Pep #20/1974
Pep #20 (1974), published by Oberon BV out of Haarlem, belongs to the pivotal final run of the Netherlands' most influential comics weekly — the period when Pep was at its creative and cultural peak. Most significantly, the 1974 issues of Pep collectively introduced Uco Egmond's gag strip 'Eppo,' whose title character and his antique-dealer companion Ouwe would go on to lend their name to an entirely new magazine when Pep merged with Sjors in 1975, making these early appearances the seedbed of Dutch comics publishing for the following decade. The strip's success demonstrated that homegrown Dutch gag comics could anchor a major anthology, a lesson that shaped Oberon's editorial philosophy as it built the Eppo era.
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Uco Egmond, an Eindhoven-born designer who had studied industrial design at Delft before pivoting to commercial art, debuted the 'Eppo' gag strip in Pep in 1974, making this issue part of the strip's inaugural run. Oberon BV had taken over as the formal publisher of Pep from issue 6 of 1972, and by 1974 the magazine — under editor Frans Buissink and his team — was navigating declining circulation while still hosting some of the richest Dutch comics content of the era. The same creative ferment that produced the 'Eppo' strip also saw Peter de Smet and Martin Lodewijk informally sketching out the concept that would become the merged magazine Eppo, a plan that Oberon's board approved and that came to fruition in September 1975.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Uco Egmond's gag strip 'Eppo' (or part of its earliest 1974 run in Pep), introducing the bespectacled, red-haired protagonist Eppo and the antique-dealer character Ouwe — a mustachioed, beret-wearing figure whom Eppo tries to help keep his shop afloat.
- Creator: Uco Egmond (born Eindhoven, 1948), trained industrial designer who made his comics debut with this strip.
- Published by Oberon BV, Haarlem — the publisher that had taken over Pep from De Geïllustreerde Pers NV in 1972 and would go on to launch the Eppo magazine and its accompanying album lines.
- Pep #20/1974 falls before the major format change at issue #22/1974, when the magazine trimmed its main section from 48 to 32 pages and added the 'Peptoe' black-and-white supplement.
- The 'Eppo' strip became so popular that when Pep merged with the rival weekly Sjors in September 1975, the combined magazine was named Eppo after Egmond's character — an extraordinary honour for a strip still in its first year.
- The 1974 Pep issues also ran established strips including Blueberry, Lucky Luke, Asterix, Agent 327, and De Generaal, placing 'Eppo' in one of the richest anthological line-ups in Dutch comics history.
- Egmond's character Eppo later gained a street named after him in the Dutch city of Almere, in a district dedicated to comics heroes.
- The strip ran — with interruptions and handoffs to other artists — from 1974 through multiple magazine incarnations (Eppo, Eppo Wordt Vervolgd, Sjors & Sjimmie Stripblad) and was relaunched by Egmond himself when the Eppo magazine was revived in 2009.