04.06.08 | ZombieTales
Finished the pages for my US-comics debut. This young Samurai will play a role in the story.
Can't show you more for the moment. But keep in mind: ZombieTales #4 (July) published by
BOOM!-comics.
27.05.08 | Cover-final Nicky Saxx
The cover-final for the new Nicky Saxx-collection. The book will be out at the
Haarlem-comicconvention (7 ;& 8 June). Click the cover for a larger version.
14.05.08 | BOOM!-studios here
No, this isn't Nicky Saxx with glasses and a haircut. I didn't draw this image. The artist is
Gabriel Hardman. It's a panel belonging to one of his comics, the story "Heathentown", a
horror-story written by Corinna Bechko. I just found out about Gabriel's existence. He's really
a great artist. Next to comics he does storyboards for movies in the US. How and
why did I found out about Gabriel? Together with him and another artist I don't know yet I'm
doing a Zombie-tale for BOOM!-studios. A chapter each, Gabriel is doing chapter one and
I'm doing chapter two. And, although Trunk (by Bee Dee publishers) and Nicky saxx
(by Safcomics) have been translated in English to be able to sell foreign rights, and
Dark Horse asked me if I would be interested in doing Star Wars in the future...maybe,
sometime..., this story for BOOM! will be my début in the English language. At the moment
I'm working on the art.
If you want to find out more about Gabriel Hardman: click here
en here.
09.05.08 | Trunk
Friday next week, May 16th, the comic "Trunk #1, the unkown soldier" will be published on this
website. Three pages a week, one page in colour, next page in black & white etc. At the
moment writer Willem ritstier and I are working on the second part called "the Preacher".
01.05.08 | Continuon
December the 12th 2007 an Apache-helicopter of the Royal Dutch Airforce ruined the high
voltage power-cables spanning the wide river "de Waal" in the Netherlands. 30.000 Houses in
the countryside, the part of the Netherlands called the "Bommeler- and Tielerwaard,
where without electricity and heating in the freezing cold of winter. One of the pylons
was standing in the middle of river with the cables hanging down into the water.
Continuon, the company which has the responsibility for this power-instalation,
had to repair them as soon as possible under very difficult circumstances. For
their year-report they wanted me to do a comic about the operation. Because there
wasn't a lot of time to finish the art Michiel de Jong inked my pencils. Script was done
by Frank Jonker
and the colours ( only in white and purple, the companycolours of Continuon) by Wilma Leenders.
The Continuon year-report and the comic (sorry, only in Dutch) can be read on-line in PDF-format. Just click:
http://www.continuon.nl/binaries/Jaarverslag%20Continuon%202007_tcm86-83411.pdf
27.04.08 | Nicky Saxx what and why #4. Nicky's conveyance/ boat
Nicky Saxx lives in a lighthouse on an island near the coast of New England. To get
ashore she uses a classic wooden Italian made Riva-powerboat. These legendary boats
are most often seen in places like the North-Italian lake district, Venice or Monte Carlo.
Her final means of conveyance is one leading to many adventures: her sailing-yacht. The first
one is sinked by the bullets of some slavekeeping cocaine-growers. The second one brings her
on a misty sea where a bunch of Vikings roam on an old longboat for a thousand years, killing
each other in vain because they are always brought back to life by a curse. On this boat she
meets the love of her life, only to find out he is in fact a dangerous international
terrorist who's just into terrorism for the money. And her last adventure starts like
a sailing and diving holiday but ends at the bottom of the sea in the secret rocket-base
of a crazy media-tycoon.
16.04.08 | Nicky Saxx what and why #3. Nicky's conveyance/car
To me, a modern car is a means of transport. Nothing more, nothing less. Just to
drive me and my family safe and dry from a to b. But I like classic cars. When
I started drawing Nicky I didn't really think about any car for her to drive. Writer
Willem Ritstier and I, by coincidence, both drove a Citroën, so I used several
Citröen models in the comic. Easy to use a car you know all about.
