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.