Dutch Donald Duck Weekly 60 years!

Congratulations to Editor-in-chief Thom Roep and his crew, who are this week celebrating the 60th anniversary of their magazine, the Dutch Donald Duck weekly!

Above: Cover artwork for this week's regular issue 43 (left) and the celebratory extra edition readers found enclosed (right). The special issue has a 35 page comic story by Jan Kruse and Maximino Tortajada Aguilar, featuring every known Disney character. (Cover artwork by Ulrich Schröder).

Exactly 60 years ago, in october 1952, the first issue of the Dutch Donald Duck weekly was published. The magazine that would introduce comics featuring popular Disney characters in the Netherland, grew from just a few comic pages, published in the Dutch women's magazine 'Margriet' in 1951, into an actual magazine in October 1952. Ten consecutive issues were published that year, followed by the first full run of 52 issues in 1953.

Above: the first three issues of the Dutch Donald Duck Weekly in 1952. Back then, the covers were still created using artwork from the American magazines. The famous first issue cover (left) has something of a history to it. It was recreated using the same Al Taliaferro/Carl Barks artwork, used for the very first 'Kalle Anka & Co' and  'Donald Duck & Co' in 1948 in Sweden and Norway. A year later, it was also used for the very first 'Anders And & Co' in March 1949 in Denmark. So it was pretty much tradition to use that cover for the very first Dutch weekly. Half the magazine was printed in black & white back then, and it still only had 24 pages. The first complete full color issue was published on March 6, 1954. 

The second issue was reused from Dell's 'Walt Disney Comics & stories' #129 and has some great art by Bob Grant, while the third issue bared cover artwork by Carl Buettner from WDC&S #126. Most of the covers in the first two years however were done almost exclusively by the famous Walt kelly, re-used of course from Dell's American counter part magazine. That is, until the 40th issue in 1953 introduced the first official 'Dutch' Disney artist, Endre Lukács (1940-2001), who did all cover artwork from then on. Endre (or Andre) was originally a commercial artist from Hungary, who had moved to the Netherlands in 1930. For almost thirty years, until 1982, he would draw covers and do comic stories, assisted by his daughter Chris, who would provide the coloring of all his artwork. His first comic story was an eight page Donald Duck story, published in the magazine on March 6,1954 in the tenth issue of that year. Surely during the 1950's, almost every cover had art by Lukács.

Above: typical covers from the 1950's with artwork by Lucáks. Left is his first, from DD weekly 40, 1953. On the right side the cover for issue 39 from 1955, which captures the first appearance of Tom Poes ('Tom Puss') and Ollie B. Bommel, comic book characters created by the famous Dutch artist Marten Toonder (1912-2005). During the entire sixty years there have only been a handful of stories featuring non-Disney character, but Toonder's comics always held a steady place in the back end of the magazine since then.

The first story, 'Tom Poes and the magic apprentice' started in Donald Duck Weekly 40, in October 1955. While the characters were already famous, as there had been many stories published in newspapers in a different format (story and dialogues below Black & white images, with typically three images in a panel). 72 stories were published,  which resulted in 31 comic books. Just like Disney, Marten Toonder had his own studio, and most of the stories were created by his staff of talented artists. 

Above left: Marten Toonder, Middle: Dick Matena. Right: Tom Poes and Olivier Bommel. Many of the later  comic stories were created by Dick Matena, who also drew a lot of Disney stories for the magazine. By the way the Toonder studio, just like the main character Olivier B. Bommel, was situated in an actual Castle (Castle Nederhorst). They also created lot's of animations, the most famous one, probably being their feature 'Als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel' ('Dexter the Dragon and Bumble the bear') which of course starred Tom Poes and Bommel and was released in 1983.

Sixty years of celebrations.

Over the course of sixty years, the magazine turned into one of the main supplier of Disney stories. A lot of Dutch artists became internationally known through the work they created for the magazine, most notably of course Daan Jippes, who was also Art Director for the magazine from 1975 to 1980. Afterwards he traveled to the US and worked on numerous animated features for the Disney studios. Today, most notable Disney authors working directly for the magazine the brothers Mau and Bas Heymans, Wilma van den Bosch and Michel Nadorp, who does all the in-house created cover artwork.
   

In the past the Dutch weekly has seen it's share of festivities throughout it's existence, which meant a special issue was published, often having with a contest of some sort and lot's of prizes to be had. Below is the three page cover by Daan Jippes from issue 43 in 1977, celebrating it's 25th anniversary.

In October 2002, the magazine celebrated it's 50th anniversary. Below the three page spread cover with art by  Michel Nadorp.