June 10, 2008

NZH timetables using European comics

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 6:00 pm

The 24 Oranges crew visited the Stripdagen Haarlem last Sunday, where it was reminded of the special connection one of the sponsors has with comics. NZH is a public transportation company from 1880 (now part of Connexxion) which during the 1980s brought out timetable books that used covers drawn by comics artists—first Dutch artists, then the leading European ones. For ages now Dik Winter has had a site with these and similarly themed later covers from GVB, the Amsterdam public transport company.

NZH’s (and GVB’s) connection with comics likely stems from jonkheer (squire) André Esta’s love for comics. Esta was the NZH CEO in the 1980s, and in the 1990s he switched to GVB.

Shown here is Lucky Luke by Belgian artist Morris.

Photo below: a vendor’s stand at a sunny Grote Markt in Haarlem.

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June 7, 2008

Comics artists on their plans at the Stripdagen Haarlem

Filed under: Animals,Comics,Shows by Branko Collin @ 3:11 pm

One of the major comics cons of the Netherlands is being held today and tomorrow, the Stripdagen Haarlem. The Amsterdam Weekly blog asked four members of the Dutch underground comics establishment what they will be visiting. Read the tips of

Sez Van Vugt:

2. Lots of nice exhibitions during the festival, but I wouldn’t want to miss the Lamelos vs. The Doozers spectacle in De Philharmonie (Saturday, 16.00) for the world. Two famously anarchistic comic artist ensembles build cardboard monsters and will fight each other to death! Mayhem ensues!

The gist seems to be that most will watch the guinea pig races (an old Dutch TV tradition) held at the De Philharmonie, and will ingest a liquid called “beer” afterwards.

Illustration: Tonio van Vugt, self-portrait. Disclaimer: Orangemaster also writes for Amsterdam Weekly and its blog.

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May 8, 2008

Symbols in political cartoons: Trik and Gorilla

Filed under: Art,Comics by Branko Collin @ 8:00 am

Two Dutch artists who draw political cartoons using mainly words and symbols to make their point have been making a name for themselves recently: Trik and Gorilla. The former won the prestigious Inktspotprijs 2007, the award for the best political cartoon, with a drawing commenting on the stalemate the Belgian government formation suffered last year. Trik used the famous last panel of the hugely popular Flemish Suske and Wiske comic strip, a powerful symbol for Belgium among Dutch readers, in which Wiske breaks the fourth wall by winking at the reader over the words The End. In Trik’s version, Wiske was dead. The End?

Gorilla is a group of designers making cartoons for the front-page of daily De Volkskrant. Readers can can vote for their favourite cartoons and buy T-shirts of the cartoons they like at the newspaper’s website. Caption for this cartoon: “Dutch best prepared for climate change.”

The wordiness of the cartoons of both artists, and the use of puns makes the cartoons feel rather like the mysterious Loesje posters that started turning up on walls all over the country during the 1980s, and that contained such witty observations as “there’s always a little bit of month left at the end of my budget.”

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April 12, 2008

Zone 5300, an abundance of bunnies

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 8:30 am

In issue 81 of Zone 5300 one Eric van der Heijden is giving Maaike Hartjes a run for her money with his own brand of tiny comics, although his intellectual absurdities remind me most of online comic XKCD. A hunter walks up to a giant rabbit, wraps his arm around its shoulders, and tells it with a big grin: “There are too many rabbits here. That’s all I am saying. Draw your own conclusions.”

There’s a four pager by Floris de Smedt where Mr. Bunny (see image above) escapes from his prison and exacts a terrible revenge from Brussels. Luckily Mr. Bunny is no match for The Professor, who has a brilliant brain and ready access to dragon eggs. No bunny can resist eggs!


Illustration by Eric van der Heijden: “Does this make you feel more of a man? Does this make you forget for a fleeting moment that your wiener is tiny?”

Toen ik klein was (When I was young) is a translation of a comic by Mr. Stocca (Milan Pavlovic) about a boy/bunny who has a crush on his school teacher, and then she dies. I love the atmospheric drawings (see below)!

Also: voyeuristic drawings of young women by Barend van Hoek, a look at artificial creatures, and the regulars (Hibou, Cowboy John, Fool’s Gold, et cetera).

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April 10, 2008

Maaike’s diary in English

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 12:10 pm

Sample Maaike Hartjes

Maaike Hartjes, who was already the grand old lady of Dutch comics when she was yea high, has started an English language blog in which she documents her next book.

