* translated editions and additional information *
from Piet Wijn and Thom Roep
Bermudillo, Timpe Tampert, Daniel Dudek, Gammelpot, Dusty Dabbert, Teobald, Nicky Bommel, Danny Doodle, Bobo Pak Janggut ..... and Barbie, published by the United Arab Emirates
See for the Dutch website: CLICK HERE
Key dates and Info trivia in Douwe Dabbert's history - Thom the small talk, Piet the illustrations
Twelve key dates in Douwe Dabbert's history
Info trivia in Douwe Dabbert's history
An alliterative name: From Bas Blommert via Grim Grabbert to Douwe “Tabberd” and finally Douwe Dabbert. From a side character to an established hero from page 13 - Donald Duck #1, 1975, who wouldn't leave for 26 years.
In the 1974 Donald Duck #52, Douwe Dabbert was announced very covertly.
In Donald Duck 1975 #1, in addition to the story itself, the first announcement of The Spoiled Princess was made.
Did you know, that on Ameland there is a grave of DOUWE Roep ... Is that a sheer coincidence, or not?
Princess Pauline was named after the first girl Thom Roep dated. He was then 6 years old.
Most people can be compared to an open book, only reading requires some effort, said the then editor-in-chief of Eppo, Frits van der Heide.
In The Spoiled Princess, Pauline smears shoe polish on a doorknob on page 2. The author came up with this idea thanks to a mischievous little boy he had known in his youth. He made the neighborhood unsafe by smearing dog turds on doorknobs .....
The second Douwe Dabbert story “The Hidden Animal Kingdom” earned less positive letters from the editors, because in the story innocent animals are eaten. Nevertheless, the album edition of this story would become the best-selling album in the Douwe Dabbert series.
Drawn by Piet Wijn, Ludu Lafhart looked remarkably like Thom's former Dutch teacher, Mr. Van W., living in The Hague. A man who was certainly not among Thom's favorites, but vice versa the same was true.
Did you know, that Thom Roep named King Isobald's daughter, Liselotte, after his own daughter, Lotte?
In "Gateway to the East" a miraculous coincidence provided an approachable companion. On plate 10, Piet Wijn drew seven little men freed by Douwe, but on plate 12, in which the witch Wredulia locks them in a bottle again, he accidentally drew one bottle too few. Thom and Piet discovered this by accident only a few weeks later, and so on plate 20 one of the little men was able to crawl out of Douwe's knapsack and take on the role of co-player.
Thom added Ludo Knudde as someone "small, puffy, with stringy blond color hair and pig eyes." He had no one actually in mind, but once drawn, the resemblance to a former boy next door was striking.
Тот-кто-может-писать-замечательные-рассказы-Дуве-Дабберта (He-who-can-write-wonderful-Douwe-Dabbert-stories)
The name Nama, Douwes' main co-star in "The Sea to the South," takes its name from a population group. The Nama were called Hottentots in the past. Their language was also called Nama. Originally, the Nama inhabited only the Orange River area in the extreme south of Namibia and extreme north of South Africa.
Settlement New-Scagon in “The Sea to the South.” Did you know, that New-Scagon here refers to the new theater in Schagen, called Scagon?
But Scagon is also very sometimes found on very old maps and in old documents.... Compare the name Callantsoog, which used to be called Cleyn Callinghe op 't Oghe.
In "The Way to West," the ship Vrouwe Margaretha, with Amsterdam as its home port, is named after Thom Roep's wife, Sonja-Margaretha, born and raised in Amsterdam.
Better well nicked than bad invented, they sometimes say...... Whether this also applies to the movie Jumanji (1995) starring Robin Williams, among others, remains to be seen. There are a number of scenes in the film that bear some striking similarities to "The messy work of Pief"......
Did you know that "Five unpleasant meetings" was the working title for "On the Trail of Evil Things"?
Did you know, that on page 37 of "The Lady in the Frame" Thom Roep featured the Elven King Oberon as a tribute to Publisher Oberon because he had always been a great employer for both Thom and Piet.
Did you know that "The Gateway to the East" in Donald Duck ran to as many as 55 pages? And that the same issue in Spanish (La puerta de Oriente) was shortened to 48 pages - 8 pages in total - by Editorial Bruguera, for reasons of saving paper?
It is known, that Douwe Dabbert meets various persons again in other editions, but it did not occur to me, that Teun the blacksmith and his family, who appear as extras in "Douwe Dabbert's Christmas Adventure", also played a minor role in the first album "The spoiled princess" .....
The fact that the nipple of Douwes' belt sometimes turns out the wrong way is discussed at length in De Bouterbode #44. It was a blind spot of Piet Wijn's, which he also sees happen sometimes in other work.... It is not a particular period but just a persistent recurring mistake.....
