'KFC Smikkelburg' #1.
Michiel Offerman is a Dutch graphic artist and cartoonist, whose ventures into the field of comics have been drawing 'Bibbers enzo...' for the ADF foundation, 'Star Barz™' (2016-2017) for Eppo and 'KFC Smikkelburg' (2020-2021) for KFC Northern Europe.
Early life
Born in Haarlem in 1975, Offerman grew up reading Eppo magazine, and especially enjoyed the humor features by Martin Lodewijk and Eddy Ryssack. During his education at the Graphic Lyceum Amsterdam (1991-1995), he discovered more adult-oriented comics by Moebius, Loisel and Bill Watterson.
Commercial art
Offerman has been working as a freelancer in the advertising industry since the 1990s, and is represented as an illustrator, visualizer and storyboarder by the Roughmen agency since 2003. Among his regular clients since 2017 are the regional HMC newspapers (Noordhollands Dagblad, Haarlems Dagblad, IJmuider Courant, Leidsch Dagblad en De Gooi- en Eemlander), for which he makes illustrations for the citizens' complaints page as well as the 'Tessa@work' column (2017-2019). He has done storyboard art and visualisations for clients like Heineken, Unox, McDonalds and Independer. For the Vizier magazine of ADF, a foundation aimed to help people with fears, compulsions and phobias, he has made the comic strip 'Bibbers enzo...' (2008-2020).
'Star Barz™'.
Star Barz™
In 2014, Eppo editor Ger Apeldoorn accidentally used one of Offerman's advertising drawings in an article about Martin Lodewijk's 75th anniversary, believing it was Lodewijk's artwork. Offerman contacted the editor, resulting in a collaboration between the two men. Their funny science fiction comic 'Star Barz™' (2016-2017) dealt with a group of adventurers commissioned to explore the galaxy for new planets planets to open franchises of a galactic coffee chain. The comic made its debut in Eppo in early 2016, and ran in short stories until halfway 2017.
'Star Barz™'.
Eppo / Stripglossy / Maxix
Michel Offerman shares a studio space with Gerben Valkema, Alex van Koten and Robbert Damen in the center of Haarlem. With Damen as scriptwriter, he made a tribute story to Martin Lodewijk's 'Agent 327' for Eppo (March 2017). They also revived Martin Lodewijk and Dino Attanasio's classic gangster comic 'Johnny Goodbye' for the 13th edition of Stripglossy magazine in 2019. Offerman additionally made a new short story with Attanasio and Dick Matena's 'De Maccaroni's', written by the series' original scriptwriter and published in Stripglossy #15 in 2019. in 2022, he additionally succeeded Daan Jippes as the artist of another Attanasio creation, 'Spaghetti', written for Stripglossy by Frans Hasselaar. In addition, Offerman makes editorial cartoons for Stripglossy. For the new Belgian comic magazine Maxix, he teamed up with scriptwriter Willem Ritstier to create 'Luthon-Höge', a series about a young police inspector who joins the "gendarmerie" of a small French countryside town in the 1950s. Helping out with the artwork are Menno Wittebrood (backgrounds and inking) and Alex van Koten (coloring).
KFC Smikkelburg
With both Damen and Van Koten, he worked on four comic booklets about 'KFC Smikkelburg' (2020-2021), distributed with the Kids Meals at Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. The assignment came through the editors of Donald Duck (DPG Media), who were approached with the project by KFC Northern Europe. Since they couldn't use Disney characters, the team developed a completely new concept and set of characters, presenting a fictional funny animal franchise of the fastfood restaurant. Damen and Van Koten write the stories, with Offerman doing the art duties. Editorial sections were written by DPG's comic editor Bas Schuddeboom, while Robbert's daughter Emma Damen provided the coloring. Since then, Damen and his studio colleagues have worked on several other commercial comic assignments for DPG's Sales department.
"Johnny Goodbye' (Stripglossy #13).