Libelle #27/1981
Libelle #27/1981 is one weekly installment in Jan Kruis's Jan, Jans en de Kinderen, the most enduring and culturally embedded Dutch comic strip of the twentieth century. Running continuously in Libelle since 12 December 1970 under VNU Tijdschriften, the strip used the warm, recognisable world of the Tromp family to mirror shifting Dutch social norms — from traditional housewife roles to working mothers, divorce, and multiculturalism — at a moment when Libelle itself was one of the Netherlands' most widely read weekly magazines. By 1981 the strip was at the heart of its prime run under Jan Kruis's solo hand, and this issue's indexed cast — Catootje, De rode kater, Harold, and Lotje — places it squarely in the era when the supporting roster around the Tromp household was being actively expanded. Harold, a well-off boy from a divorced household, is documented as entering the Tromp's neighbourhood in album 12 of the collected series, and weekly installments published in mid-1981 fall precisely within the window that album 12 collects.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Jan Kruis launched *Jan, Jans en de Kinderen* after Libelle editor-in-chief Peter Middeldorp — who knew Kruis from the latter's earlier work on the Belgian comics magazine Robbedoes — approached him in 1970 to produce a weekly family gag page for the women's weekly. Kruis modelled the strip closely on his own household: his two daughters Leontine and Andrea became Catootje and Karlijn, his wife Els helped colour the pages, and the Tromp family's red tomcat and dachshund Lotje mirrored the Kruis family's own pets. VNU, which published Libelle, declined to produce the strip in book form, so independent publisher Joop Wiggers took out a mortgage on his house to fund the first album in 1972 — beginning a book series that would eventually run to over sixty collected volumes.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Publisher: VNU Tijdschriften, Amsterdam — the large Dutch publishing conglomerate that owned Libelle from its mid-century consolidation until Sanoma acquired the title in 2001.
- Strip featured: *Jan, Jans en de Kinderen* by Jan Kruis, a weekly single-page gag comic first published in Libelle on 12 December 1970 and still running today under Studio Jan Kruis.
- Catootje Tromp: preteen daughter of the Tromp family, modelled on Kruis's real daughter Leontine; a core protagonist whose school-age perspective drives many of the strip's social-commentary gags.
- De rode kater (The Red Cat): the Tromp family's large ginger tomcat, formally named Edgar Allan Poes (a pun on Edgar Allan Poe and the Dutch word for 'pussycat'), known for philosophical monologue pages that Kruis drew when pressed for time — one of the strip's most distinctive running devices.
- Lotje: the Tromp family's dachshund, notable for a recurring 'personality disorder' gag in which the dog believes himself to be historical or fictional figures including Napoleon, Diego Maradona, and Sinterklaas.
- Harold: a recurring supporting character — a well-off boy from a divorced household — documented in sources as moving into the Tromp neighbourhood in album 12 of the collected series, placing his introduction in the weekly Libelle installments of approximately 1981.
- Jan Kruis based the strip's characters, pets, and domestic setting directly on his own family life; his wife Els assisted by colouring the pages during the strip's early years.
- The strip won Kruis the 1980 Stripschap Prize from Dutch comics appreciation society Het Stripschap, reflecting the series' standing in Dutch comics culture at exactly the period this issue was published.
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