Libelle #50/1976

History

Jan Kruis launched the strip on 12 December 1970 after being commissioned by Libelle editor Peter Middeldorp, who knew Kruis from the latter's earlier work on the Belgian comics magazine Robbedoes. Because Kruis was simultaneously supplying illustration work to rival women's weekly Margriet, he signed the earliest episodes under his middle name 'Andries' to avoid conflict. When publisher VNU (which owned Libelle) declined to issue the strips in collected album form, Kruis's friend Joop Wiggers self-financed an initial print run of 30,000 copies in 1972, launching an independent album series that grew into one of the best-selling Dutch comic franchises. By 1976, the strip had shed its early reliance on recycled visual gags (some borrowed from Kruis's earlier Tintin-magazine strip 'Gregor') and settled into the dialogue-driven, socially observant style that would define it for the rest of its run.

Trivia · 8 facts

• The strip appearing in Libelle #50/1976 is 'Jan, Jans en de Kinderen' by Jan Kruis, which debuted in Libelle on 12 December 1970 and has appeared weekly in the magazine ever since.
• The family cast — father Jan Tromp, mother Jans Tromp, teenage daughter Karlijn, and younger daughter Catootje — was modelled by Kruis on his own family; Karlijn and Catootje correspond to his real daughters Leontine and Andrea.
• The red tom-cat (De rode kater), dachshund Lotje, and Siamese cat Loedertje are the family's recurring animal characters; Loedertje is documented as joining the cast from approximately the fifth collected album onward, placing her introduction in the mid-1970s and making issues from this period early appearances of the full pet ensemble.
• Kobus, the white pony belonging to Catootje, is a later addition tied specifically to the family's move to the province of Drenthe (documented in album 7 of the collected series), so his appearance in mid-1976 weekly episodes would be among his earliest appearances if the album timeline aligns.
• By 1976, Stripschrift — the journal of the Dutch comics fan association — gave the strip its first dedicated coverage, marking the year the broader Dutch comics community formally recognised 'Jan, Jans en de Kinderen' as a culturally significant work.
• The strip was published in Libelle by VNU Tijdschriften but collected in album form by independent publisher Joop Wiggers Producties B.V., because VNU itself had initially declined the album project.
• Kruis drew the strip solo until 1999, when he handed the creative reins to Studio Jan Kruis; spin-offs later included a 2005 stage musical, a 1985–1986 animated television series on TROS, Dutch postage stamps issued in 1998, and a newspaper strip focused on De rode kater ('De Rode Kater', Sp!ts, 2010–2014).
• A fictional holiday introduced in the strip, informally known as 'Saint Pancake' (Pannenkoekdag), gained a real-world cult following among Dutch readers, illustrating the strip's unusual degree of cultural penetration.

Cast · 8 characters

Full credits