When Nicky slowly became the dark longheared ravengirl I decided there was a need for a
classic car fitting her style and appearance. Of course Citroën once had one
of the nicest and most advanced classics ever made, the DS, but I didn't think
the DS was suitable for Nicky Saxx. It became the one which has been driven by
the two 'Rogers'. The first Roger is the leadsinger of my favourite band, the Who:
Roger Daltrey. He bought it using the advance he got for the band's first album.
The second one is Roger Moore. He drove the car in the TV-series 'The Saint'.
The car is a Volvo.. A VOLVO!!?? Those safe, solid and ugly square cars from
Sweden? Yes! Volvo once produced one of the finest good looking sportscars:
The P1800. There is a difference between those used by the two Rogers and the
one Nicky drives. The Rogers had a coupé. Nicky has an ES, a hatchback with a
huge all-glass tailgate.
14.04.08 | Trunk
What kind of dark secret does Trunk stumble upon this
time in his new adventure. Soon you can read all about it in Myx-magazine.
11.04.08 | Jack Pott delayed
The publisher just told me there will be a small delay in the appearance of the third Jack Pott-collection.
Mister Pott seems to be a bit busy right now.
08.04.08 | Final cover Jack Pott
This is the final cover for the third Jack Pott-collection. If all goes well it will be
in print in within two weeks.
07.04.08 | Nicky Saxx what and why #2. Nicky's conveyance/ motorbike
Everybody visiting this website sees her at the openingpage: Nicky Saxx leaning against
a motorbike, dressed in bikerssuite and matching bra. The bike is a
Triumph Thruxton.
The stripe with paddockpatern used to be over the full length of the first Thruxtonmodels.
The drawing has been done for an artprint published by comicshop Alex in Antwerp but
became that populair it was used as THE Nicky Saxx-look, among aothers by Safcomics (click 'news'),
the foreign rights agent for Nicky Saxx. Question is: Why a motorbike and does she actualy
drive one in the comic. Answer to the first question: The red thing next to the
Nicky saxx-drawing is mine.
It's the last of a whole bunch of them I had over the years, most of them Japanese-made. I like
English caferacers and Italian
streetfighters but, unfortunatly,
for me japanese bikes are more practical and more payable. Yes, I ride motorbikes. For
quite some time now, ever since I was allowed to get a license, at the age of 18. Never
stopped. The first seven years I didn't even want to have a car, despite the Dutch weather.
It's an adiction, a way of life to me. So it wood be logical for Nicky Saxx to ride a
motorbike but does she realy rides one in the comic...?
Yes, sometimes she does. In the seventh story she enters Ella's apartment dressed in the
Triumph-bikerssuit and holding a helmet. You won't se the bike in the rest of the
story but it's a assumable she came over to Ella riding her Triuph Thruxton. Two
stories back she tells she owns a license to ride a motorbike and you see she's actualy riding one.
She rides a borrowed Aprilia Tuono, an Italian streetfighter.
Once I nearly owned an Aprilia Tuono. I entered a competition in which you could win the
Tuono by riding the bike and do a testreport as original as possible and of course I did
it my way: I made a comic about it.
Aprilia-Netherlands chose twenty of the best test-reports and put them on the internet and
left it to the visiters of their website to deside which one of them wood be the owner of
the brand new Tuono. Some of my fans heard about it an mobilised the entire Dutch and
Belgian comicscene to vote on my behalf. Result: I won... nearly. Ain't bad loosing but
to win nearly... Still, its great what the fans and the scene did, a very nice and
dear memory to me. One thing became clear to me: The Aprilia Tuono is the best bike
to outrun an attacking battlehelicopter while riding a winding road in the mountains.
Click to enlarge.
01.04.08 | Cover Nicky Saxx in ink
The cover of the new Nicky Saxx-collection in ink.
28.03.08 | Nicky Saxx What & Why #1: Nicky's hair-do.
Starting the Nicky Saxx-comic felt to me like a disaster. Willem and I where doing the
populair fantasy-comic Zodiak for the newspaper 'De
Telegraaf'. I have never been satisfied with the quality of my artwork but at the time we
worked out the tenth Zodiak-story I did get the feeling it started to reach my standards.
