Pieter en Frits
Saturday, 15 November 2008
Apart from the comics that I have already mentioned in this blog, I have done at least one other comic with Pieter Dorrenboom. I love to write for Pieter, not only because I think his drawings are superb, but also because he always understands what I ask him to draw. Of course I make sketches of the scenario, but I don’t think that many artists would know what to do with my sketches.
The comic that has not been mentioned here yet is one we did for a magazine for teenagers who were about to finish secondary school. The magazine gave information on studies, jobs and all kind of other things that are a pain in the ass when you are 18 or 19. The editors of the magazine asked Pieter to make a comic for them because they liked “Single mania”, a comic we have been doing for Zone 5300 for a long time. They never asked me; comics are usually connected with the person who makes the drawings, and not with the writer. I don’t mind that, as long as I get paid. In this case there was not much money, of course, but because it was for Pieter I did it anyway. I asked Pieter to draw ourselves as teenagers and we called the series “Pieter & Frits”.
This were the first two episodes:
For some reasons the editors were not pleased with the first episodes. They wanted us to change all kind things, which I refused. They also came up with ideas that that they wanted us to use, which I refused too, because I didn’t think the ideas were good. After a while I gave up and said that I didn’t want to work for them anymore. For some mysterious reasons Pieter wanted to continue the comic without me for a while. He had to work out the ideas that he got from the editors. But because an idea is not a scenario, and because Pieter is not very good at writing scenario’s, he called me up if I could help him out. I though this was a very funny situation: I was one of the main characters in a comic that I wasn’t allowed to write myself, but that I secretly was re-writing!
Here are three of such episodes:
I quite liked this ridiculous situation, but Pieter didn’t, and soon he told the editors of the magazine that he no longer wanted to do this comic. As far as I know they didn’t ask another artist to do the drawings. I wish they had!
Here is a song from an LP that I got from Pieter a little while ago. It is “Orchestral Intrigue á la Ray Martin”. The ten spy songs on this LP are all great, but I choose the theme from “Trials of Brian”:
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