fumetti – Wis[s]e Words

It’s 1974, you’re a Dutch glam rock band and you want to be different: what do you do? You take your inspiration from the pulpiest of pulp comics and create a hit out of it:

Jacula was originally a Italian fumetti comics series, published from 1969 to 1982, translated into Dutch from 1973 to 1978. Fumettie are cheap, pocket sized black and white comics printed on the worst grade of paper. Cheap and disposable entertainment, full of lurid sex and violence, made by anonymous and interchangeable writers and artists, with nothing to recommend them. Jacula is a bog standard example. Set in the 19th century, Jacula is the “queen of vampires” and travels all over the world, fighting other vampires and getting involved in horror situations, with of course at least one or two sex scenes per story. While over time there has been a re-appreciation of the fumetti, with the realisation that at least some of those anonymous creators were genuinely good at their work, I can’t say Jacula would excite anybody, at least not the issues published in Dutch. The stories are plodding, the artwork is pedestrian and there’s little to shock, no edgier than a Hammer Horror movie.

A selection of gory and sexy Jacula covers

It probably sold thanks to its covers. Always better than the interior artwork, with a big helping of bare tits and the occassional bloke’s arse, lots of blood and horror, they’re doing a good job selling the much more staid interior. Maybe that’s what inspired Dutch glam rock band Lemming to create songs of it and from Lucifera, a similar series. Not bad songs either. They fit in well with that groovy age of seventies horror, that also included the fumetti that inspired them, as well as the various low budget horror movies filmed cheaply in central Europe. Watching this clip now gives me an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. These sort of cheap shlock comics are no longer being published in the Netherlands and even in Italy itself seems to be mostly gone. As for the band, they released one album in 1975, disbanded sometime in the seventies, reunited in 2002 and released one more album in 2008.

comic strip from Ype+Willem

Panel 1: Well, better go back to work then darling — But you have to hangup first.
Panel 2: No silly, you hang up first
Panel 3:Noooo, you hang up first
Panel 4: (entire train): NO, you hang up first

So earlier this month I went to my first comics con in twelve (!) years and the best part of a con is always finding new, interesting comics and cartoonists. Ype Driessen was my biggest discovery of the Haarlem con, even though he’s been active for years, having had a comic in the Dutch newspaper NRC Next for some time. Shows how much out of the loop I am. Luckily his publisher had a stand in Haarlem, the cover of his book caught my eye and I started reading, and, almost immediately, giggling. If reading four strips in a row makes me giggle three times, it must be good.

comic strip from Ype+Willem

Can you get anybody on Grindr here?

As you can see from the examples above, Ype Driessen makes fumetti, or photo comics, according to him largely because he can’t really draw. There is a minor tradition in Dutch comics of fumetti gag strips, most notably by Hanco Kolk and Peter de Wit in the eighties, with Mannetje and Mannetje, in which Ype fits nicely. There’s something inherently funny in seeing those hugely exagerrated poses and emotions acted out, but Ype has a sense of humour that would’ve worked just as well in more traditionally, drawn strip. He’s not afraid to make fun of himself or his boyfriend, can be slightly bitchy, but on the whole isn’t very mean and occasionally it’s corny; very corny.

In the interview/mini documentary Ype did for a Dutch broadcaster, shown below, he shows how he creates his comics, with the interviewer as the straight man.

Articles with the Tag fumetti

Jacula – from shock comic to glam rock

Ype + Willem: a funny fumetti