Dutch weekly versus Dutch monthly

[Daniel van Eijmeren]

HARRY FLUKS to ANDERS SIVEBAEK, 05 APRIL 2001:

>> About the letter column in DD Weekblad [..] most of the letters
>> are about things the readers experienced in dayly life or vactaions
>> and such. They are that more than questions about stories or such,
>> as would be in eg. the greek magazine Komix' letter columns. ?

> Right. Vactaions and such. 8-)
> The Dutch weekly aims at children of age 9 or 10.

The Dutch monthly ("Donald Duck Extra") seems to aim at more matured
readers, like students. Artists like Don Rosa, William Van Horn and
Marco Rota are mostly published in the monthly.

The monthly is quite different from the weekly, because it just
contains comics. There's no text-story, no letters page, and there
are no serialized stories. Unlike the weekly, the monthly doesn't
seem to aim at families at all. The thought behind the monthly is that
it's meant for the readers who want to read more than what's published
in the weekly. At least that's how they advertised the comic when it
started in 1986.

I think the weekly and the monthly make a nice pair, but unfortunately
we don't have any comics which contain interesting background information
like the "Year That Was" articles in the Gladstone's comics. For me, the
monthly would be the perfect comic for such pages.

>> Well, as my kind of fan of Rosa I wouldn't say I find any of his
>> covers horrid, only the overdrawn ones.

> So "your kind of fan" thinks *everything* Rosa does is wonderful?
> I wouldn't even say that about the work of Barks! I'm not a blind
> admirer of a person's work.

In The Netherlands, Barks' covers are also redrawn when used for the
weekly. I think this started somewhere in the late 1980s.

About ten years ago, when I was at a Dutch convention, I heard from the
Dutch editors that Barks' illustrated story "Go Slowly, Sands of Time"
would not be published in the weekly, because they dislike the art of 
the aging Scrooge.

Apparently the editors are very, *very* cautious about the material they
publish in the weekly, because it's the best-selling comic in The Netherlands.

There's also a lot of nostalgia involved, because a lot of parents seem
to buy the weekly to give their kids the same great comic as in their youth.
So, my guess is that the editors find the familial atmosphere of the
weekly more important than publishing artistic ("adult oriented") stories.

For that reason, I was a bit surprised to see Barks/Jippes' "Officer for
a Day" in the weekly. I think that if this wasn't a Barks story, they 
would not have published it in the weekly. The story is full of political
matters which young kids may not understand.

The popularity of the weekly also means that the editors have to be
careful to avoid complaints from readers. For example, some religious
readers object to the Madam Mim stories because (in their eyes) these
stories contain occultism. 

It's just a guess, but I think that the monthly does not have that
limitation. At least not as much as the family oriented weekly.


Best wishes,

--- Daniel