Halfway the eleventh Zodiak story the newspaper decided it was time for a more down to earth
comic instead of a fantasy and asked us to create one with a female-adventurer being the
main character. I hated the idea, felt happy doing Zodiak, just didn't want to do a
different comic. I had to, The new comic would start the day after the last appearance
of the Zodiak-daily.
Willem started writing a plot. The main character would be a slender , dawn to earth and fearless
powergirl with a past which is somewhat of a mystery. She has a friend, Ella Steiner, very
feminine, who practices parapsychology. I had to visualize them while still working on
Zodiak, quite against my will.
Ella wasn't a problem. She had to be attractive, with dark curly hair and a more faminine,
voluptuous figure, not the sporty type like Nicky Saxx. Something like the Italian showgirl
Fanny Cadeo. And there she was...
But Nicky was a huge problem. No idea what she had to look like, no single inspiration, not
a clue... She had to be introduced at the final Zodiak-daily and not knowing what to do I
chose a dark version of a blond female character from Zodiak: Bob Karn. (yes, her name was
Bob).
Nicky Saxx premiered June 15, 2002. I still didn't like her.
She was to meaningless to me, she didn't have the looks. Particualarly her hair-do. It
looked like the hair-do of any average female actionfigure in those days. Just boring. I
couldn't get a feeling with the comic and because of that I couldn't reach the quality of
the artwork I did for Zodiak. A still shorter hairstyle in the second story didn't work
either. But suddenly I stumbld upon a photo the Norwegian photographer Hegre had made of
one of his models: Tatiana, the female raven. Just dressed in her very long hair. That's
the way Nicky should have been, had to become. A ravengirl with long straight hair, dressed
in baggy-trousers. That's what she became.
Willem didn't like it, he wanted her to have the short hairstyle. The opening of the seventh
story clearly shows it. Nicky enters the shop of her hairdresser. Her hairstyle is an
abomination to him.
She keeps her looks untill the sixteenth stor in which her hair gets stuck in the branches
of a Southamerican jungletree. Someone had to cut her loose. But in the seventeenth story
it has all grown back.
When Nicky did get her final looks I started to like working on the comic but I never wood
reach the quality of the art for Zodiak accept in the shortstory I did for a
homage-collection to the Dutch godfather of newspapercomics: Marten Toonder in which Nicky
meets Marten's ghost, Nicky's encounter with V which I did for my friend David Lloyd when
the movie adaptation of his 'V for vendetta' was released in Europe, and some Nicky
Saxx-illustrations.
26.03.08 | Cover Nicky Saxx in pencil
The cover for the fourth Nicky Saxx-collection in pencil.
25.03.08 | Rough cover Nicky Saxx
This is the rough for the cover of the fourth 'adventures of Nicky Saxx'-collection which
will be published by Bee Dee (actually the tenth collection, together with the former six
done by Boumaar-publishing). Nicky flees from her hotelroom across the roofs of Paris by
night to avoid a confrontation with de persuing badguys.
29.02.08 | Red Knight art prints
Out this weekend: two new art prints based on the 'The Red Knight-graphic novel series'
by art print-publisher Ammar. One is showing the red knight himself in confrontation with
'the seven' and the other the leadfigure from the second story: 'the black she-wolf'.
The Red Knight-graphic novel series, is based on the long-running Flemish comicseries
'De Rode Ridder' by Willy Vandersteen (at present written by Martin Lodewijk and drawn
by Claus Scholz). The first 'Red Knight'-story was written by Ronald Grossey and
drawn by Marvano. The tryout-page for the series and two of the pages I did for the second story
you'll find in the 'miscellaneous adventure'-section (scroll down).
26.02.08 | Star Wars
In the summer of 2007 one of my mailboxes was bombarded by spammessages. Those kind about problems with your malehood and tell you what you can do about it or offer you cheap Rolexes and are send by senders with English names that don't sound quite real. Also a full load on 16 July. Clean the mailbox, click the name, hold and drag to the garbage.. click, hold, drag and click... wait a minute! When I click such a name and hold it to drag you see the e-mailaddress it comes from and this one ended: ...@DARKHORSE...
