'Mob of the Haunted Mansion': my Disney story reprinted.

As of this week you can find one of my Comic stories for Disney collected in the Summer Holiday Special, published by Sanoma and for sale at all the HEMA stores!

Well, it's official: it's summer alright! And to celebrate it, all the major Comic publishers here come out with their own Summer Holiday Special! Sanoma had already recently published their usual Disney books: The regular 'Donald Duck Summer Holiday 2011' comic book special (which has appeared every year since 1978) and'the 'Beagle Boys Summer Holiday 2011' comic book. They're filled with comic reprints, games and trivia and the usual coloring page, which should keep your kids busy, while you're trying get your family to your place of destination alive, at least, that's the idea!

Reprint.

The HEMA concern, a nationwide chain of department stores, which has also branched out in Germany and Belgium, teamed up with the folks at Sanoma Media to create their own line of Summer Holiday Books this year. They all have the same graphic design on the cover, sharing the title 'Op vakantie met' ('On holiday with') and focus on different characters like 'Nijntje', 'Barbapapa', 'Nickelodeon', 'Hello Kitty' and of course: 'Donald Duck' !

It's nice to see the guys at Disney had chosen one of my stories for the 'Donald Duck' version. 'Gespuis in 't spookhuis', ( 'Mob of the Haunted Mansion') is a good lenghty thriller with some nice plot twists and enough laughs to cheer it all up. I can understand they wanted to reprint it again, as it keeps you to your seat long enough and definitely intices a re-read.

Originally it was 15 pages longer even, and I got it back the first time around from Tom Roep (editor in chief) saying it was way too long! (I primarely used to read the 'Barks library' books and they all have these huge stories in them, so I guess I modeled it after that).

Above: two pages from 'Mob of the Mansion' as it was first published in 2001. The Disney crew had designed their Weekly magazine around the story (the issue had black pages) with a contest winning you some cool prizes and games for your Nintendo handheld.

'Hall of Fame'.

'Mob of the Haunted Mansion' was one of the stories I did with Bas Heymans for the Donald Duck Weekly, it's a 20 page story, first printed in May 2001 and it has definitely been picked up abroad, as it was translated in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Poland and Norway. In the Netherlands, the story even made the cover of 'Donald Duck's Funniest Adventures' #4 and it also served for the cover of issue 32 of Disney's 'Hall of Fame' comic book series in Norway.

One of my other stories done for Disney, 'Donald Duck: Temporarily Millionaire' (also with Bas Heymans) was published in April this year in 'Aku Ankka Ekstra' issue 156 in Finland. (the monthly 'Donald Duck Extra' magazine). Below: various covers from around the world, which published the ghost story in their respective comic magazines. The Dutch cover is the last one on the right.

The other three stories in Hema's 'Donald Duck Summer Comic Book' Special are 'The Caravan Race' by Ben Verhagen and Jan Kruse, 'Timber' by Paul Halas with Flor Collins and Vicar and 'The Egyptian Prince's Secret' by Marco Rota. The books are for sale now in all the HEMA stores and cost € 4,00 Euro's each.

HEMA has 445 department stores in The Netherlands, 62 in Belgium, 8 in Germany, 3 in Luxembourg and recently opened 4 stores in Paris, France!

Adhemar releases new 'Bessy' titles.

Following up on my last post, I got an email this week from Peter Janda. He runs 'Adhemar', the Belgium comic shop in Gent, which also runs a small press publishing house, releasing extremely exclusive titles and niche objects. He sent me a couple of pictures, showing five new titles from their limited  re-release of the 'Bessy' series, originally created by the Vandersteen Studio in the 1970's.

Back then the series was in such a high demand, they succeeded in delivering one new title every week. At the same time, only one title was published every three months in The Netherlands and in Belgium, so there's still a huge amount of stories that have never been released here.

Adhemar released 25 titles in the 'Bessy' series until now, the five that are up for order now (26-30) are in limited supply (1250 issues each) and numbered: (If you're interested, contact Adhemar.)

