Should you happen to find yourself in the slow train between The Hague and Rotterdam, you might come across this monthly fanzine made by Schiedam artist Ronald de Graaff and friends.

Zienzine is set up as a platform for contributing artists. It is distributed for free (in the train, and at the addresses of some of the makers), which is why each edition is limited to 250 copies. The editors are trying to put back issues on the web for those who don’t often find themselves in the slow train between The Hague and Rotterdam, but so far have only managed to make issue 0 of the five that have been published available for download.

The first issue contains stories about Volkswagen plagiarism, pinhole photography, and doodles and cartoons. There is also a recipe for vegetarian boerenkoolstampot. If you want to know how not to pronounce this word, see here (featured earlier).

I discovered Zienzine from the print edition of Zone 5300. Zone’s latest is filled with comics from Flanders, and may be had for a few more days. It appeared last December, but I could not review it then. TNT Post never delivered my issue, and I finally got to rectify that last week.

Cowboy John is a comic strip that appears regularly in Zone 5300, and that now has its own, eponymous album. It is basically a continuation or spin-off of the Jan Jaap comic that writer and artist Jan Vriends published in the same magazine.

Cowboy John is a man with a past that has led him to drink and dress up as a cowboy. The comic strip switches back between single strip gags and longer, dramatic bits, and to fill out the album ‘bloopers,’ out-takes and Cowboy John strips that appeared in other magazines.

Do I like Zone 5300 sending me review copies? Yes. Would I buy the book? No. Cowboy John has a warm, safe home in the tri-monthly and motley collection of comics, reviews, short stories and curiosities that is Zone 5300, where its erratic style fits right in. But it’s not an album with which to snuggle up on the couch and forget the world for half an hour.

The Cowboy John book is the first in a new imprint named after the magazine, Collectie Zone 5300.

OK, there is one Belgian band, Zeker Weten, who does their thing in Flemish, but it works wonderfully, as does the rest of this original and unexpected compilation. Dutch artists such as Leine, The Spinshots and Juicebox, and Belgian artists (both French and Flemish) such as Suarez and Tom Barman & Guy van Nueten have joined in covering the master of contemporary French music himself, Serge Gainsbourg.

Brought to you by Dutch journalist and DJ Guuzbourg (aka Guuz Hoogaerts) who is now on his fourth compilation, has tried and succeeding in convincing the Dutch (the Belgians were convinced eons ago) that French music doesn’t make you feel inadquate, it makes you feel groovy.

Now comes the name dropping. The official CD presentation of Gainsnord (a term coined by our very own Branko of 24oranges) will be launched at Paradiso, Amsterdam on 18 September with local band West Hell 5 playing live (also on the album), DJs and VJs of the Amsterdam Beat Club, including yours truly, DJ Natashka. The cover was illustrated by comicbook artist Hanco Kolk and designed by graphic artist Martin Draax, bassguitar player of the Spinshots.

Update: Gainsnord website with music.

Of all the incorrectly addressed mail I receive, I mind the Large catalogue (”pop merchandising”) the least, because it has got Roel Smit’s vibrant cartoon art on the cover. Shown here is the latest, the autumn issue.

Frits Jonker, half of the Fool’s Gold team, last year reviewed Smit’s latest book, Rock ‘n’ Roel:

There are some of his early drawings in the book, but he became so much better around 1999. Before then, his work was enthusiastic and well done, but, with a few exceptions, not brilliant. After 1999 every drawing is exceptionally powerful and often so good that it makes me wish that I had put more effort into learning how to draw. All his work is centered around one theme: PUNK. Or rather, Roel’s version of punk: Love-core, as he calls it.

The Summer edition of Zone 5300 contains a large retrospective of The Cramps, the psychobilly dinos that put the fun into punk, because of stiletto-heeled front-man Lux Interior’s death earlier this year. Writer Eric van der Heijden handcuffs you, then shows all the clean versions of rock ‘n’ roll and the dirty parents they sprang from. Guess where The Cramps belong?

Lars Fiske reports on a 1922 visit of Dada to the Netherlands (illustration).