"Dark Horse Comics" and it come from the man who is known (what I later found out) as "mister Star Wars" in US-comicsworld. He asked me if I would be interested in drawing Star Wars. Sure I was, I wanted to do US-comics for years and Star Wars wouldn't be a bad start, on the contrary. Still knew what it felt like when the first film come out ...
Mark Schulz and Al Williamson did work on Star Wars comics, Collin Wilson... Jan Duursema... George Lucas once said in an interview Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon was one of his inspirations for Star Wars... yes, I want to... I even would have time in a few weeks...
Turned out he mainly wanted to see if I was interested but didn't have a story planned for me. Lucasfilm didn't seem to have a problem with it but of course they would want to know if I can do spaceships etc. So I did an X-wing etc.
He would keep me in mind and yes, I keep it warm but it still didn't come so far, don't know it ever will and actually, at the moment, allthough Nicky Saxx was canceled in the newspaper, I would have less time than I did have in July / August last year.
But drawing a X-wing dogfight sure was fun.
20.01.08 | Cover Jack Pott in color
Jack Pott is a comic with a classic look. Needs a classic cover that doesn't look dull. Took some time to make a choice between these three...
but this is the one:
16.01.08 | Cover Jack Pott in ink
The cover for Jack Pott #3 in ink.
14.01.08 | Sketch cover Jack Pott
This is the scetch for the cover of Jack Pott #3 'Cry from the past'. Jack
Pott is the first daily-newspapercomic I did. Willem Ritstier wrote the stories. Six adventures in ± six years
appeared in the Dutch newspaper 'Algemeen Dagblad'. Not the best drawing I did. I was still searching for my own
style. But the comic is my alltime favourite. The original daily strips will be published by Bee Dee in six editions, one for each story. Soon I'll show you the inking.
04.01.08 | Nicky Saxx-memorial
Today is a sad day for fans of the Nicky Saxx newspaper strip. "De Telegraaf", which has the exclusive publishing
rights for the strip, has decided to cancel it. The final episode appears in the newspaper today. The decision to
cancel was not made because the strip had become unpopular, but because the newspaper considers a daily adventure
strip to be old-fashioned. They want something new - something different. It's hard for me to understand why they
would cancel the last existing newspaper adventure strip in the Netherlands - possibly the last in Europe -and not
cancel one of the many average and widely published syndicated strips they feature instead.
This cancellation ends the current story prematurely, leaving Nicky's friend Ella Steiner searching for her at the
bottom of the sea after they'd succeeded in destroying the secret oceanfloor base of an evil billionaire striving
for world domination. Will she ever be found? Will she ever return? Who knows?
There are no plans for myself and Willem Ritstier to continue producing Nicky Saxx in another form. We loved doing
it as a newspaper strip, and we wouldn't enjoy doing it in any other format. It just wouldn't be the same.
We'll be working on new things together, and other things separately. Look out for more news on this, later.
One new Nicky Saxx collection is due to appear, featuring stories 19 and 20. Nicky's last adventure will be
produced by Bee Dee as a special edition.
Click the strip above for a bigger version.
17.11.07 | Trunk section
Ofcourse Trunk should have some space of his own on this website. Check out the Trunk-page for artwork and sketches.
14.11.07 | Paul Pope talks about Nicky Saxx
US-comics colleague, Paul Pope, talks about Nicky Saxx on his blog.
RITSTIER/OOSTERVEER
One of the nicest suprises I discovered in Amsterdam recently is a daily Dutch cartoon strip called "Nicky Saxx",
written by Willem Ritstier, and illustrated by Minck Oosterveer. This strip appears daily in De Telegraaf,
Holland's largest newspaper, something like a cross between USA Today (splashy color covers, large
sports/entertainment section with a lean toward the lurid) and the New York Times (world events/business
news/editorials). I kept tearsheets of the Saxx strip for the days I was there, and regretted that I couldn't
find it on weekends.
