Best Comic

At the end of the 1980s, working on stories for several comic publishers, I received this bible from Dutch publisher Oberon, as they were remarketing their comic magazine to focus on the long lasting Dutch comic Sjors & Sjimmie (translated that would amount to George & Jim I think). Normally, this was a one page gag strip that appeared weekly on the back of the magazine, but the publisher wanted to start putting out longer stories, and was seeking expansion of their regular team, consisting of Robert van der Kroft (artist) with Jan van Die and Wilbert Plijnaar (writers). This 27 page bible is in Dutch, but has many images by Kroft to explain how the comic should look and how the stories were supposed to work out. 

This popular Dutch comic originally started out in the 1930s as a continuation of the American comic strips Winnie Winkle and Perry and the Rinkydinks by Martin Branner which were very popular, but ceased to appear in The Netherlands back then. The Dutch version of the comic was created by famous Dutch artist Frans Piët and was continued by several others, until it was modernized and received its final appearance by the team of van der Kroft, van Die & Plijnaar in the 1970s.

Today, the comic is no longer created and the magazine has ceased publication. Kroft and Van Die (with Evert Geradts) still work on their weekly comic Claire for Flair magazine while Wilbert Plijnaar is succesful as a storyboard artist in California and recently worked on the Ice Age and Despicable Me franchises. 

I hadnt seen this thing in a long time and recently got hold of it through a friend, so I decided to put it up here! For more about Sjors & Sjimmie check the official Dutch website. Remember, click to enlarge!