Donald Duck #2/1955
Donald Duck weekblad #2/1955 is an early issue of one of the Netherlands' most culturally enduring periodicals, appearing during the magazine's formative third full year of publication. By this point De Geïllustreerde Pers had only recently (issue 10/1954) moved the magazine to full-colour production, making all 1955 issues part of the first generation of fully colour Dutch Duck comics. The year 1955 itself was a turning point for the series: later that same year (issue 40/1955) the magazine introduced the first non-Disney strip content, Tom Poes by Marten Toonder, marking the editorial ambition to build a broader Dutch comics culture around the Disney core. The presence of characters such as Gijs Gans, Goofy, and Mickey Mouse alongside Donald and his nephews reflects the weekly's early mission of introducing the full Barks-era Duckburg cast to Dutch readers who encountered these characters largely for the first time in this format.
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De Geïllustreerde Pers launched the Dutch Donald Duck weekblad on 25 October 1952 after publisher Bartel van de Velde was inspired by the Scandinavian Disney weeklies, particularly the Danish Gutenberghus model, and secured a licence from Walt Disney. The earliest issues were filled almost entirely with translated Carl Barks stories from American Dell comics, and the first Dutch-produced covers and supplementary content were created by Hungarian-born illustrator Endre Lukács, who gave the magazine a distinctly local visual flavour — in 1955, for instance, he drew the first Sinterklaas cover. The Dutch naming conventions for all major characters (Kwik, Kwek en Kwak; Gijs Gans; Willie Wortel; Guus Geluk; Oom Dagobert) were established by the original team of translators at De Geïllustreerde Pers, grounding the American material in a recognisably Dutch idiom from the very start.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published in early 1955 by De Geïllustreerde Pers (Amsterdam), the original Dutch-language licensee of the Disney weekly format, founded on a model inspired by Scandinavian Disney weeklies.
- By 1955 the magazine had been fully in colour since issue 10/1954, making this one of the first generations of fully colour issues in the run's history.
- The issue features Donald Duck (Oom Donald), his nephews Kwik, Kwek en Kwak (Huey, Dewey & Louie), Gijs Gans (Gus Goose), Goofy, and Mickey Mouse — all characters introduced to Dutch readers primarily through this weekly series.
- Gijs Gans (Dutch name for Gus Goose) is a Carl Barks-associated character who first appeared in newspaper strips on 9 May 1938, drawn by Al Taliaferro; his recurring role as Grandma Duck's lazy farmhand was established in comics from the 1940s onward.
- Content in 1955 issues was drawn predominantly from translated Carl Barks stories originally published in American Dell comics such as Walt Disney's Comics & Stories, which had been the source material for the Dutch weekly since its 1952 launch.
- The year 1955 was a landmark for the series as a whole: issue 40/1955 introduced Tom Poes by Marten Toonder — the first non-Disney strip ever published in the magazine — signalling the editorial expansion beyond the Disney-only format.
- Dutch character names used in this issue, including Kwik/Kwek/Kwak and Gijs Gans, were coined by De Geïllustreerde Pers's first generation of translators and have remained the standard Dutch versions of these characters to the present day.
- The 1955 run was subsequently reprinted in facsimile as part of De Geïllustreerde Pers's 50th-anniversary collector series (released in two volumes covering the full 1955 annual run), making it one of the earlier years of the Dutch Donald Duck to be formally archived and reprinted.