Many people think that Donald Duck comics still come from America today. That hasn’t been the case for a long time. Most comics in the comics weekly Donald Duck were invented and drawn in the Netherlands. In fact: “The Netherlands (and Europe) has more Disney comics talent than America,” says the editor-in-chief of the Dutch comics magazine. Donald Duck, Ferdi Felderhof. He does that in the catalog accompanying the exhibition 70 years of a Merry Weekly in the new Dutch comics museum Museum of Comic Art (MoCA) in Noordwijk aan Zee.
This year it is 70 years ago that the first Dutch Donald Duck comic magazine was published. Including the first song of October 25, 1952 is there.
On the basis of more than fifty large original pages drawn by at least thirty artists, most of them Dutch, the exhibition shows how Donald became more and more Dutch every decade. That’s because they started making fewer Duck comics in America. In the comics market there, dominated by superheroes, there was less and less to be earned with an anti-hero like Donald. He is mainly a TV cartoon star in the US (His debut, as an important member of the Nuts Club, was also in a cartoon, in 1934† In the US, Donald no longer has his own comics magazine, unlike in the Netherlands and several other European countries.
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Daan Jippes
Carl Barks
As can be seen in the exhibition, that was different in the beginning. Then there were comics from America, supposedly all drawn by Walt Disney. Of course it wasn’t. The comics about Donald and other Disney characters, drawn by anonymous freelancers, differed greatly in quality. But young readers quickly recognized from the drawing style that one artist drew really good stories. Like, in that very first issue, Donald as a firefighter, setting himself on fire. That was from Carl Barks, who also came up with Kwik, Kwek and Kwak and Uncle Scrooge.
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Van Barks is original artwork in the exhibition, about Donald Duck as an evil beautician. Bark’s original comics are easily worth a quarter of a million. His lively drawing style and his witty stories would become the foundation of the Dutch Duck comic culture. But that was not the case in the early days. In the 1950s, a Dutch-Hungarian artist, Endre Lukács, was allowed to draw the first Dutch Duck stories, such as a cover with Donald on Amsterdam facades.
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Gerben Valkema
When the comic stream from America dried up in the 1960s, the Duck editors called in the Dutch comics studio of Marten Toonder, known for Tom Poes and Ollie B. Bommel. Bearer artists went The Little Bad Wolf and other comics. In addition, artists such as Hans Kresse and Jan Wesseling and Fiep Westendorp made beautiful illustrations for the reading stories in the magazine – also available in original in MoCA.
Dutch Duck School
When Toonder also stopped working as a comics studio, the Donald Duck editors started training artists and storymakers themselves in the 1970s. They were also allowed to make their own follow-up comics. Donald Duck became the most important employer for Dutch comic book makers. The wealth of high-quality draftsmen that this resulted makes the exhibition a source of joy.
so there is Daan Jippeswho, as a seven-year-old, started the Dutch Donald Duck read – and, inspired by the ‘good Duck artist’ Barks, became a cartoonist himself. He is now ‘the best Dutch Duck artist’. He also made the catalog cover. Or Evert Geradts, initially an underground cartoonist, who announced Barks in the Netherlands in his magazine ‘Aunt Leny Presents† He became one of the most prolific Dutch Duck screenwriters. The flourishing of young artists afterwards, all with their own recognizable style, such as Michel Nadorp, Mau Heymans and Gerben Valkema, and many others, are featured in the exhibition. Their comics are also used in foreign Disney magazines.
Disney too strict?
The exhibition is such an ode to idiosyncratic Dutch creative talent, which gives a special, sometimes subversive twist to the Disney legacy, in the spirit of Barks. Not everything is allowed, because the Disney Company is still strict on the story material. Because of the inclusivity and colonialism discussion, for example, comics about the Indian Hiawata can no longer be found in the Donald Duck (but in the exhibition). Daan Jippes thinks Disney is too strict these days, he said at the opening. Can you still make comics like this? But the Duck editor-in-chief said Disney has always had strict rules and keeps the creativity of Dutch Duck comic makers Donald vital. The comic magazine, with a circulation of more than 200,000, is still one of the most widely read magazines in the Netherlands – not just by children.