DirkJan is a Dutch comic strip series, created in 1989 by Dutch author and artist

Mark Retera Mark Retera (born 16 May 1964, Eindhoven) is a Dutch cartoonist, best known for his absurd gag comic '' DirkJan''. He is the winner of the 2004 Stripschapprijs. He also draws caricatures for the Dutch weekly ''Panorama''. Retera studied cognitiv ...

. It is also the name of its main character. The series is a

gag-a-day A gag-a-day comic strip is the style of writing comic cartoons such that every installment of a strip delivers a complete joke or some other kind of artistic statement. It is opposed to story or continuity strips, which rely on the development of ...

comic.

Description

DirkJan is an underachiever who stumbles through life in mostly three-panel

comic strips. He started out in 1989 as a student at the current

Radboud University Nijmegen Radboud University (abbreviated as RU, nl, Radboud Universiteit , formerly ''Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen'') is a public research university located in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The university bears the name of Saint Radboud, a 9th century D ...

in the Netherlands, where he lived in a typical student house with all the stereotypical side-kicks, such as the frat boy, the beer drinker, the bossy girl who checks if everybody keeps to the house rules, and the tramps who use the heated shared hallway to stay the night. Early DirkJans contained many references to the student life of

Nijmegen Nijmegen (;; Spanish and it, Nimega. Nijmeegs: ''Nimwèège'' ) is the largest city in the Dutch province of Gelderland and tenth largest of the Netherlands as a whole, located on the Waal river close to the German border. It is about 6 ...

Publication

DirkJan was first published in ''Critic'', the magazine for the local union of psychology students. It then moved on to monthly publication in the student magazine of Nijmegen ( Algemeen Nijmeegs Studentenblad, ANS). DirkJan became known nationally when the then only commercial comics magazine of the Netherlands SjoSji (now defunct) started publishing the strip. With the last move, the nature of the strip changed. Most of the student side-kicks got cancelled and DirkJan left university, first for jail (DJ is a notorious

Kabouter Kabouter is the Dutch word for gnome or leprechaun. In folklore, the Dutch Kabouters are akin to the Irish Leprechaun, Scandinavian Tomte or Nisse, the English Hob, the Scottish Brownie and the German Klabauter or kobold. In the folklore of th ...

abuser) and then to wander the globe and indeed space. As of May 2023, there are 28 DirkJan albums, tentatively named 'DirkJan 1' through 'DirkJan 22'. Several newspapers in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

publish the comic in their daily edition. There are 8 more albums outside the regular series. The amateur comics magazine

Iris Iris most often refers to: *Iris (anatomy), part of the eye *Iris (mythology), a Greek goddess * ''Iris'' (plant), a genus of flowering plants *Iris (color), an ambiguous color term Iris or IRIS may also refer to: Arts and media Fictional enti ...

(1990–1995) republished a number of DirkJan comics, some of which were refused for publication in SjoSji.

Sources

External links

Portfolio of Mark Retera
* http://www.mooves.nl/ (two animated DirkJan strips, Flash-only site) Dutch comics characters Male characters in comics Fictional Dutch people Dutch comic strips Gag-a-day comics 1989 comics debuts Comics characters introduced in 1989 Comics set in the Netherlands {{comic-strip-stub