the creator of ''Ketelbinkie'', one of the most popular Dutch comics after World War II, and of Pipo de Clown, the star of a television show t ...
) * '' Kick Wilstra'' ( Henk Sprenger) * '' Koning Hollewijn'' (
Marten Toonder Marten Toonder (2 May 1912 – 27 July 2005) was a Dutch comic strip creator, born in Rotterdam. He was probably the most successful comic artist in the Netherlands and had a great influence on the Dutch language by introducing new words and expr ...
, Eiso Toonder, Andries Brandt, Ben van Voorn, Ton Beek, Ben van 't Klooster,
Jan Wesseling Jan, JaN or JAN may refer to: Acronyms * Jackson, Mississippi (Amtrak station), US, Amtrak station code JAN * Jackson-Evers International Airport, Mississippi, US, IATA code * Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN), a Syrian militant group * Japanese Article Numb ...
, Harry van de Eerenbeemt, Fred Julsing,
Thé Tjong-Khing Thé Tjong-Khing (; born August 4, 1933) is a children's book illustrator based in the Netherlands. He was born in Purworedjo, Java to a large Chinese Indonesian family. As a child he was interested in the Tarzan comic strips of Edgar Rice Bur ...
, Frits Godhelp, Richard Klokkers,
Lo Hartog van Banda Lodewijk Hartog van Banda (4 November 1916, in The Hague – 2 February 2006, in The Hague) was a Dutch comics writer.Piet Wijn Pieter Cornelis Wijn (17 May 1929 – 6 October 2010) was a prolific Dutch comics creator. Wijn was born in Hilversum. His creations include the cartoon versions of Marten Toonder's Tom Puss and Kappie, Gloria van Goes, Douwe Dabbert, and ...
) * ''Kraaienhove'' ( Willy Lohmann) * ''Oktoknopie'' ( Gerard Leever) * '' Olle Kapoen'' (
Phiny Dick Afine Kornélie Dik, better known as Phiny Dick (14 September 1912 - 7 August 1990) was a Dutch illustrator and writer of children's books and comics. She was the wife of Marten Toonder from 1935 until her death. Biography Afine Dik was born in ...
) * ''Meccano'' (
Hanco Kolk Hanco Kolk (born 11 March 1957, Den Helder) is a Dutch cartoonist and comics artist. He is best known for his collaborations with Peter de Wit, with who he made ''Gilles de Geus'' and '' S1NGLE' Kolk married author Isabelle Rosselin in 2016. Bi ...
) * ''Minter en Hinter'' (
Paul Biegel Paulus Johannes "Paul" Biegel (; 25 March 1925 – 21 October 2006) was a successful and prolific Dutch writer of children's literature. Biography Paul Biegel was born in Bussum in 1925. His father, Hermann Biegel, was of German descent, and ow ...
, Dick Vlottes) * '' De Avonturen van Pa Pinkelman'' ( Carol Voges,
Godfried Bomans Godfried Jan Arnold Bomans (2 March 1913 – 22 December 1971) was a Dutch author and television personality. Much of his work remains untranslated into English. Life and career Godfried Bomans was born in The Hague and grew up in and aroun ...
) * ''
Panda The giant panda (''Ailuropoda melanoleuca''), also known as the panda bear (or simply the panda), is a bear species endemic to China. It is characterised by its bold black-and-white animal coat, coat and rotund body. The name "giant panda" is ...
'' (
Marten Toonder Marten Toonder (2 May 1912 – 27 July 2005) was a Dutch comic strip creator, born in Rotterdam. He was probably the most successful comic artist in the Netherlands and had a great influence on the Dutch language by introducing new words and expr ...
) * ''
Paulus the woodgnome ''Paulus the woodgnome'' ( nl, Paulus de boskabouter) was a Dutch newspaper comic strip, which ran between 1946 and 1984. Its popularity inspired a series of children's novels, a radio series and a television puppet series. It was created by Jan ...
'' (
Jan van Oort Jan van Oort (13 April 1921 – 29 November 2006) was a Dutch children's book writer and comic strip cartoonist, working under the pseudonym of Jean Dulieu. He is known for his creation of ''Paulus the woodgnome''. Personal biography Jan va ...
