Eppo publisher Rob van Bavel has added a new comics mag to his stable, called Por Dios.
It will contain the same sort of comic strips that adorn his other publication, with a twist: the comics in Por Dios have been published before. Every issue of the monthly will contain one complete long story. The upshot is that Van Bavel can now publish stories by authors that are dead (Don Lawrence, De Smet) or retired, and that new generations can be introduced to the classics.
The name comes from the tag line of Eppo precursor Pep: “Por dios, what a magazine!” The price per issue is 5 euro, while a 12 issue subscription can be had for 50 euro.
After WWII, Europe was treated to full-colour comic magazines, notably Robbedoes (Spirou) and Kuifje (Tintin), both from Belgium. The Netherlands had Pep en Sjors, which later merged into Eppo, which then became Sjosji, which went tits up in 1999 because kids don’t read comics anymore. A bunch of middle-aged men then got together and declared they refused to live in the present. 
I am not sure whether I should cheer on the re-introduction of a regular, mainstream comics magazine in the Netherlands—not counting Donald Duck magazine which is a phenomenon hors categorie. Reading the mag feels a bit like choosing a coffin—surely I am not yet that old? On the other hand, the big guns of yesteryear have lost nothing of their story telling genius. The new Franka reads like Largo Winch (friendship, betrayal, high finance, Ludlum in comic form really), Martin Lodewijk gets ever better at mixing the old-fashioned and the corny with current events in his hilarious spy parody Agent 327, and there’s even a comic version of Havank’s The Shadow by none other than Daan Jippes.