Back in the seventies and eighties Dutch kids got to read Joost Swarte comics for free at school.
A bit of a cheat as Jippo wasn’t a comic so much as a magazine that also featured comics. It and its stablemates Okki (for children just starting primary school) and Taptoe (for the oldest primary school students) were edutainment magazines sold directly to schools, orginally started as proper Catholic publications but by the seventies this was long gone. Of the three, only Okki is still being published; Jippo only lasting to 1984, Taptoe to 2016. Because there was a bit of a gap between Okki and Taptoe, in 1974 Jippo was created for children in the middle years of primary school. Joost Swarte was there from the start with his series Katoen en Pinbal.
Katoen en Pinbal was a comedy series about the clown in Pierrot costume Katoen and the dog in tuxedo Pinbal, who get into various adventures, as in this issue where they are in the middle of a story in which they got suddenly incredibly rich and no longer like it. If you’ve seen any of Swarte’s more adult work, this is pretty much a version aimed at children. Some of it has been translated into English by Fantagraphics; it’s worth checking out if you like Swarte.
All these three magazines were a lifeline for a lot of Dutch cartoonists like Swarte for decades. Not only did it provide a steady paycheck for those featured in it, certain authors like Fred Julsing did some of their best work for them. As a kid I read all three of them because my school had a subscription, even after I graduated, through my younger siblings. Though I don’t necessarily consciously remember much of the comics in them, I’m sure it has been influencing my taste at least subconsciously…
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