Dick Matena

Dick Matena was a Dutch comics artist and writer born on 24 April 1943, who over a career spanning more than five decades established himself as one of the Netherlands' most versatile and prolific figures in the medium. He died on 26 April 2026, just two days after his eighty-third birthday.

Matena entered the industry in 1967 and worked across a remarkably broad range of genres — from humor strips to erotic comics — accumulating credits as artist, colorist, inker, letterer, and writer on nearly 400 issues. His work appeared regularly in major Dutch comics publications including Pep, Donald Duck, Eppo, and Sjors en Sjimmie Stripblad, and he contributed significantly to the science-fiction adventure series Storm.

He published under several pseudonyms throughout his career, among them A. den Dooier, John Kelly, and Dick Richards — a flexibility that allowed him to move between very different tonal registers without confusing his readership.

Though his output was wide-ranging, Matena became particularly respected for his literary comic adaptations, translating celebrated novels into sequential art with evident care for the source material. This body of work gave his later career a distinct cultural weight, bridging popular comics readership and serious literature in a way few Dutch cartoonists managed as consistently. His active years ran from 1967 through 2023, closing a career of uncommon range and durability.