Martin Wisse has got a good tip:

A can’t miss bargain to be had at De Slegte in Amsterdam right now: copies of Gr’omnibus, a treasure trove of sequential art from Groningen, the Athens of the North; an invaluable treasure now yours for only two euro fifty! Why you should bother? Because you get to sample some 40 odd (some very odd) Dutch (as well as the occasional furreign) cartoon talents, culled from the pages of one of the most consistent of Dutch underground comix zines, Gr’nn.

Groningen (Grunn in the local dialect) is one of [the interesting cities outside the Randstad], a university town big enough not to be overwhelmed by it with a decent local art scene and night-life, a city in which over the years a thriving alt-comix scene has been established.

In 1996 a few of them started Gr’unn, which since then has published a lot of up and coming cartoonists. People like Barbara Stok, Mark Hendriks, Amoebe, the Lamelos collective, Marcel Ruijters, Reinder Dijkhuis, Berend Vonk, all had strips in Gr’nn. [...]

So if you’re in Amsterdam and you want a cheap way to sample a huge chunk of the contemporary Dutch comix scene, go get Gr’omnibus from de Slegte. It’s in the middle of Kalverstraat so even tourists should be able to find it.

He is right you know, and today I grabbed myself one of the last four copies. You guys need to hurry!

De Slegte is a chain store for second hand and remaindered books, and very popular in this book-mad country.

Illustrations: cover artist unknown, Vlerk, Jan Krol, and Nico Visscher respectively.

The Anne Frank Foundation will publish a comic version of part of the diary of Anne Frank this week.

Written by Sid Jacobson and drawn by Ernest Colón, the 160-page-long graphical biography will be sold for 15 euro. There are also editions planned for English, German, French, Italian and Spanish speaking countries.

Link: RTL Nieuws. Illustration: annefrank.org.

Figure 1: De Wit during his Virgil Partch period.

At the end of its 15th anniversary celebrations, glossy underground mag Zone 5300 decided to publish a humour special. Comic strips, what a concept! Dutch comic giant Peter de Wit accepted a guest editorship, and included the first long story of his flagship gag strip Sigmund in the magazine.

Lots of space is devoted to what De Wit likes and how De Wit thinks. (“Mocking the diminutive psychiatrist and his patients day in day out doesn’t work. I stopped doing that after six months because it became too predictable. Now I let the jokes do the heavy lifting.”) De Wit also visits the Heinz Museum in Amsterdam, all about the local cartoon cat, and talks an interesting five pages long about his favourite cartoonists (1).

Figure 2: “Dammit! Todd’s woman is hotter than mine! That is just wrong, Debs…”

Also: Pennsylvania-born Groninger Charles Guthrie’s De Sporters (The Jocks) follows the sadistic adventures of Luke Skywalker-lookalike Dick Quick and his blonde bombshell girlfriend and punching bag Debbie Doe. (2)

Figure 3.

Robert van Raffe’s four-page comic Gods Pupil uses a wide array of visual techniques in just a few frames, but the bland colours and pencilled background also give the strip an unfinished look. Two people on their backs in the grass, gazing at the moon, while one draws a lazy finger over its surface to outline a rabbit that he says is what the typical shape of the moon’s face stands for: this is the start of a succinct exploration of the nature of God. It is also a clear invitation to explore more of Van Raffe’s work. (3)

The entire 24 Oranges team visited the Stripdagen Haarlem yesterday, a comics con that takes place only every other year.

The weather was wishy washy, leaning towards raining, but never leading to a cleansing and cooling downpour. Nevertheless, some of the sellers of second hand comics packed up early on Sunday due to the drizzle.

The indoors events largely took place at De Philharmonie where a large number of artists were busy autographing away. Famous artist Jean-Marc van Tol, whose mug (photo) can be seen on TV show De Wereld Draait Door daily, had set up shop outdoors on the terrace of Café Studio, where a camera over his head recorded his every drawing, which was then relayed to a largish screen over his head.

Gr’nn artist Naam (pun intended, but not by us) drew us a button of 24 Oranges (photo), and Belgian comic artist Dominique Goblet told Jeroen Mirck (photo) about how she transformed punishment by her mother into a philosophical event, and how when making photos she is always looking for a narrative, and therefore rarely takes just one picture.

The theme of this years event was Eastern European comics, and this reflected in the tongue-in-cheek ‘Soviet’ style of the Stripdagen’s visual branding. Students from Design Academy Eindhoven were invited to tackle the problem of signage, and did so by introducing checkpoints with ‘guards’ and ‘passports’ where visitors could ask for information.

Back in November 2008 famous comic book store Lambiek in Amsterdam celebrated its 40 year anniversary, a milestone even famous Dutch comic strip artists like Hanco Kolk and Jean-Marc van Tol probably did not expect the store to reach, considering their rightful laments on this tough business.

Unfortunately, today marks the passing of Kees Kousemaker, founder of Lambiek, who was just 68 years of age. According to the Dutch association of comic strip artists, “Kees Kousemaker meant a lot to the comic strip world and helped many an artist.” He was the driving force behind the Comicopledia, the largest online source on comics, an author, organisator and owner of what could easily be called the most important and influential comic book store in the Netherlands, and possibly the oldest still standing in the world. RIP.

(Links: stripmakers, Zone5300, Photo courtesy of Zone5300)

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.)