Sjors & Sjimmie (George & Jimmy) is a Dutch adaptation of the comic stripWinnie Winkle, specifically the character Perry Winkle from that strip. The difference between the American original and the Dutch adaptation is that Sjors (Perry) forms a duo with Africa-born Sjimmie. They are raised by Sally and the Colonel. The Colonel regularly finds himself on the receiving end of their pranks. In return Sjors & Sjimmie are outsmarted by their scheming classmate Dikkie, although they manage to stay the best of friends.
The popularity of the newspaper strip Buster Brown (debuting in 1902) spawned many imitators, including the Perry Winkle character (Winnie's adopted younger brother) in Martin Branner's long-running strip Winnie Winkle (debuting in 1920). Perry's adventures were translated and published in Dutch newspapers; and in 1938 given a Dutch-made version (Sjors en de Rebellenclub by Frans Piët) after the original US strip shifted focus back on to Perry's sister Winnie.
After the strip took a hiatus during World War II, the protagonist Sjors found a companion in Sjimmie, an African boy who was part of the visiting circus. Sjimmie was originally portrayed in blackface stereotypical ways such as speaking in broken language. In 1969 Jan Kruis took over the comic from the retired Frans Piët; he reinvented Sjimmie as a normal-looking, properly speaking teenager, and introduced the Colonel (Sally's father) as a grumpy war-veteran.
Kruis produced two 44-page stories, but eventually chose to work on his one-page comic Jack, Jacky and the Juniors in which Sjors & Sjimmie made one cameo appearance. Jan Steeman continued Sjors & Sjimmie during the first half of the 1970s.
1975-99; the Wiroja-years
In 1975 the Sjors and Pep magazines merged into Eppo; Sjors & Sjimmie were re-invented as one-page gags drawn by Robert van der Kroft. The initial response was tepid, but things improved when scriptwriter Patty Klein was replaced by the duo of Wilbert Plijnaar and Jan van Die. Collectively known as the Wirojas, the threesome of van der Kroft, Plijnaar, and van Die turned Sjors & Sjimmie into one of Eppo's most popular features.
During the 1980s Sjors & Sjimmie grew into teenagers pursuing like-minded interests (soccer, computer games) and chasing girls with varying results, while modern-day trends, celebrities, and political developments were ridiculed. For example; Sjors & Sjimmie were huge fans of "Michael Claxon" ("claxon" meaning "car horn" in Dutch) and "Madomma" ("dom" meaning "dumb" or "stupid" in Dutch), and preferred off-time lunches at McMickey's over mundane cheese-sandwiches.
In 1988 Eppo magazine was renamed Sjors & Sjimmie after its most successful comic. It lasted until 1999 and contained multi-page stories besides the regular one-pagers. The Wirojas couldn't cope with the amount of work, which was outsourced to a Spanish art studio; the Wirojas stayed on hand for cover designs and quality control whilst producing the gag strip Claire for the women's magazine Flair.
The first years of "Sjors & Sjimmie" were still successful, but in 1994 the name was shortened to Sjosji in an unsuccessful attempt to reach a younger generation. In 1999 Sjosji ceased publication.
Cancellation and possible comeback
The magazine was revived in 2009 as Eppo, but due to legal issues Sjors & Sjimmie were not included. Robert van der Kroft worked on Claire-gags with Jan van Die and Evert Geradts. The latter replaced Wilbert Plijnaar, who moved to Los Angeles in 1995 where he enjoyed a successful career in animation and continues to live. In 2019, the Wiroja's reunited to produce new gags for quarterly magazine StripGlossy.
In other media
Sjors van de Rebellenclub met vacantie (1940)
Seven live-action Sjors & Sjimmie movies were made between 1955 and 1977 by Henk van der Linden.
An anticipated eighth movie was planned, but eventually cancelled. It would have starred comedians Paul de Leeuw and Eric van Sauers as Sjors & Sjimmie in their forties.
In 1992 Sjors & Sjimmie appeared in an animated rap video for the No Shobo campaign (shobo being contemporary slang for showoffs).
Johannes Andries "Jan" Kruis was a Dutch comics artist best known for the family strip Jack, Jacky and the Juniors.
Martinus Spyridon Johannes Lodewijk is a Dutch comics writer and cartoonist, and advertising adviser.
The Stripschapprijs is a Dutch prize awarded to comic creators for their entire body of work. It is awarded annually by the Stripschap, the Dutch Society of comics fans, since 1974. The prize is non-pecuniary, but is considered the most important award for comics in the country.