The work title is ‘Enjoy Your Life and Your Socks’, something I saw written on a shop in Japan. I’m going to try to add a new page every day.

I first met Maaike when I was co-publisher of the Iris fanzine in my student days. I believe it was at the Haarlem comics con which takes place every two years, where she showed up with her “folder.” She had wanted to publish her work with another fanzine but they never showed up … and she went on to become a figurehead for our magazine until we quit in the mid-nineties. Maaike is an incredibly versatile artist—though she hates to show this versatility in her comics, focusing instead on what fellow cartoonist and fanzine editor Reinder Dijkhuis once called “her irresistibly funny minuscule drawings,” with which she fills and publishes diaries.

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December 27, 2007

Zone 5300, winter 2007

Filed under: Art,Comics by Branko Collin @ 9:00 am

Once again the macabre is represented in the fourth and last issue of Zone 5300 this year. Death and decay play important roles in respectively a Molluskhead story by Fufu Frauenwahl and in Floor de Goede’s Deathboy.

[illustration] Simon Spruyt reminisces about the time when he took little Lizzy for a tour of his comics plant (illustration). In doing so he gives the reader rare insights in the cold, hard economic realities of making and selling comics. No, it’s not what you think it is. No, not that either. Yes, you’re warmer with zombies, but you’ll have to read the story yourself to find out.

[photo] New physical media give publishers an enormous opportunity to sell to you what you already own: DAT tapes to replace your LPs, CDs to replace your DATs, and so on ad infinitum. But what happens to the discarded carriers? Rotterdammer Matrijs van Merg takes care of them. He builds organs from diskettes, videotapes from LPs, and more, and Zone 5300 interviews him. Photo: race track made from LPs.

Another article is the long interview with 1970s underground comics icon Paul Bodoni, whose albums have such imaginative titles as The Story of the Story and Other Stories, and Two Alfredos on a Green Coyote.

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December 3, 2007

Donald Duck magazine takes kids’ money for copyright lesson

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 2:17 pm
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Illustration copyright 2007 Disney.
– Scrooge: Plus a fine for PIRACY! Ten thousand euro, you sneaky thief!
– Donald: M-mercy! I am so sorry! And I finally BOUGHT the original CD!

This week Donald Duck magazine has decided that their customers should be treated to what amounts to a lesson about copyright. In a two page story (issue 49-2007) Huey, Dewey and Lewey download the latest Jan Goudsmid CD, but only so that they can already listen to it until they can afford to buy the real thing. Donald Duck suddenly realises how much money he could make if he bought a 20 euro CD and sold 100 copies at 10 euro a piece, and starts to put his nefarious scheme into practice. But record company owner Scrooge McDuck finds out and puts a stop to Donald’s plan.

Downloading music for private use is legal in the Netherlands, but selling unlicensed copies is not. The over-the-top moralistic tone of the story caught the attention of FOK forum subscribers, who immediately started pointing to the similarities between this story and the Brein foundation’s party line. The dialogue is preposterous at times. Donald: “Why don’t you guys keep this [downloaded copy]?” The nephews: “But that’s not fair! This CD is COPYRIGHTED! If nobody would buy CDs anymore, the record companies and artists would become beggars!” (Remember: the record company is owned by Scrooge McDuck.) One of the FOK forum subscribers: “They used to print »(advertisement)« about items like that.”

Disclaimer: I have written for Donald Duck magazine myself. Although they paid significantly less than the competing Sjors en Sjimmie franchise, it was always fun to write stories for them, simply because they pretty much let you decide what to write. As a result, stories for the magazine may have a tone of voice that implies grown-ups talking down to kids, but typically the stories are just fun adventures. Moralistic tales like this copyright story are rare. Indeed, in the next story of this week’s issue Chip ‘n’ Dale try to break into what looks like a military compound in order to steal nuts. Their three attempts fail because the compound is well secured – even underground – indicating the owners’ unambiguous desire to keep out intruders. But in the end, the two chipmunks luck out, and end up with a mountain of nuts. Moral of that Disney story: crime pays.

Also: the MPAA is a member of Brein. Disney is a member of the MPAA.

Update December 4: Thom Roep (Dutch), Donald Duck’s editor-in-chief, denies to FOK that the Brein foundation is in any way connected with this story, and admits that the dialogue is a little heavy handed for a magazine that dubs itself “het vrolijke weekblad” (the happy weekly):

Specifically the things that the nephews say on page 25, frame 7 [the bit I quoted before – Branko] should have been a lot less goody-two-shoes, and does indeed not correspond to the style of the magazine, which often tries to look at certain situations with a somewhat cheeky wink. We regret it a lot that this story has caused so much irritation and reactions, and we will definitely stay alert to remain a “happy weekly” in the future.

