October 10, 2010

Parool newspaper doesn’t want to pay for its daily strip

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 11:25 am

A row in Dutch comics land! About a month ago newspaper Parool called for fresh cartoonists and then told them that it would not pay them for their work.

Comics artist Sandra de Haan did not like this one bit and started a Facebook page called “Stripmakers zouden geen gratis strips aan kranten moeten leveren” (Comics makers should not let newspapers publish them for free), and fellow Zone 5300 editor Michael Minneboo wrote about the whole brouhaha.

Turns out that Parool was looking for amateur comics artists who could use a leg up in the big bad world of publishing. Editor-in-chief Barbara van Beukering admitted the mistake to Minneboo: “The text in our call [for comics] could definitely be called misleading, for which I apologize.”

Parool has since then changed the wording of its advertisement.

You would think that with the funk that both the newspaper industry and the European comics industry are in, the two groups would treat each other with a bit more understanding.

At the least the affair led to another Brom & Vlieg episode which can be read—absolutely free of charge —at Sandra’s website.

Tags: ,

June 26, 2010

Zone 5300 Summer 2010

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 2:03 pm

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 God’s 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)

Tags: ,

April 29, 2010

Famous comic book store loses its creator

Filed under: Comics,History by Orangemaster @ 12:24 pm
Kees1

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)

Tags: , , , ,

February 26, 2010

Zienzine, fanzine from Schiedam

Filed under: Art,Comics by Branko Collin @ 12:03 pm

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.

Tags: ,

November 29, 2009

Cowboy John

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 11:10 am

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.

Tags: ,

July 28, 2009

Zone 5300 in the land of the Dadas

Filed under: Art,Comics,Music,Nature by Branko Collin @ 8:19 am

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.)

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

April 18, 2009

Colourful and perhaps slightly disturbing comic book covers

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 10:25 am

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):

zone-5300-ads-thumb

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.”

Tags: ,

January 4, 2009

Frits Jonker’s typefaces

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 2:15 pm

Fool’s Gold editor Frits Jonker is playing with typefaces, faces drawn using the letter shapes (only and all) of a person’s name. He’s got a longish Flickr photostream with just typefaces of what I assume are his friends, but the image above with Batman and Robin and Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie was taken from the latest Zone 5300.

Speaking of which, the winter issue of Zone 5300 has an exerpt from Nozzman’s “drawing book” (“not a sketch book, because even if I don’t study or research these drawings, they’re still mature”), part 1 of Mr. Mack’s very handy guide to trucker’s CB talk, Robert van Raffe’s look into dandyism, an interview with detective writer Philip Kerr, and much more.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

November 2, 2008

Geometric family tree as birth announcement card

Filed under: Comics,Design by Branko Collin @ 5:35 pm

Piet Schreuders, him of the Poezenkrant (which is not about cats), designed this card in 1984 on occasion of the birth of his daughter Anna. It’s a family tree that goes back four generations, pink branches signifying girls, blue ones boys. It’s one of the reasons that the Fool’s Gold editors clamour for a Schreudermania book.

Ah, speaking of Fool’s Gold. People forgot to tell my clients that there’s an economic crisis supposed to be going on, and as a result I haven’t really had the time to review the latest Zone 5300. Issue 83 is all about Outsider Art. Like every other issue of Zone 5300. Which they sort of acknowledge in the foreword, then still power on.

The good thing though is that as part of that whole Outsider Art thing Fool’s Gold got two extra pages in full colour. Comics are mostly by the regular contributors. Lamelos’ Sam Peeters goes solo this time with In de schaduw van mijn lul (In the shade of my penis), which manages to pack armed robbery, monkeys, slipping-over-banana jokes, faeces, swamp things, camp fires, steaming hot sex, and a gruesome beheading all in six small pages, in that order. I thought you ought to know.

Zone 5300 also checks out how Teun Hocks, illustrator to amongst others The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine is doing these days. He’s doing… wait, buy the damn magazine already!

Tags: , , , , ,

July 5, 2008

Zone 5300, Summer 2008

Filed under: Comics,Weird by Branko Collin @ 1:43 pm

Who’s heard of Lian Ong recently? The comics artist received aclaim with her album Horizon in 1998, winning an award at the Stripdagen Haarlem. The comics book took 8 years to create, and she didn’t feel like repeating that stunt again, so she became a Tai-Chi teacher.

Another (sigh) autobiographical story by Simon Spruyt, this time about his carreer as a comic artist-god (illustration right). Revealing.

Fool’s Gold is looking for subsidies to bring out a CD with their large collection of gay songs, and are asking readers who know which ways to walk toward the state’s purse to help them out. This issue was the first time in years that Fool’s Gold writes something I’d read about before on the web (the phonautogram), a clear indication of what a good nose the two editors have for the weird and the wonderful—or a clear indication that I surf the wrong websites.

10 bonafide ways to lose your punk credibility. Number 7: Run for mayor of San Francisco (Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedies). Finish behind a drag queen called Sonic Boom Boom.

Graphical biography in which the devil tells the life story of American writer and explorer W.B. Seabrook, alleged eater of man flesh, sexual deviant, inventor of the word “wow,” and popularizer of zombies. Written and drawn by two of the magazine‘s editors, Tonio van Vugt and Marcel Ruijters.

Detectives should stay away from time travel (illustration left), that would save us a lot of problems. In Joshua Peeters’ De Rechtvaardige Rechters (The Just Judges) our heroes who do not look like another staple of Flemish comics—and we’ll keep denying it till you believe us—try and retrieve the famous panel by the Van Eyck brothers.

Tags: ,