Saturday, April 08, 2017

Klein Grut

Saturday Leftover Day.

Found this in the online archives of a Dutch newspaper. I am in the process of finding out what it is, but here is what I have now. The strip ran from October 18 1960 (a tuesday) until April 18 1961. It was signed Droc and the copyright belongs to ABC Press, which was a photo syndicate in Amsterdam. The owner of that syndicate was a Hungarian refugee who had started the bussiness in 1939. So I am not sure if this is by a Dutch artist or bought abroad. The characters and concept are the same as Peanuts, but diferent. There seem to be quite a few 'feminist' gags, with the girl character talking about coming the president. Which is odd, because we as a country were (and still are) a monarchy.

Translation: This strip is politically neutral.

Translation: Will you come to my birthday party?/No/Why not?/I can't find anyone to look after my father and mother./They can be a problem, those parents.


Translation: I should go and see a docter for this stiff neck.

Translation: And then... they got married... and lived happily ever after./Not in the movies!

Translation:Thinks: Burglars!//I really should go and see a vetanarian for those nerves!

Translation: My doll is broken. Can you fix her?//Look Bennie, Simon fixed my Precilla. Isn;t that clever?/My, isn't the world full of clever technicians!

Translation:I'll throw it in./What do you mean, a fault? Throwing the ball back into the field is supposed to be done with your hands!

3 comments:

Diego Cordoba said...

This does indeed look a lot like someone trying out a Peanuts sort of strip. The gag about the stiff neck I've seen a couple of times before, even, if I'm not wrong, in a Mafalda strip which comes from Argentina.

As to where some gags or jokes originated is impossible to tell, but some jokes travel all around the world and no one knows where they originally came from.

Ger Apeldoorn said...

Yes, the stiff neck joke is a classic and I don't even know how old it is.

comicstripfan said...

The style reminds me very much of that of Charles Schulz' early 1950's Peanuts - by around the 1960's, contemporary with these strips, Peanuts seemed to have what I can only describe as a more "refined" or "polished" look which remained more or less constant throughout the strip's later history.