'Petit Héros' (Ganesha #17, 2016).
Martin van der Schuijt is a Dutch comic artist, and between 2011 and 2019 the editor of the Dutch StripSter comics portal. His own comics are often fantasy-oriented and have appeared on StripSter and in the French Ganesha magazine.
Early life
Martin van der Schuijt was born in 1977 in Winschoten, a city in the northern province of Groningen. Both his parents for drawing, which he inherited from them. During the daytime, his father worked as a ship's carpenter. An avid comics fans since his childhood, Van der Schuijt grew up with 'Spider-Man', 'Thorgal' and 'Storm', with Grzegorz Rosinski and Don Lawrence becoming his main artistic inspirations. Instead of going to the Art Academy, however, he studied to become a sales specialist at the ROC Twente. Since 2014, he has worked in this profession, and later as a business analyst, for the MediaMarkt store. On the side, Van der Schuijt has been working on comic and cartooning projects.
StripSter
In 2009, Van der Schuijt began collaborating with the 'InterStrip' project of the StripSter website, at first contributing cartoons featuring the pelican Rusty. The site had been founded in 1999 by Henk Schouten, and during its early years, had become well-known for its weekly publications of comics by new Dutch and Flemish talent, its heated debates on the message board and as a reference guide for alternative comic publications. By 2011, Schouten was gradually dropping out of sight, and Van der Schuijt took over his role as web editor. His workload included uploading and posting each weekly edition, searching for new talent and organizing stands for the several Dutch comic fairs. However, by the 2010s, weblogs and social media had taken over the role of websites and message boards, and StripSter had lost most of its prominence. In April 2019, StripSter.eu went offline, although the name has continued to live on as a Facebook page.
Final opening page of the StripSter website, drawn by Martin van der Schuijt and published on 23 March 2019.
Over a ten-year period, Van der Schuijt has participated as an artist with several of StripSter's collective comic projects, some of which were also published in print. In 2010, he was one of the artists of 'Onder de Kleuren van de Nacht', a comic story written by Arno van Dijk and drawn by fourteen different artists. It tells the story of two brothers who fight over their terminally ill father's fortune, and are then sent to a deserted island to settle their differences and go on a treasure hunt. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the StripSter site, the story was also released in book format. Another collectively drawn StripSter InterStrip project was 'Genadeloos' ("Merciless", 2015), written by Dirk de Graef, which was self-published as a comic book for the site's 15th anniversary. The story follows two detectives who investigate the murder, in broad daylight, in the presence of several witnesses, of a young woman.
Among the other cartoonists who submitted their work to StripSter during this period have been Mark van den Anker, Florien Born, Rob Brandon, Thijs Broers, Karin Burm, Steven van Dyck, Joost Eijkholt, Rob Eikenaar, Waldo van Gheluwe, Wouter van Ghysegem, Jeroen Gilhuys, Hans Gravekamp, Thijs Hannaart, Eric Hebben, Jan-Rutger Hoekstra, Remco van den Hout, Jamie de Jonge, Glenn Kluivert, Ralph Krebbers, Santiago Martin, Laura Meyvogel, Femke Schaars, Maarten Trouw, Evert VDJ, Guy van de Velde, Hans Verbeek and Wim Vlieg.
Further comic projects
As a comic artist, Van der Schuijt tells stories containing mystery, science fiction, fantasy and conspiracies, preferably with a good twist in it. Together with the American writer Anne Toole, Van der Schuijt made the short story 'Petit Héros' for the heroic fantasy issue of the French anthology magazine Ganesha (issue #17, 2016). Their six-page story dealt with the young Bernard in medieval Paris who dreams of becoming a knight. Van der Schuijt was also present in issue #19 of Ganesha (2017), creating the short story 'Esprit de la Forêt' with writer Pierre Champion, about a young woman who falls in love with a winged forest spirit and becomes pregnant. In 2024, Martin van der Schuijt participated in the StripBattle in Jump Magazine #32 with the 'Gleam' comic. He made it to the finals, but eventually lost to Ron Schuijt.
'Esprit de la Forêt' (Ganesha #19, 2017).