Eppo #23/1979
Eppo #23/1979 (7 June 1979) marks the concluding chapter of Henk Kuijpers' 'De Wraak van het Vrachtschip' (The Revenge of the Freighter), the fourth Franka adventure and the second half of the two-part ghost-ship saga that began in Eppo #52/1978. As the closing installment of one of the earliest full-length stories starring the Netherlands' first strong female lead in a mainstream adventure comic, this issue represents a milestone in the serialized run that would cement Franka's place as one of the most beloved Dutch comic characters of the twentieth century. Beyond Franka, the same weekly issue carried ongoing chapters of Martin Lodewijk's Agent 327 and Don Lawrence's Storm—two other pillars of the Eppo line-up—making it a snapshot of Dutch comics at arguably its most creatively dense weekly moment.
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Eppo was launched in 1975 by publisher Oberon (the youth-publications arm of VNU) as a deliberate merger of the declining weeklies Pep and Sjors, with Martin Lodewijk serving as art director and talent scout alongside editor-in-chief Frits van der Heide. By mid-1979 the magazine had settled into a stable weekly rhythm anchored by its three flagship serials—Franka, Agent 327, and Storm—all of which had debuted within the magazine's first four years. The 'De Wraak van het Vrachtschip' serial ran from late December 1978 through this June 1979 issue, following the continuity of the preceding 'De Terugkeer van de Noorderzon' arc, with both stories subsequently collected and published together as a double album by Oberon.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Eppo #23/1979 is dated 7 June 1979 and was published by Oberon, the Dutch youth-publishing division of VNU.
- The issue contains the final installment of Franka's 'De Wraak van het Vrachtschip' (The Revenge of the Freighter), the 4th Franka story by Henk Kuijpers, which serialized from Eppo #52/1978 through this issue.
- 'De Wraak van het Vrachtschip' and its predecessor 'De Terugkeer van de Noorderzon' together form the two-part story arc 'Het Geheim van het Spookschip' (The Secret of the Ghost Ship), later collected in a double album by Oberon.
- Franka (Francesca Victoria), created and drawn by Henk Kuijpers, was the first adventure comic in the Netherlands to feature a strong, independent female protagonist as its lead character.
- Agent 327—written and drawn by Martin Lodewijk, featuring secret agent Hendrik IJzerbroot and the towering double-agent Olga Lawina—was a concurrent weekly serial in this issue, having transferred from Pep to Eppo in 1975.
- Storm, illustrated by Don Lawrence with scripts by Martin Lodewijk (and others), was also serialized weekly in Eppo from 1977; the character Roodhaar (Ember), Storm's red-haired companion, was a recurring figure in these installments.
- Sjors & Sjimmie, redrawn for Eppo by Robert van der Kroft, was another continuing strip in this issue, representing the lineage inherited from the defunct Sjors magazine.
- The strip 'Eppo' (the title character, a boy and his antique-dealer companion), created by Uco Egmond and named after a character from the predecessor magazine Pep, also appeared as the magazine's back-page feature.