·    'Het Zoete Kruid' ('The Sweet 'Herb')
·    'De Verdwenen Pelswerksters' ('The missing fur workers')
·    'De Bedreigde Karavaan' ('The threatened Caravan')
·    'De Gebroken Lans' ('Broken Spear')
·    'De Uitwisseling' ('The Exchange')

The Vandersteen Archives

Peter also shared some light on their upcoming release of a new 'classics' series, called the 'Willy Vandersteen Archives', of which the first titles are scheduled for September/October this year. This series will hold all the stories Willy Vandersteen created before he ran the studio, so all titles are done by the master himself, story and artwork! The stories were published in the 1940's in several magazines, the new hard cover books will have the original colors from back then. Check out an exclusive preview of the first two covers beneath. The first five titles will be:

·      'Het Rode Masker' ('The Red Mask')
·     'Het Zwarte Luipaard' ('The Black Leopard')
·     'De Blauwe Kreeft' ('The Blue Lobster')
·     'Ridder Gloriant' ('Knight Gloriant')
·     'De Heldentocht der Bataven' ('March of the Batavi') 

Peter Janda is an expert in the field of comic books and vice president of the 'Chambre Belge des Experts en Bandes Dessinées' (The official Belgium 'Chambre of Experts' on comic books) and is related to the  'Belgium Comicbook centre', the museum in Brussels.

Suske & Wiske 314: studio leaks cover art.

While the official release date for the upcoming volume in the popular Belgium comic series ‘Suske & Wiske’ (called ‘De Kwakende Queen’, no. 313) has been set for June 22 by publisher Standaard, the authors, Studio Vandersteen,  have already leaked some of the artwork for their next album, ‘Het Lijdende Leiden’ (314), which is currently published in Belgium newspaper ‘De Standaard’ (starting May 13).

‘Het Lijdende Leiden’ has the main characters transported through time to the city of Leiden in 1574. While they’ve lost all recollection of who they are, they assume new identities and get caught in a war between the Spanish conquistadors and the Dutch resistance, torn between aiding the city’s defends and supporting the attacking Spanish legion, just like it happened back then for real. The story concentrates on the history of Magdalena Moons (1541-1613), daughter of prominent figure judge Pieter Moons, who was part of the Dutch resistance, and commander of the Spanish army Francisco Valdez. While the town was starving and Valdez attacked the city, Moons offered to marry Valdez if he would stop, buying time for reinforcements to arrive and break the siege. Left below: Magdalena and Alvarez as depicted by Dutch painter Simon Opzoomer (1819-1878), National Museum Amsterdam (click to enlarge).

Leiden is one of the oldest Dutch cities and is known for it’s prominent University throughout history. Founded in 1575, it is the place where John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the USA studied, as well as famous philosopher Descartes and Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, who discovered Saturn´s moon Titan in 1655. Albert Einstein was professor of theoretical physics there.

It’s amazing to see that after hundreds of great stories, the creative team at Studio Vandersteen still seems to find inspiration for new adventure, finding inspiration in local history only makes for a more interesting read, and promises some nice jokes (and they deserve it! The Spanish not only invaded our country back then, they also stole the World Championship football last year right from under our feet in the final match, Grr!)

Willy Vandersteen (photo below), creator of the popular Belgian comic, created his first Suske & Wiske comic in 1945.It is published in the US as 'Willy and Wanda' and was known in England as 'Bob and Bobette', (same as in France). Today, it's no known in the UK as 'Spike and Suzy'. Paul Geerts joined the studio in 1968 and continued his work under his supervision.

When Vandersteen passed away in 1990, he left the comic to his employees. After Geerts, his assistant Marc Verhaegen continued the work in april 2002. He had worked with the studio since 1988 and created 32 comic books until February 2005, when the studio thought his stories became too dark (Verhaegen had written a story about Auschwitz) and he was let go immediately. Today, the main artwork is created by Luc Morjeau with scripts by Peter van Gucht and help from other talented artists like Dirk Stallaert (also artwork), Isabelle van Laerhoven and Sabine de Meyer (coloring), Peter Quirijnen (backgrounds) and Eric de Rop (inks).

Beside ‘Suske & Wiske’, Vandersteen created several other successful comic series.‘De Rode Ridder’ (‘The Red Knight’) is a comic set in medieval times. 229 Issues have been published since 1959 (issue 230 entitled ‘De Amazones’ will be on sale June 22).

Vandersteen created 'De Rode Ridder' based on the books by Leopold Vermeiren with artist Karel Biddeloo (who continued the series on his own from issue 44). After he passed away June 2004, Claus Scholtz took over, who had been working for the Vandersteen studio since the mid-eighties on 'Bessy' and 'Karl May'. Scripts for the series are since written by Dutch comic author Martin Lodewijk. Vandersteen's other series 'Bessy', a western featuring a Collie dog (made with Karel Verschuere), had 992 titles published in Germany. In all, he had over 25 series, selling more than 200 millon copies world wide! Recently Suske & Wiske have also become available in digital form, so you can read it on your Ipad 2!