It turns out, that Thom, being left-handed also often wears his belt "the wrong way around", as that buckles easier!!!
One joke that Dickie Dapper experienced at the time was loved by Thom Roep. Dickie asks an elderly female for directions. She doesn't know. When Dickie has already walked a good distance, he is called back, after which the female tells him that she asked her sister and that she doesn't know either..... Thom has always hoped that someone would ask him for directions. Unfortunately, until he once again led Douwe down his lonely path and he was able to make the joke there anyway. See "The Witches of the Day before Yesterday."
In a number of albums, Douwe Dabbert has experienced recurring environmental elements of nature, such as the four directions of the wind (4, 6, 7, 8 and 13), in which the four elements of earth, water, air and fire play a role....... But he has also experienced conditions from cold to heat in four albums (18, 19, 20, 21).
The fortress of Casius Gaius.... Where did that name come from? ..... Thom had a children's book "Caius is a donkey" in his bookshelf. The name seemed ideally suited to the story. Gaius, a variant of "scum" doesn't sound so positive, but his colleagues thought it sounded good. Caius Gaius, however, sounded too rhyme-like to him again, and so it became Casius. Funny thing is, that in 2016, Thom discovered, that real Cassius Gaius did exist.... "Gaius Cassius Longinus was a very popular name in the gens Cassia.
Not only Douwe Dabbert is internationally oriented. Even Thom knows how to thank people in a language from one of Douwe Dabbert's stories (ご清聴ありがとうございました)......... (Japanese: "Thank you for your attention")
Album 15 is the first long adventure that Piet Wijn drew entirely with his left hand after his stroke (1987) that prevented him from sketching and inking with his right hand, and switched to his left.
This is also the issue where Douwe says goodbye to Paul, where he stayed for a while
Where do some of the names used in the various Douwe Dabbert albums come from? Here are some references:
From "The deceit of Balthasar" we know Ruben. Named after Thom's boy next door, 11 years old in 1990. This Ruben Houkes would later become a renowned judoka.
The clumsy Simon owed his name to a wonderful older colleague. And inn "The Red Eye" got its name because Thom suffered from an eye infection for weeks while writing.
At the end of "Back to the Secret Animal Kingdom" Torm the bear brags about his wrestling exploits at the Kommersbonten fair .... That there is an annual fair there we know from Suske and Wiske The Tuf Tuf Club.
In the "Masked Chief", Douwe notes that he has never visited the town of Lommenstee .... Named for Joan Lommen, 32 years Thom's conscience and deputy on the Walt Disney editorial staff.
Hasselaarsdijk is named after Frans Hasselaar, editor at Donald Duck.
Field guard Roelofs has the same last name as the then editor of Donald Duck.
Constable Steenstra and farmer Beekman are named after Donald's editorial secretary at the time and Jos Beekman first editor at EPPO, respectively.
In 1997, the Suske and Wiske album "Magnificent Pjotr" came out.... Pjotr is indeed called the leading character in the "Ship of Ice".
Quite in the beginning of "The Closet with a 1.000 Doors" magician Balthasof utters the following sentence: "Whipped cream? What in Jippes' name are we going to get? ...... A sincere and a personal tribute by Thom to Daan Jippes, the famous cartoonist and cartoon employee.
Comic book #22, "Back to the Hidden Animal Kingdom" was by the way pre-published in Donald Duck with the title "Twenty-two years later". A tribute by Thom Roep and Piet Wijn to Alexandre Dumas with his "Twenty Years Later" as the sequel to "The Three Musketeers".
Anyway, the album "Back to the Hidden Animal Kingdom" is full of winks. For example, the main characters from "Alone in the World" play a part and there is a bear who performed at the fair in Bommerskonten as a reference to the village of Bommerskonten and the fair in Suske en Wiske: De Tuf Tuf Club (1952).
The cover of Het Verborgen Dierenrijk was designed by Daan Jippes, the illustrator of Twee voor Thee - The fairy-tale theme and story are somewhat reminiscent of Jommeke 32: In Pimpeltjesland (1967) and even more so of Jommeke 14: Op Heksenjacht (1963) by Disney enthusiast Jef Nys. But Jommeke 92: Het Aards Paradijs (only published in 1979!) about a hidden realm where hostile, talking animals have to live with each other is the most telling comparison to a Flemish cannon - Although Douwe's magic knapsack (still given to him by his grandfather Sebastiaan) easily lends itself to an all-solver in the form of a deus ex machina, the authors wisely use the magic tool to change the course of the story. Solutions must come mostly through Douwes wit, ingenuity and devising stratagems. Fortunately, the magic knapsack never acquires the allure of a Jerommeke (Suske en Wiske) or a Jan Spier or Captain Oliepul (Nero) who promptly invade a story to provide the solution in absolute need. Volume 23: The Amazing Frame Story from 2001 is the last album in the series for now. But a second heart attack gets in the way during the album's creation. After long deliberation, Dick Matena completes the final story. Anyway, princess Pauline from volume 1 plays a leading role in it again, more or less closing the circle.
