The dark ages (or oxen years)
There are two major changes to be noted in the Weekly around 1963: it gets a different logo
(already in 1961 - without the daisies that referred to the lady's magazine Margriet),
and a new kind of stories appear.
These new stories are called Studio stories: they are made by the American Disney studio, but
they are not printed in any American comic. So these stories are exclusively made for foreign countries.
Other names for these stories: Foreign Market, S-coded.
In the beginning, these Studio stories were drawn by the same artists who also did the other American
stories. But soon, new artists are involved (or old artists are assigned new jobs).
These new artists are usually much less able to draw. The average story in the 60s is therefore very ugly.
However, may S-coded stories are very well written. New characters are being introduced, like
Fethry Duck and Belle Duck. The stories where Madam Mim and Magica live together in a castle create
a new world, with lots of new secundary characters.
The Dutch Weekly only prints a small part of the total Studio production.
Characters like the Phantom Blot, José Carioca, Hard Haid Moe, were famous in other countries, while
they remained fully unknown in Holland at the time.
In this period, the Americans ran out of Wolf and Hiawatha stories. Apparently, these characters
were not popular enough in the USA. The Studio didn't produce any Hiawatha stories, and the Wolf stories
were either of too bad quality, or too few. Anyway, in 1965 the Weekly decided to have their own
stories with these characters produced. By the Toonder studio (well-known from Tom Puss and Oliver Bumble).
After a short start-up phase, Toonder produced 4 pages a week: one week a Wolf story, the other week
a Hiawatha story. These stories also created their own world, with secondary characters like
Boze Bij, Dikke Tor, Humpie the dog, the bronze axe, the Pafwangs (Hiawatha), and
the booswigteklup, the Good Ladies club (with Miss Schaapkens) (Wolf).
In 1969, this regular productions stopped, about the same moment that the Tom Poes stories stopped
in the Weekly.
In the end of the 60s, a new artist gave the Weekly an important "face": Henk Albers.
For several years he did all the redactional pages, including a letters page, posters, stories about
Disneyland, calendars, "Duckburg newspapers" (Duckstandkranten), etc.
All texts are copyright Harry Fluks. Do not copy without permission.
This website has been built as a hobby. It has no official connections to Disney or the weekly Donald Duck magazine.
Drawings are copyright Disney, photographs are copyright of Harry Fluks. Unless noted otherwise.
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