Above left: Rode Ridder 230 will be released in June. Right: Belgium Comicshop and small press publisher Adhemar recently released an exclusive limited and numbered series of 25 new Bessy titles.

'Het Lijdende Leiden' will be for sale in September this year, a special collectors edition will be available in cooperation with the 'October 3rd organization', a special organization founded in 1886 celebrating the end of 'the Siege of Leiden' which happened on October 3, 1574. (during the Eighty Years' War 1568-1648). The organization currently has 14.000 members and celebrates it's 125th anniversary this year.

Check below for some more original artwork (pages six and twelve) from the forthcoming 'Het Lijdende Leiden' (thanks to Studio Vandersteen).

Le Mans update - horrifying crash!

First huge crash within the first hour of the race!  Allen McNish completely destroys his car when he crashes his Audi as he tried to get ahead of one of the Ferrari's. Check the vid beneath!

24 Hours of Le Mans this weekend!

With the ’24 Hours of Le Mans’ happening this weekend, I figured it would be an excellent moment to catch up with some of the old Vaillant comic books! Above: Audi R15 TDI, winner of Le Mans 2010.

For those of you not into the whole racing thing… ‘Le Mans’ is a 24 hour (!) car race, held annually since May 1923 in the North of France. It’s called the ‘Grand Prix of Endurance and efficiency’, with a complete distance of over 5000 Kilometres, six times longer than the Indianapolis 500 and 18 times a Formula One Grand prix. Trying not to crash your car at these velocities for 24 hours straight is extremely difficult!

The worst motor sport accident occured during the 1955 Le Mans race when Pierre Levegh's Mercedes collided with an Austin Healy driven by Lance Macklin. The car rammed the bank, exploded and its engine flew into the crowds, killing 80 spectators instantly!

French comic legend Jean Graton.

Michel Vaillant is a popular European comic about a race car driver who meets with all kinds of adrenaline raising danger, on and off the racing circuit. Created by famous French author Jean Graton since 1957, the comic appeared in legendary ‘Tintin’ magazine (Le Journal de Tintin, 1946 - 1988) and ranks among many of the European masterpieces of that era. Seventy volumes have since appeared and a movie based on the comic series was produced in 2003 by Luc Besson ('The Fifth Element', 'Transporter'), depicting the ‘24 Hours of Le Mans’, shot during the actual race of 2002.

Above: The orginal first edition of 'Le Grand Defi', Graton's first album from 1959 and the cover for the most recent volume 70: '24 Hours under the influence' from 2007, written and created by his son Phillipe and the guys at Studio Graton.

After a few shorter stories in ‘Tintin’ magazine, Graton created his first full length adventure in 1959,  published in comic book by Belgian publisher ‘Le Lombard’, which would remain Graton’s publisher until 1976. After an argument Graton switched to Paris based publisher Dargaud, known for the French edition of the ‘Tintin’ magazine and ‘Asterix’. Vaillant’s adventures were published by ‘Novedi’ during the early eighties, but soon after, Graton and his son Phillipe started their own publishing business ‘Graton Editeur’.

Above: various classic covers by Jean Graton for his stories in Tintin comics magazine during the fifties and sixties.

Graton is known for his extremely detailed artwork, depicting every aspect of his racing cars and elements from the surrounding industry through profound documentation. In 2004 he retired at the age of 80 and left the creation of the series in the hands of his son, Philippe and ‘Studio Graton’, home of artists Christian Papazoglakis, Nedzak Kamenica and Robert Paquet.
(Left) Graton was always to be found at the circuits, attending the races and befriending the drivers, who were inspired by his art and stories early on.

Original editions and artwork from Michel Vaillant by Graton are highly valued on the collector’s market, fectching the highest prices at auctions. Below: Original pages from Graton’s first volumes in the Vaillant series, ‘Le Grand Défi’ and 'Le Circuit de la Peur' (1961) sold online in 2008 through Artvalue.com.

Although most stories are still to be published in the USA, Studio Graton released three volumes in the English language: 'The Great Challenge' (the first volume), and the later stories 'China Moon' (68) and '24 Hours Under the Influence' (70). 'Le Pilote sans visage', the second volume from 1960 was published in the States by Mediavision in 1997 as a graphic novel ('The Mystery Driver').

The 79th '24 hours of Le Mans' will start this Saturday, June 11 at 15:00 CET and is broadcast live around the world in HD! Check their official website, visit the original Michel Vaillant site (in French) or check out the video beneath, shot at the Graton Studio during the release of the 70th album and Vaillant's 50th anniversary.