De Telegraaf runs their cartoon strips in a rather large format in the first folio-- about 7 inches wide, which is
notably large by most American daily cartoon standards. Most of the Dutch dailies are woefully mediocre, featuring
the usual laconic, big bagette-footed blobs with half-lidded eyes, all of them "C" level graduates of the lazy
post-Garfield school of cartoon humor. Garfield itself can be found there too, as a matter of fact, like some
undying dead horse of a joke. I have to admit, I'll never understand the ongoing European popular fascination
with Garfield. If you ever do a book signing in Europe involving children, you'll invariably wind up drawing
Garfield and/or the slobbering dog. Montezuma has his revenge, and I guess Jim Davis does too. He must be out on
the course right now, swinging his nine irons, laughing and laughing.
Ritstier and Oosterveer's sexy, leggy adventurer Nicky Saxx stands out amongst her daily running mates, towers
over them infact. While the others are looking into empty dog dishes and blandly warbling to other bagette-footed
blobs, Nicky Saxx is dodging bullets, jumping between moving motorcycles, wrestling sharks, piloting yachts and
sipping dry champagne. A true adventure strip in the Modesty Blaise/Cap'n Easy tradition, I can't believe I've
never heard of her before. In Oosterveer's work, there is a sense of the characteristically tight inking we see
in other Dutch cartoonists, such as Joost Swarte and Dick Mategna, yet the subtle abandon in Oosterveer's brush
gives his drawings a slightly more international feel. His art is like a suprising blend of the Italian cartoonist
Magnus (whom Americans will remember for the erotic strip Necron), and France's Jean-Claude Forrest (Barbarella).
His panel compositions are excellent, the story is communicated briefly and with force. His work is brushy and a bit
simple, perfectly suited for daily adventures.
Oosterveer writes of Nicky Saxx on his personal website:
"The Nicky Saxx strip has been running for some years now as a daily in Holland's largest-selling newspaper,
"De Telegraaf". Nicky and her friend, Elsa Steiner, are globe-trotting adventurers with a taste for danger, hiring
themselves out as troubleshooters and investigators of the paranormal via their organisation, Room 666, which is
located in a disused lighthouse on the East Coast of America. Aided by computer expert and technical wizard,
Ben Folds, the duo specialise in helping all those people the conventional law-enforcement bodies cannot assist."
I enthusiastically recommend Oosterveer's work to people interested in good European cartooning.
26.09.07 | Trunk website
The first publication (in Dutch but other languages will follow) of the Trunk-comic,
written by Willem Ritstier and drawn by me will be available at the beginning of October.
It's set in the future and tells the story of a disabled ex-soldier who survives a
global war, and tries to carve out an existence as a kind of ghost/demon/vampire hunter
and private eye in a world where all Hell has broken loose.
Willem's son, Alwin (17 years old) is producing a website devoted to the Trunk-comic:
www.trunk-comic.nl. At the moment it's still running on proof, only in Dutch, but,
in time, there will be an English version.
12.09.07 | New collections Nicky Saxx
It took some time, but the second collection of "The Adventures Of Nicky Saxx" is finally out from
publisher Bee Dee. The third is scheduled for the end of this month. In addition to those from
previous publishers, it will be the eighth and the ninth to see print. Click on images to see a
larger size
16.04.07 | Nicky goes international
The agency SAF will introduce "Nicky Saxx" to the foreign publishers.
08.01.07 | Cover Nicky Saxx 7
This is the cover for the new Dutch edition of "Nicky Saxx", which will be published at the end of January
by publisher Bee Dee. The title is "Noodweer", which is a Dutch expression for "storm". A bigger version of the cover
can be found on the Nicky Saxx-page.
12.10.06 | Trunk
Willem Ritstier and I have started a new strip called "Trunk". It's set in the future and tells the story of a
disabled ex-soldier who survives a global war, and tries to carve out an existence as a kind of
ghost/demon/vampire hunter and private eye in a world where all Hell has broken loose. We have completed
a short story - "The Little Indian" - which will apear as a supplement in the Dutch magazine "Myx",
and in a horror story collection called "Bloeddorst" (Bloodlust).
Currently we are working on a 46-page story called "The Lost Soldier", which will also apear in "Myx"
magazine and then be published in book form in Dutch, German and Danish."