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November 9, 2007

Zone 5300, 2007 autumn edition

Filed under: Comics,Design,Literature by Branko Collin @ 2:11 am

Literature opens doors, and eyes, and windows on the soul, some people say. But who is going to close all these entrances again? For instance, in the new Zone 5300 Maaike Hartjes reports from Japan that one of the most popular forms of manga for women there is gay manga for girls, including gay manga for girls set in Lord of the Ring’s Middle Earth and illustrated with a drawing of a smooching Aragorn as portrayed by Viggo Mortensen. How am I ever going to unknow that?!

Or what about this: the heyday of Holocaust porn? Let me rephrase that. What about this: Holocaust porn? Apparently quite popular in Israel during the Eichmann trial. Zone writes about tall blonde nazi women in tight leather skull adorned uniforms brandishing whips and presumably about to suck the life juices out of camp prisoners. The 2007 documentary Stalag by Ari Libsker explores the phenomenon.

At this point I am too jaded to get worked up over the fate of Virgil Mankiewicz, a man from Nebraska who got sentenced to death because his Siamese twin brother Homer got sentenced to death.

There’s also a short interview with Raoul Deleo, one of the two makers of De eenzame snelweg (The Lonely Motorway), a book describing the trip the authors took along the same route that Jack Kerouac describes in On The Road. Kerouac typed out his book on scrolls, and in true “method drawing” fashion Deleo copied that idea by constructing a case with a built-in scroll to draw on while on the road (see illustration).

Furthermore, there is a look at the fantastic work of Chuck Groenink (for instance: teabags hanging from a ceiling, dripping like corpses in a slaughterhouse), comics by Merel Barends and Jakob Klemencic, an excellent episode of Fool’s Gold (which I reported about earlier), and Wasco’s interpretation of Dick Bruna’s Zwarte Beertjes book covers (see illustration).

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October 10, 2007

Donald Duck in Amsterdam

Filed under: Architecture,Comics by Branko Collin @ 1:30 pm

Albeit an American export, the Donald Duck comic is something typically European. For some reason, Donald Duck comics haven’t done much in their country of origin. In the Netherlands however, Donald Duck magazine — subtitled “The merry weekly” — is considered the blueprint of how to make a successful magazine. It has existed for well over 50 years, and has always been a hit, not in the least because grown-ups kept buying the magazines for themselves and their children long after they supposedly should have grown out of comics themselves.

Donald Duck’s adventures often take place in Duck Town, which is a generic city in the US. Whenever couleur locale managed to creep into a locally produced comic, it would be an exception. But the Dutch magazine is now sending its main characters on the road, and is working on a story that takes Donald, Scrooge, and the three nephews to Amsterdam. Daily De Telegraaf reports (Dutch) that there will be gables, canals, and the royal palace on Dam Square (so-called because it is where the actual dam was built in the river Amstel).

Disclaimer: I have co-written a few stories for Donald Duck magazine myself in the past, but I have no ties to the magazine.

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July 29, 2007

Zone 5300: more of same

Filed under: Art,Comics by Branko Collin @ 3:30 pm

[cover] The summer edition of Dutch “comics, culture & curiosa” mag Zone 5300 has been out for a while, but I have been a bit busy and haven’t been able to discuss the issue here before. Loads of the house comics are presented in this issue (you know, Beach Man, Maaike, Boerke, and even an Hibou). The boys from Lamelos (translation: Lemmego) have a mister Doodiehead and his friend Cheesehead guard a diamond from criminal hedgehogs (pleonasm, or an all too necessary amplification of the truth?).

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Illustration by Lamelos.

Among the rare guest strips are the (autobiographic?) Love Story by Wittek, and Voodoo Koedoe (which rhymes in Dutch), in which Joshua Peeters gets in touch with his inner wigger. “Come on Dorothy, let me tell you about the missionary position.”


Illustration by Joshua Peeters.

Furthermore, an article exploring the use of corpses in art, and the usual barrage of book, music and film reviews. In Fool’s Gold, Milan Hulsing and Frits Jonker ask what happened to Die Sprechende Türkin, an early 19th century speech synthesizer built as half an android (the top half, of course), so if you know the answer, don’t hesitate to mail them.

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