'Hogwashed' (BNS Stripkrant 2010).
Frans Hasselaar is a Dutch comic artist, writer and editor. He is the longtime art editor for the Dutch Disney magazines, and works on personal comics projects on the side. Under the pen name Frank Hollander he wrote and drew the funny animal webcomic 'Hogwashed' (2009-2010, 2019) and he is the scriptwriter of comics like 'Max' in Hitkrant (1996-1999, art by Michel Nadorp), 'Veertigers' in Eppo (2014-2016, art by Jeroen Steehouwer) and 'Beterman' in Stripglossy (since 2016, art by several artists).
Early life and career
Born in 1962, Hasselaar grew up reading Walt Disney's 'Donald Duck' and developed a lifelong passion for American (newspaper) comics. Philosophically oriented series like Walt Kelly's 'Pogo' and Charles Schulz's 'Peanuts' are major influences on his own comics projects, but he has also expressed his interest in the work of Bud Blake, Mort Walker, Johnny Hart and the underground artists Gilbert Shelton and Robert Crumb. He began drawing his own (newspaper) comic strips and presented his work to several publishers, both in the Netherlands and Flanders, but also in the USA.
Donald Duck
Hasselaar sold his first scripts to editor Thom Roep of Dutch Disney magazine Donald Duck in 1984, and was hired as an editor in 1985. While serving as an editor and translator for both Donald Duck and Donald Duck Extra, he continued to write scripts with characters like 'The Big Bad Wolf', 'Brer Rabbit' and 'Goofy'. Between 1989 and 1998 he wrote a great many one-page gags with 'Winnie the Pooh' for Disneyland magazine, most of which drawn by artist Daniel Pérez of Comicup Studio. He also wrote the script for the non-Disney comic 'De Aap Is Los!', about a chimpanzee with a fascination for cigars, who breaks free from a research lab in Amsterdam. The story was illustrated by the Spanish artist Ruben Pellejero and serialized in Donald Duck issues #35 through 47 of 1989.
'De Aap Is Los! 'Art by Ruben Pellejero, script by Frans Hasselaar (Donald Duck #39, 1989).
In the 1990s, Frans Hasselaar was transferred to the art department of the Disney magazines. Since then, he has overseen the art and coloring of the local production of Disney comics in the Netherlands, since 2009 in cooperation with Ferdi Felderhof. Together with art supervisor Ed van Schuijlenburg, he has scouted and trained new local and foreign talents, including Bas Heymans, Jeroen Steehouwer, Sander Gulien, José Ramon Bernado and Carlo Gentina, as well as members of art studios like Comicup, Bardon Art and Magic Eye. He manages the in-house art department, which has housed such artists as Michel Nadorp, Wilma van den Bosch, Viktor Venema, Jan-Roman Pikula, Maarten Janssens and Maarten Gerritsen throughout the years. He furthermore thinks up many of the cartoons which appear on editorial sections like the reader's mail page, and provides detailed briefings for artwork dedicated to commercial purposes and digital game projects.
Sketch for a cartoon related to one of the letters from Donald Duck's mail page. The final artwork was provided by Studio Comicup.
Tina / Zo Zit Dat
When the other children's magazines of the Sanoma publishing company were merged with the Disney titles from 2008 until 2017, Hasselaar has overseen the comics production of girls' magazine Tina and popular science magazine Zo Zit Dat as well. In this capacity, he has plotted with Jan Vriends and the magazine's editors for plots with the new title character of Tina magazine since 2013. He has most notably developed the characters and outset of 'Professor Breinstein', the back cover gag comic of Zo Zit Dat in 2011. Most of the plots were subsequently developed by editors like Jos Beekman, Bas Schuddeboom and Simone Ruitenbeek, while the artwork was created by the Comicup artists Dany Fernandez, Sonia Álbert and Andrea Dotta under supervision of Jan-Roman Pikula and Viktor Venema. The 'Professor Breinstein' comic was completely handed over to Roel Venderbosch in 2018.
'Hogwashed' (16 June 2010). The line "back to the drawing board" originates from a famous cartoon by Peter Arno.
Other comics
In addition to his daytime job, Hasselaar has worked on several side projects. During the 1990s, he made contributions to the comics news magazine Stripschrift. With his friend and colleague Michel Nadorp, he created comic strips like 'De Nitwits' for Club Veronica, 'Ab van de AbvaKabo' for the Dutch labor union AbvaKabo in the 1980s, as well as the gag strip 'Max!' in the teen magazine Hitkrant (1996-1999). He participated in the 2006 comics contest of Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool with the superhero parody 'Beterman', drawn by Maarten Janssens and Gerben Valkema. This comic also made an appearance in MYX Magazine, and was revived for the StripGlossy by Uitgeverij Personalia in 2016. Each episode is drawn by another artist, such as Maarten Gerritsen, Tim Artz, Michel Nadorp, Henrieke Goorhuis, Daan Jippes, Jeroen Steehouwer and Hans van Oudenaarden.
Strip posted on Facebook on 3 November 2013. Translation: "We collect money for 'Bakers Without Arms'... - 'Good cause, good cause.' - 'Then you probably want to buy this foot-baked apple pie?' - 'Oh, sure!'.
Hasselaar wrote and drew his 'Pogo'-inspired web comic 'Hogwashed' under the name Frank Hollander for the Comics Sherpa website in 2009 and 2010. The strip has also been featured in the annual BNS Stripkrant. For comic magazine Eppo, he wrote 'Veertigers' (2014-2016), a gag comic about three men in their forties, suffering from midlife crises and the physical complaints that come with their age. The artwork was provided by Jeroen Steehouwer (initially in cooperation with Frans Leenheer), and the comic was collected in one album by Don Lawrence Collection in 2016. Frans Hasselaar published an occasional comic strip on his Facebook page with a starring role for himself in 2013-2014. Throughout 2019 he posted new strips on his social media accounts. Besides the artist himself, the cast of this meta-humor comic strip contained a talking tree stump and his 'Hogwashed' characters. Hasselaar was one of the authors participating in Eppo's tribute project for Martin Lodewijk's 'Agent 327' comic. He made the episode 'Dossier Salto Mortale' with Kees de Boer, published in Eppo #12 of 2017. For Stripglossy, he is additionally the writer of new stories with Dino Attanasio's 'Signor Spaghetti' (2019), for which Daan Jippes provides the artwork.
Frans Hasselaar, interviewed on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the Dutch Donald Duck weekly in 2017.