) * ''Pinkie Pienter'' (J.H. Koeleman) * ''Piloot Storm'' ( Henk Sprenger) * ''Professor Pi'' (Bob van den Born) * ''
Roel Dijkstra ''Roel Dijkstra'' is a Dutch comic book series about a fictional football player. The series was created in 1975 by Jan Steeman (1933-2018; winner of the 2005 Dutch Stripschapprijs) and Andrew Brandt. The first 21 volumes, drawn by Steeman and hi ...
'' - (
Jan Steeman Jan Steeman (23 May 1933 – 24 January 2018) was a Dutch comics artist, best known for his association football comic ''Roel Dijkstra'' and ''Noortje'', a comic strip about a bumbling teenage girl published in ''Tina''. The latter runs for more t ...
, Andries Brandt) * ''Roel en zijn beestenboel'' - (
Gerrit de Jager Gerrit de Jager (born 1954, Amsterdam) is a Dutch cartoonist, creator of series such as ', ', ' and '. His career started in the early 1980s with Wim Stevenhagen under the pseudonym ''Prutspruts'' ("fiddle-fiddle"), which later changed to ''P ...
,
Wim Stevenhagen Wim is a masculine given name or a shortened form of Willem and other names and may refer to: * Wim Anderiesen (1903–1944), Dutch footballer * Wim Aantjes (1923–2015), Dutch politician * Wim Arras (born 1964), Belgian cyclist * Wim Blockmans ...
, Wim Schaasberg) * ''
Scribbly ''Scribbly'' was a Dutch comic strip, created by Jan-Paul Arends. It ran daily in the Dutch edition of the ''Metro'' free newspaper from 1999 to 2010. Seven albums have been published containing the daily strips. The comic is known for its weird c ...
'' (Jan-Paul Arends) * ''
Sigmund In Norse mythology, Sigmund ( non, Sigmundr , ang, Sigemund) is a hero whose story is told in the Völsunga saga. He and his sister, Signý, are the children of Völsung and his wife Hljod. Sigmund is best known as the father of Sigurð the dr ...
'' (
Peter de Wit Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...
) * ''
S1NGLE S1NGLE is a Dutch gag-a-day comic series, created in 2000 by Hanco Kolk and Peter de Wit. It centers on three women and their endless endeavours to find the right male partner. The popularity of the series inspired a TV sitcom series of the same n ...
'' (
Hanco Kolk Hanco Kolk (born 11 March 1957, Den Helder) is a Dutch cartoonist and comics artist. He is best known for his collaborations with Peter de Wit, with who he made ''Gilles de Geus'' and '' S1NGLE' Kolk married author Isabelle Rosselin in 2016. Bi ...
,
Peter de Wit Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...
) * ''
Sjef van Oekel Sjef van Oekel was a TV comedy character created by Dutch artist Wim T. Schippers and played by Dutch comedian, singer and actor Dolf Brouwers (1912–1997). Van Oekel started as a side character in ''De Fred Hachéshow'' in 1972, but became such ...
'' (
Theo van den Boogaard Theo van den Boogaard (born 25 March 1948, Castricum, Netherlands) – also known as Theo Bogart – is a Dutch cartoonist. He first came to attention as an underground cartoonist in the early 1970s for the sexually explicit comics series ''Ans ...
,
Wim T. Schippers Willem Theodoor "Wim T." Schippers (; born 1 July 1942) is a Dutch artist, comedian, television director, and voice actor. During the 1960s, he worked mostly as a visual artist, associated with the international Fluxus-movement. As a television w ...
) * ''
Sjors en Sjimmie ''Sjors & Sjimmie'' (''George & Jimmy'') is a Dutch adaptation of the comic strip ''Winnie Winkle'', specifically the character Perry Winkle from that strip. The difference between the American original and the Dutch adaptation is that Sjors (Per ...
'' (
