Dutch stories and ... more dull numbers

[Simo Malinen]

>> In last year even the Dutch weekly "Donald Duck" published 
>> more pages from Egmont than Dutch pages!
>
>Anyway, I think that currently
>- the best Dutch stories are better than the best Egmont stories 
> (not counting Mickey stories - we see very few of them here in 
> Holland. And not counting Rosa stories either - they're a 
> different dimension...);
> - the average Dutch story is just as dull as the average Egmont story;
> - the worst Dutch stories are better than the worst Egmont stories 
> (easy to say, since Egmont is producing so much more).
>
>Vicar is too dull these days. I never liked Tello that much, and
>Bancells/Santanach art is something I really *dis*like...
>Branca is (still) great!
>
>--Harry.
>

Uh, oh. There seems to be a quite general idea of that:

i) Stories coming from HOLLAND are GREAT, SUPERIOR BY THEIR 
QUALITY and really quite like something what Carl Barks used 
to do. (RIGHT?!)

ii) Stories coming from DANMARK are DULL, BORING and totally 
meaningless NONSENSE you don't need to account at all.

Why is this so? Are the Dutch stories really better than the 
Danish stories - and how? Where's the difference? Is the truth 
out there?

This list below is viewing the top-25 of the most productive 
artists drawing Dutch stories H 90001 - 99295 and H 20001 - 
20170: (total 2357 stories known by Inducks -files, covers 
are not counted):

877pages (307stories) drawn by: Mau Heymans
785 (321) Comicup Studio
487 (73) Bas Heymans
413 (110) José Colomer Fonts
407 (157) Freddy Milton
387 (128) Jaap Stavenuiter
345 (119) Bardon (Studio)
294 (99) José Ramon Bernado
242 (68) Santiago Barreira
221 (16) Daan Jippes
205 (44) Sander Gulien
128 (75) Carmen Pérez
124 (8) Ben Verhagen
95 (28) Valentin Doménech
94 (35) Dick Matena
83 (27) Prodima
79 (120) Marga Querol Manzano
77 (17) Hans van Oudenaarden
57 (55) Wilma van den Bosch
43 (12) Blai
39 (13) Conrado Lazaro
39 (5) Jan Gulbransson
31 (25) Michel Nadorp
31 (9) Daniel Pérez
24 (24) Guido Matena

Some of the artists mentioned above are not drwaing only 
Dutch stories: Colomer has been one of the most productive 
artists working to Egmont since 80's. Artists such as José 
Ramon Bernado, Valentino, Marga Manzano or Conrado Lazaro 
have not worked only for Egmont but also for Italians via 
Comicup - and Santiago Barreira's style reminds astonishingly 
the style of the Vicar's inker team - -

This second list below is showing the amounts of Dutch 
stories H 90001 - 99295 and H 20001 - 20170 sorted out by 
their pages:

0,25 pages - 243 stories
0,5 pages - 2 stories
1 page - 834 stories
2 pages - 316 stories
3 pages - 235 stories
4 pages - 364 stories
5 pages - 146 stories
6 pages - 44 stories
7 pages - 14 stories
8 pages - 16 stories
9 pages - 14 stories
10 pages - 67 stories
11 pages - 9 stories
12 pages - 17 stories
13 pages - 6 stories
14 pages - 4 stories
15 pages - 4 stories
16 pages - 7 stories
17 pages - 0 stories
18 pages - 2 stories
19 pages - 3 stories
20 pages - 3 stories
21 pages - 1 story
22 pages - 3 stories
23 pages - 3 stories
24 or more - none

As it is shown, Dutch are mainly concentrated to produce 
short stories ("fillers") - Note that there are only some 
150 stories having 8-16 pages. That's not very high number 
from a over ten year period.

It's not only a recent trend that Egmont stories are being 
found from Dutch weeklies:
Here's the top-30 list showing the most published artists 
and the amounts of their published pages and stories in 
Dutch weeklies 1/1995 - 52/2000 (covers are not counted):

1596pages (152stories) drawn by Victor Arriagada Rios
473 (186) Mau Heymans
431 (135) Comicup Studio
345 (66) José Colomer Fonts
308 (34) Daniel Branca
275 (43) Bas Heymans
273 (90) Bardon
248 (44) Jack Bradbury
237 (63) Santiago Barreira
206 (74) Freddy Milton
204 (37) José Ramon Bernado
191 (25) Carl Barks
183 (33) Sander Gulien
177 (35) Al Hubbard
155 (44) Floyd Gottfredson
134 (33) Paul Murry
126 (75) Carmen Pérez
107 (43) Jaap Stavenuiter
106 (44) Al Taliaferro
89 (7) Daan Jippes
78 (21) Jorge David Redo
74 (18) Valentin Doménech
73 (18) Antonio Gil-Bao
70 (17) Tony Strobl
65 (15) Santiago Scalabroni
57 (13) José Tello Gonzalez
55 (6) William Van Horn
52 (13) Juan Torres Perez
52 (7) Tino Santanach Hernandez
49 (8) Romano Scarpa
49 (3) Ben Verhagen

Note that there are no missing lines above. In Dutch weekly 
during last six years Vicar's dull Egmont stories have been 
seen over three times than what have the most published 
Dutchman's (Heymans) stories!
Since the Dutch stories are an average so short, it's not a
miracle that Dutch editors are using Vicar's and Branca's 
stories as weeklies first leading stories.

This table below shows the amounts of pages and stories from 
Danmark and from Holland published in Dutch weekly 1/1990 - 
12/2001:

year: D (Danmark) - H (Holland)
1990: 444pages (74stories) - 456pages (154stories)
1991: 407 (71) - 509 (165)
1992: 451 (76) - 522 (116)
1993: 499 (78) - 504 (165)
1994: 405 (55) - 482 (157)
1995: 511 (68) - 511 (174)
1996: 334 (46) - 794 (266)
1997: 398 (51) - 705 (248)
1998: 560 (69) - 598 (241)
1999: 444 (78) - 418 (222)
2000: 664 (98) - 502 (220)
2001: 138 (21) - 133 (53)

As seen here, Dutch weekly contains stories from Holland and 
from Danmark quite equally. Western -stories are having only 
some 100-300 pages per year. The most remarkable point is the 
lenght of stories from these two sources: not many fillers 
from Egmont are being seen in Dutch weekly.


CONCLUSIONS: ------------------- - -

- Some of the artists of the Dutch stories are familiar also 
from stories produced in Danmark and Italy.
- Dutch are not producing lot's of material for weeklies. 
- The stories Dutch produce are mainly short fillers, long 
adventureous stories are (nearly) rare.

Leading: =>

- Are the writers behind the quality of the Dutch stories?
- Is the quality of the Dutch stories so high after all?
- Dutch are not producing even half of the material needed to 
fill all the weeklies of a one single year.
- What would happen to the quality of the Dutch stories if they 
would need to increase their production?

- If Jippes' Barks -remake stories were not counted would the 
best Dutch stories be still better than the best Egmont stories?
:

Somehow I think all stories are needed. Weeklies eats a huge 
amount of pages every year - all the pages Barks draw wouldn't 
last more than 3-4 years - famous almost-Barks-like stories 
drawn by Jippes & Milton from the 1970's to the mid-80's would 
last only 2-3 months - It sure is fun to get something new to 
read every week. 

(In a long run) how would the popularity of the Northern Europe 
weeklies go if they were compiled by using only "high-quality 
comics from Holland" and Barks re-re-re-re-re-re-prints - and 
they came out only once or twice per month? (quite like in the 
USA in the 90's)
It's also likely that nobody was boring enough to read this 
message this far. >(

 - Simo