What do you do if everybody is already shooting nice pics of microbes, hell, if nice pics of microbes are really old hat in your country? Stereoscopic photos of the creepy-crawlies! Plus you try to get American art schools and Dutch museums to believe your story that art can only be objectively enjoyed after you have dunked classic works and instruments in a bath full of micro-organisms. Such is the wondrous sense of humour of Wim van Egmond.

Maaike Hartjes tries her hand at photography. Eerie! Cute! How does she do it? (Maaike’s got a new blog by the by, so go check it.)

And finally a long comic of Fool’s Gold contributor Milan Hulsing about collected collectors, so you know he knows what he is talking, er, drawing about.

(Illustration: Lars Fiske.)

May 1 was the day Robert Schuit started a new cartoon blog at—guess where?—cartoon.blog.nl. Schuit, who draws cartoons himself under the name Bandirah, managed to convince a jolly band of artists to join him, among which ‘big’ names such as Argibald, Michiel van de Pol and Humor de Nar (illustration).

24 Oranges started more than 2 years ago with an entry about the new cartoon blog clogwork.net, which is still alive and populated by the slightly older cartoonist.

(Illustration: cartoon.blog.nl, by Humor de Nar. Caption: “To think there are people who spend their Friday nights all alone.” Link: Sargasso.)

An ad on the back of the latest Zone 5300 brought together these colourful and perhaps slightly disturbing comic book covers by Dutch and Flemish artists (click for a larger version):

From left to right:

• I Heart Paris by Maarten vande Wiele and Erika Raven;
• De Maagd en de Neger 2 (The Virgin and the Negro, part 2) by Judith Vanistendael;
• Rood Gras – Ik ben een bos en er lopen mensen door mij by Rob van Barneveld (Red Grass – I Am a Forest and People are Walking Through Me);
• Als Vader Abraham van huis is (When Vader Abraham is Away from Home) by Argibald; and
• Zachte Dwang (Gentle Coercion) by Kim Duchateau.

They almost make me want to not buy the books, so that I can fantasize about what is in them.

Between the covers of issue 85 of Zone 5300 are stories by Tanxxx and by Wittek & Sven Tauke, excerpts from Typex’ sketch book, a two-pager by Zone editor Sandra de Haan, and also a two-pager by Maaike Hartjes, in which the author goes introspective, but in a funny way.

Zone 5300 also points out that the ultra-Dutch comic Sjef van Oekel is being rereleased in French (where the title character is called Leon-La-Terreur), but not in Dutch. “What’s up with that?” the mag demands to know of the artist, Theo van den Boogaard. “The co-operation between publishers De Bezige Bij and Oog & Blik is still young, but there is a good chance they will publish the Dutch reprint. Wim [Wim T. Schippers] and I always wanted to be published by De Bezige Bij, so this development makes us very happy.”

Does Dutch humour translate into English? Sure it does, provided it is done accurately (so no Dunglish) and by someone who ‘gets it’. And that’s exactly what Rotterdam comic strip artist Sandra de Haan has done, the result of which you can enjoy below.

A Dutch friend once told me that Dutch humour is roughly akin to Scandinavian humour: dry, straight-faced, a bit slow and sometimes very scatologic (see Sandra’s other English comic strips). I think it leaves you slightly perplex albeit with a smile.

The Artez art academy in Zwolle, Overijssel, will offer a programme in drawing comics starting September, writes De Pers (Dutch). Head of the school’s Art and Design department, Wilhelm Weitkamp, told the paper: “Comics used to be seen as low culture in this country. That is changing.” (Sounds like code for: nobody’s buying comics anymore.)

The idea originated with comic artist Hanco Kolk whose inimitable Beauregard, see illustration, I regard as one of the best Dutch comics ever made. Kolk told NOS (Dutch): “I started as a comics artist during the time of the major comics magazines. When you were done, the other 24 artists would put your strip through the grinder. You could say we were teaching each other. When the big magazines fell away, this coaching aspect also disappeared. And you notice this in the work of new talent. They’re not good enough.”

Illustration from Hanco Kolk’s Beauregard, the first part of a series about the capital of decadence, the city Meccano. Beauregard is a gossip reporter with an eye for scoops: “June 12, 12:30. I unravel the double life of baron De Lagnac.”

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 Godess).