Alle Heiligen
Marcel Ruijters is a Dutch comic artist, who is best known for his works based on medieval themes. He studied at the Art Academy in Maastricht and started self-publishing his comic stories in 1988. He has self-published over 30 comic books, including 'Onbegrijpelijke Verhalen', 'Mandragoora', 'Fun&Games', 'Thank God it's Ugly' and five issues of 'Dr. Molotov'. For these early creations, he regularly collaborated with other artists, especially Matthias Giesen.
A Day in the Swamp (Coyote #5, March 1984)
His work has been published in several alternative magazines, including Zone 5300, Coyote and Gr'nn, as well as a variety of magazines and anthologies from all over the world, such as Hopital Brut, Malefact and Stripburger. He has had many exhibitions, from Terneuzen to Milano, and makes paintings and sculptures as well. He is an editor with the Rotterdam-based alternative comic magazine Zone 5300. He has also made illustrations for more mainstream clients like Skepter, De Humanist, Webber, Sesamstraat Maandblad, Jumbo and Kennisnet.
Troglodytes
Between 1999 and 2007, he releaed the 3-volume series 'Troglodytes' with Oog & Blik. Abroad, he published the mini-comic 'A Jest of Nature' in Canada in 1998, and several of his books were published by Le Dernier Cri in France, such as 'Bestiarium' (2004) and 'Tarot Corrupt' (2007).
His 2005 graphic novel 'Sine Qua Non' was inspired by medieval woodcuts and mysticism, and was well received in the press. In May 2008, Marcel Ruijters won the VPRO Award for best Dutch graphic novel for 'Inferno', his comic based on Dante's work, published by Oog & Blik. Marcel hosted an Inferno art exposition at Galerie Lambiek in April-June 2008, where all 119 original pages from the graphic novel were on display.
In 2010, Ruijters released a colored edition of 'Bestiarium', a collection of scraperboard illustrations which pays tribute to medieval manuscripts full of mythical creatures and human races. Ruijters has remained inspired by the art and stories of the Middle Ages for his next works, '1348' (Le Dernier Cri, 2010) and 'Alle Heiligen', a collection of fake saint's lives (Sherpa, 2013). During the Stripdagen in Gorinchem on 7-8 March 2015, Ruijters was awarded the Stripschapprijs. In that same year, he was commissioned to make a comic about medieval Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch, at the occasion of the 500th anniversary of his death.
