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