Tina #36/1968
Tina #36/1968 is part of the foundational run of the Dutch De Spaarnestad edition of Tina — the first comics weekly in the Netherlands created exclusively for girls. Launched on 10 June 1967, the Dutch Tina distinguished itself from all other international editions by being published entirely in full color, a deliberate production choice by De Spaarnestad that set it apart even from the British source material. By the time issue #36 appeared in 1968, the magazine had already outlasted most of its international co-editions and was well on its way to becoming the best-selling comics title in the Netherlands, demonstrating an appetite for girls' comics that the broader Dutch market had previously doubted. Issues from this second year of publication document the magazine in its earliest, most strip-heavy incarnation — before editorial non-comics content began to encroach — and thus represent the purest form of De Spaarnestad's ambition to deliver a pan-European girls' anthology to Dutch readers.
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Tina was conceived in late 1966 by John Sanders of London publisher Fleetway (IPC) as a pan-European action-adventure comic for girls, designed from the outset for simultaneous multi-country syndication. De Spaarnestad director Walter Stuifbergen was among the first European partners to sign on, and his insistence on printing the Dutch edition on De Spaarnestad's own Haarlem presses — rather than relying on the British production plates — gave the Dutch Tina its distinctive full-color presentation and an independence that allowed it to survive when the British edition merged with Princess in September 1967 after only 30 issues. The first Dutch editor, Jaap Klaarenbeek, single-handedly translated the incoming British strips into Dutch in the early years, and the anthology was filled primarily with action serials produced by Fleetway's largely anonymous stable of British and Spanish artists. Issue #36 of 1968 falls squarely in this foundational phase, before the magazine began commissioning locally produced Dutch strips in the early 1970s.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Tina #36/1968 was published by Uitgeverij en Drukkerij De Spaarnestad, based in Haarlem, Netherlands — the same house that simultaneously published Sjors magazine.
- The Dutch Tina launched on 10 June 1967 and was, uniquely among all international editions of the title, printed entirely in full color from its very first issue.
- Issue #36/1968 falls in the magazine's second year of publication, a period when virtually all story content was translated from British Fleetway source material, primarily drawn by English and Spanish studio artists.
- The fictional character 'Tina Ruysdal' is indexed in the Grand Comics Database as appearing in the Dutch Tina magazine; she is distinct from the British magazine's editorial-mascot character simply called 'Tina.'
- At the time of this issue's publication, De Spaarnestad's Tina had already surpassed 100,000 weekly readers and was establishing itself as the Netherlands' best-selling comics title — a position that made it influential enough that Fleetway structured the later British merger with Princess with Dutch reader preferences specifically in mind.
- Early issues of Dutch Tina, including the 1968 run, carried serials such as the spy strip 'Jane Bond, Secret Agent' (Mike Hubbard), the science-fiction strip 'Ruimtemeisjes' (Space Girls), the western 'Wagens Koers West,' and the historical strip 'Moira, Slavin van Rome' — all translated from Princess Tina/Tina British source material.
- From 1967 to 1984 each issue of Tina maintained a consistent 32-page format, and the early cover portraits were painted-illustration artworks by various artists, with Spanish artist Purita Campos taking over regular cover duties from 1970 onward.
- De Spaarnestad was notable in the Dutch comics industry for employing cartoonists on staff salaries during the 1950s–1970s, an in-house studio model that influenced the production and visual style of all its publications including Tina.