Plezier met Sjors #7
Plezier met Sjors #7 (1967) is a hardcover showcase of the De Spaarnestad anthology ecosystem at its peak, gathering under one roof the flagship Dutch strip Sjors en Sjimmie alongside British imports that shaped a generation of Dutch readers. It documents a pivotal cultural moment: Frans Piët's Sjors en Sjimmie was in its final years under its originator — Piët retired in 1969 — making late-1960s annuals like this one among the last primary-source documents of his uninterrupted stewardship of the longest-running Dutch comic series. The volume's multinational roster, mixing homegrown Dutch storytelling with British adventure and humour strips, illustrates exactly how De Spaarnestad's Sjors brand served as a conduit for European comics cross-pollination throughout the 1960s.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
De Spaarnestad, the Haarlem-based Catholic publishing house, had been producing annual Sjors collections since the strip's earliest album appearances; the Plezier met Sjors series gathered serialised content from the weekly Sjors magazine into 160-page hardcover annuals each year. Frans Piët, who had been drawing Sjors since 1938 and introduced Sjimmie in 1949, remained the strip's creative anchor throughout this period, while the anthology format allowed De Spaarnestad to repackage British licensed material — Robot Archie, Billie Turf — alongside original Dutch content for a broad young readership. The publisher's studio model, rooted in Haarlem, meant that artists like Bert Bus worked in-house alongside Piët, giving the annuals a consistent editorial identity even as individual strips came from British syndicates.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published 1967 by De Spaarnestad (Tijdschriften Uitgevers Maatschappij), Haarlem; 160 pages, hardcover, partially coloured — the standard format for the Plezier met Sjors annual series.
- Frans Piët wrote and drew the Sjors en Sjimmie episodes; this is late-career Piët — he retired from the strip in 1969 after more than three decades, making these 1967 annuals among the last to carry his original work.
- Sjors en Sjimmie originated as a Dutch-made continuation of Martin Branner's American strip Perry Winkle / Winnie Winkle (1938); Piët introduced Sjimmie — an African boy Sjors met at a circus — in 1949, after which the series was retitled Sjors en Sjimmie.
- Sally, indexed as a character in this issue, is the guardian figure of Sjors and Sjimmie in Piët's continuity, raised alongside the Colonel who is a recurring foil for the boys' pranks.
- Archie de man van staal (Robot Archie) is a British strip originally created by writer E. George Cowan and artist Ernest (Ted) Kearon for the UK weekly Lion (debut 23 February 1952); the Dutch edition began serialisation in Sjors in 1959, with De Spaarnestad collecting it in albums from 1960 onward — Ted Ritchie and Ken Dale are the human co-protagonists who operate the remote-controlled robot built by Professor C.R. Ritchie.
- Billie Turf is the Dutch localisation of Billy Bunter, the rotund British schoolboy created by Charles Hamilton; the strip appeared in Sjors from 1955 onward, drawn primarily by Reg Parlett, with the character's schoolmaster Mr. Quelch rendered as Meester Kwel in Dutch.
- The credited artist roster for this volume (per LastDodo) includes Juan Arranz Aguado, Ernest (Ted) Kearon, Don Lawrence, Reg Parlett, Frans Piët, and Carol Voges — an unusually international mix of British and Dutch talent assembled by De Spaarnestad's editorial.
- Seven live-action Sjors & Sjimmie films were produced between 1955 and 1977 by director Henk van der Linden, reflecting the franchise's broad cultural reach beyond comics during the period this annual was published.