Frans Piët Frans Piët ( Haarlem, 17 February 1905 - 5 January 1997) was a Dutch comics artist, most famous as the original creator of the longest-running Dutch comics series of all time: '' Sjors & Sjimmie''. Biography He was born in 1905 as the son of a ...
, Robert van der Kroft, Wilbert Plijnaar, Jan van Die, Patty Klein) * ''
Storm A storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment or the atmosphere An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmos ...
'' (
Don Lawrence Donald Southam Lawrence (17 November 1928 – 29 December 2003) was a British comic book artist and author. Lawrence is best known for his comic strips '' The Rise and Fall of the Trigan Empire'' in the British weeklies ''Ranger'' and ''Look ...
) * ''Tekko Taks'' ( Henk Kabos * ''
Tom Poes ''Tom Puss'' (''Tom Poes'' in Dutch) is a Dutch comic strip, created by Marten Toonder. Together with Hans G. Kresse's '' Eric de Noorman'' and Pieter Kuhn's ''Kapitein Rob'' it is regarded as the Big Three of Dutch comics. ''Tom Poes'' was a ta ...
'' (
Marten Toonder Marten Toonder (2 May 1912 – 27 July 2005) was a Dutch comic strip creator, born in Rotterdam. He was probably the most successful comic artist in the Netherlands and had a great influence on the Dutch language by introducing new words and expr ...
) * ''Tripje en Liezebertha'' ( Henk Backer) * ''Ukkie'' ( Fred Julsing) * ''
Vader & Zoon ''Vader & Zoon'' (''Father & Son'') was a Dutch newspaper gag-a-day comic strip, drawn by Peter van Straaten. It was published in ''Het Parool'' from November 12, 1968 until 1987 and Van Straaten's most famous and popular work. Concept ''Vader ...
'' (
Peter van Straaten Peter van Straaten (25 March 1935 – 8 December 2016) was a Dutch cartoonist and comics artist. He is best known for his political cartoons as well as his satirical observations of everyday people. He also had a newspaper comic strip '' Vader ...
) * ''
Van Nul tot Nu A van is a type of road vehicle used for transporting goods or people. Depending on the type of van, it can be bigger or smaller than a pickup truck and SUV, and bigger than a common car. There is some varying in the scope of the word across ...
'' ( Co Loerakker, Thom Roep) * ''Yoebje en Achmed'' ( Henk Backer) * ''Zusje'' (
Gerrit de Jager Gerrit de Jager (born 1954, Amsterdam) is a Dutch cartoonist, creator of series such as ', ', ' and '. His career started in the early 1980s with Wim Stevenhagen under the pseudonym ''Prutspruts'' ("fiddle-fiddle"), which later changed to ''P ...
)


References


Further reading

* * * (no ISBN for the concurrently released hardcover edition) * ( hardcover edition); From the makers of the eponymous 1980s television program and, as a serious treatise, an attempt to counteract the detrimental effects the downgrading of their program into a children's program by the broadcaster had in popular awareness. * (9th and last edition of the Matla comics catalog) * ; Published on behalf of
Tilburg University Tilburg University is a public university, public research university specializing in the social and behavioral sciences, economics, law, business sciences, theology and humanities, located in Tilburg in the southern part of the Netherlands. Tilb ...
. * * * ; Published on behalf of the Museum Meermanno-Huis van het Boek. * ( hardcover edition) * * ( hardcover edition)


External links


Comics Database
; Concerns the Dutch-language releases of American and British comic book series, and includes pocket (pulp) comics of other origins.

on International Catalogue of Superheroes

on Lambiek Comiclopedia
stripINFO.be
; Generic, all-encompassing comics database, including other language editions, but with emphasis on the Dutch-language publications.
StripSpeciaalzaak.be
; Comics news site with emphasis on the Dutch-language publications. {{Comics Dutch literature