Dutch comics are comics made in the Netherlands. In Dutch the most common designation for the whole art form is "strip", whereas the word "comic" is used for the (usually) soft cover American style comic book format and its derivatives, typically containing translated US superhero material. This use in colloquial Dutch of the adopted English word for that format can cause confusion in English language texts.
Franka is a popular Dutch comic book series drawn and written since the mid-1970s by the graphic artist Henk Kuijpers. The principal character is a strong female Dutch sleuth who solves mysteries in exotic locales.
Winnie Winkle is an American comic strip published during a 76-year span (1920–1996). Ten film adaptations were also made. Its premise was conceived by Joseph Medill Patterson, but the stories and artwork were by Martin Branner, who wrote the strip for over 40 years. It was one of the first comic strips about working women. The main character was a young woman who had to support her parents and adopted brother, serving as a reflection of the changing role of women in society. It ran in more than 100 newspapers and translations of the strip's Sunday pages were made available in Europe, focusing on her little brother Perry Winkle and his gang.
Sjors van de Rebellenclub is a 1955 Dutch adventure film directed by Henk van der Linden. It was based on the popular Dutch comic strip Sjors en Sjimmie.
Eppo is a Dutch comics magazine named after the protagonist of the back-page-gags. It was the result of the merging of the magazines Pep and Sjors. Eppo ran as a weekly magazine from 1975 to 1988; it was revived in 2009 as a fortnightly magazine.
Peter de Wit is a Dutch comics artist and cartoonist. He is best known for his comics series De Familie Fortuin, Sigmund and his collaborations with Hanco Kolk with whom he created the series Gilles de Geus and S1NGLE.
Hanco Kolk is a Dutch cartoonist and comics artist. He is best known for his collaborations with Peter de Wit, with who he made Gilles de Geus and S1NGLE
Wilbert Plijnaar is a Dutch comics artist. He is the winner of the 1995 Stripschapprijs.
Piet Fluwijn en Bolleke was a Belgian gag-a-day comic strip series drawn by Marc Sleen from 1944 until 1965. It was continued by artists Hurey and Jean-Pol until 1974.
De Lustige Kapoentjes was a long-running Flemish comic book series, which existed under different titles and was drawn by different artists, among whom Marc Sleen and Willy Vandersteen are the most well known. The series was published in 't Kapoentje, the youth supplement of Het Volk, and in Ons Volkske, the youth supplement of De Standaard. They were the mascots of 't Kapoentje from 1947 until the magazine's demise in 1985.
Gilles de Geus is a Dutch humoristic/historical comics series, created by Hanco Kolk and Peter de Wit in 1983. It is set in the 16th and 17th centuries during the Eighty Years' War and features the adventures of Gilles, a brave but not always too bright resistance fighter who is part of the Geuzen, an army who fight the Spanish oppressor in the Netherlands. The series has been compared to Asterix for being a humoristic comics series set in a historical time period, containing a lot of satirical winks and references.
Celebrity comics are comics based on the fame and popularity of a celebrity. They are a byproduct of merchandising around a certain media star or franchise and have existed since the mass media and comics came into existence in the 19th century. Celebrity comics are usually not held in high esteem by critics, because of their purely commercial nature. They are solely created to capitalize on media trends and therefore published so quickly and cheaply that drawings and narratives tend to be of very low quality.
Noortje is a Dutch gag-a-day humor comic strip created in 1975 for the Dutch girls' magazine Tina. The script is by Patty Klein and the drawings are by Jan Steeman. It is currently one of the longest-running Dutch comics series and with 41 years the longest-running Dutch comics series made by the same writer/artist team. In 2016 Steeman resigned and was succeeded by his son Lucas Steeman; he died on January 24, 2018, of kidney-failure. Patty Klein died on 15 March 2019.
Tita Tovenaar or TiTa Tovenaar is a Dutch children's television series, which was produced by the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting and ran between 1972 and 1974. At the time it was popular enough to inspire audio plays and a comic strip. Tita Tovenaar remained popular in repeats and was adapted into a 2005 stage musical. Between 2008 and 2009 it briefly returned to Dutch TV screens in a new version.
Frans Piët was a Dutch comics artist, most famous as the original creator of the longest-running Dutch comics series of all time: Sjors & Sjimmie.
Robert van der Kroft is a Dutch comics artist, musician and disc jockey. He has been drawing the longstanding Sjors & Sjimmie comic strip since 1977, and Claire since 1988.
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