Eppo comics magazine revived

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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.

Instead, they revived Eppo magazine (Dutch), the first issue of which is now in the stores. A hefty 99 euro will get you 25 issues, a year’s worth. The first issue is surprisingly light on advertisements, 2.3 out of 36 pages. I hope that’s not a bad sign. Eppo is first and foremost an exercise in nostalgia; the editors even brought back De Partners, one of the worst comics ever allowed to roll off a printing press. And the mag opens with space opera Storm, just like it used to. (Now we just have to wait for the letter pages to be filled again with debates between Storm haters and Storm lovers.)

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.

What the heck: cheer! What magazines like Eppo did was create an advertising platform for comic artists (Dutch), as I am sure this new incarnation will also do. That can only be a good thing.

Illustration: 3 panels from Franka story De witte godin (The White Goddess).

4 Comments »

  1. Eric says:

    Excellent news…I remember growing up with the Eppo. After a few years it turned into Eppeo-word vervolgd (to be continued), after that it was simple “word vervolgd”. Remember them even promoting cartoon drawing, I even ordered a book to learn! Nice to see this being revived.

  2. Marc says:

    @ Eric. After that it was not Wordt Vervolgd, after Eppo Wordt VErvolgd it was Sjors en Sjimmie Stripblad, and afterthat just Sjosji until 1998 when they thought they should call it Sjosji Stripparazi, and after that a few months Striparazi to disapear after 4 issues in 1999.

    So first it was Sjors( 1954) and Pep(1963) the publishers of those magazines were fusing in the 70’s so the two magazines went for a fusion too and became Eppo in late 1975. Ten years after they caled it Eppo Wordt Vervolgd and in early 1988 they called it Sjors&Sjimmie Stripblad, but people always, called it Sjosi, so in 1994 the name of the magazine was officialy chanced into Sjosji only in the last moths of 1998 until the end early 1999 it was calles (sjosji) Striparazzi.

  3. Dian says:

    I grew up reading Eppo in Bahasa (Indonesia) version; in among which I read Roel Dijkstra’s as much as Storm and The Partisan. I don’t remember much of the stories, but Roel’s was definitely what made me fell in love with football… until now. ;-) Too bad this magazine is no longer available either in Bahasa or English in Indonesia.

  4. […] It was a title ran successfully from 1975 to 1988, and was revived as a title in 2009 as a fortnightly comics magazine , along with many of its original strips, including “De Partners” (“The […]

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