Douwe Dabbert normally has a bald head, but in the story he tells he is younger and still has a full head of hair. Only on page 24 does he suddenly in the past also have a bald crown.
Douwe Dabbert definitely lives on. Even Prime Minister Mark Rutte mentioned Douwe's name in a TV interview (he didn't have a magic knapsack), and several quizzes on television included a question about Douwe. Even The Dodo Museum on the island of Mauritius shows a picture of Douwe with his dodo from album number 7. There are furthermore retail stores, cafes, a restaurant in Indonesia, ships, accessories (tie, tie pin, clip, puzzles, shopping bags, figurines, clock, playing card, bookmark, stamps, .....) and even a street in Almere is named after Douwe...... All in homage to Piet Wijn and Thom Roep.
Boreas, the North Wind from issue 23 is named after Boreas, the Greek God of the wind. He is one of the most famous wind gods.
During Piet Wijn's farewell, Thom Roep delivered a warm farewell speech ....
Dear Piet ...
That someone who was so good could remain so humble....
That someone who was always so acclaimed always remained so calm....
Self-glorification was not something you did, Piet! Just act normal was your motto....
You weren't much of a talker either. Yes, you were good at talking with you, because you LISTENED and only then answered. At your home as far as I can tell, and especially when you came to me at the editorial office with new Douwe Dabbert pages. 'Beautiful, Pete! Beautiful! Very nice!”, I'd say. And then it sounded, “Well, thank you!” and you waited for the stream of words I poured out on you. About the ups and downs of Donald Duck, any gossip about your fellow cartoonists and strong samples from comics land.
It was amazing that when we met, there was quite an age difference. I was 22 and you were 45. You were about the same age as my parents, but that age difference soon disappeared because of shared interests; comics, illustration, movies, painting....
When I joined the weekly magazine Donald Duck in 1973, a number of dreams became a reality. For me, a comic book fan since I was five years old, it meant that I could make my hobby my job and suddenly I saw all my heroes, the cartoonists that is, in person, because the editors of Pep, Sjors and Donald Duck were housed on the same floor.
Almost all my heroes, because I never saw you, Piet, the first year. In fact, you worked for Tina and that magazine was on another floor. You then made the comic strip “Jennifer Scott” for the girls' magazine and I liked it so much that I bravely went to ask for a copy every week, from which I tore the pages of Jennifer and put them in a collector's folder.
That caught the eye of the then Duck editor-in-chief, Paul Deckers, and he gave me the opportunity and the honor of creating an outline for a fairy tale story to be published in Donald Duck.
And that became Douwe Dabbert's first adventure!
No one at that time could have guessed that Douwe would eventually appear in 23 albums and Douwe would gain a whole fan base at home and abroad. It became a long, pleasant and successful collaboration, where there was never an unkind word and two souls had one thought. I provided the talk and you provided the pictures. Exactly as it suited our characters.
'Piet Wijn is best known for his creation Douwe Dabbert' was said on TV and in the newspapers a few weeks ago. That's true, but let's be honest; that's partly due to the fact that the strip was pre-published in Donald Duck, a magazine that always reached between 300,000 and 400,000 families weekly and therefore had far more readers than the other magazines you worked for. Douwe was and is surely no better than the wonderful comics you created with my fellow scriptwriters Andries Brand, Patty Klein, Paul Deckers and Marjolein Winkel, by no means mentioning them all.
Because ALL your drawing work, Piet, everything you put on paper, has the same quality and belongs to the classics.
And the reason for this?
Quite simply. Besides craftsmanship, your drawings contain a good dose of old-fashioned coziness and warmth. And that remains fascinating, even if society changes so quickly. However fast-paced or digital the world may develop, there is fortunately still room and need for nostalgia and romance. To old-fashioned, homey, coziness! Think of a glass of red wine by the fireplace, hot chocolate with ice skating, enjoying illustrated fairy tales (on real paper and not on a screen) and traditional St. Nicholas evenings with poems and surprises. Traditions full of atmosphere that fortunately are still passed on from generation to generation. And the drawing work of you, Piet, belongs in this list. Craftsmanship that is timeless and evokes satisfied and happy smiles!
Piet Wijn, you have made history without too many words, but with thousands of beautiful illustrations forever!
“He who is lovable” ..... ‘He who created wonderful stories in Douwe Dabbert’....... ‘He who sent me lots of information’ ... “He who always replies despite his busy schedule” .... “He who shows the way” ..........
