'De Veerpont' (La Bande Dessinée de Drs. P, 2022).
Frits Smid is a Dutch visual artist, specializing in cartoons and comics. He is the editorial cartoonist of the IJmond edition of Noord-Hollands Dagblad, and the author of 'La Bande Dessinée de Drs. P' (2022), a comic book with visualizations of the witty and humorous songs by the Dutch light verse poet Drs. P.
Cartoon for the IJmuider Courant, 30 April 2022. "A tsunami of old age threatens to engulf the IJmond."
Life and career
Frits Smid was born in 1968 in the industrial harbor city Beverwijk. Living in the IJmond region, he has been active as a cartoonist, painter, poet, performance artist and film maker. He has had two terms as city poet of Beverwijk, makes technical illustrations and does promotional artwork for local entrepeneurs. He has designed over 500 flyers for the Beverwijk cultural café Camille. In 2008, Smid replaced his tutor and friend Jan van der Schoor as the weekly cartoonist commentator on the regional news for the IJmond edition of Noord-Hollands Dagblad, as well as the IJmuider Courant. He ranks among his influences the novelists Kurt Vonnegut and W.F. Hermans, the poets François Villon, Drs. P and Lennaert Nijgh, comic artists Hergé and Jacques Tardi and the graphic designers Abram Games and A.M. Cassandre.
'Dodenrit' (La Bande Dessinée de Drs. P, 2022).
La Bande Dessinée de Drs. P
While stuck at home during the 2020 lockdowns because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Smid began working on a series of visual interpretations of Drs. P songs. Drs. P - pen name for Heinz Polzer (1919-2015) - was a Dutch light verse poet, known for his witty songs with dark comedy, often performed casually on a piano and with his trademark cracky voice. Drs. P deliberately spoke in old-fashioned, almost antiquated Dutch, which gave his lyrics an ironic touch. Coincidentally, Polzer also scripted one comic series in his career, 'Dan Teal' (1970-1971), drawn by Johnn Bakker.
Smid picked out ten of Polzer's compositions, using different styles to capture the right mood for his graphic adaptations. He used realistic black-and-white drawings for 'Dodenrit', Drs. P's cynical account of a 19th century Russian family traveling to Omsk by trojka. Attacked by wolves, they throw their children off the wagon one by one in order to keep the hungry predators at a distance. For 'De Veerpont' - about the philosophical ponderings of a ferryman about his repetitious life - Smid applied a Clear Line approach, reminiscent of Joost Swarte. Other songs are rendered with pop art graphics ('Het Speelgoedmannetje'), in medieval style ('Keplinkepling') and with a woodcut technique ('De Zusters Karamazov'), all using a graphically clever combination of text and art. 'La Bande Dessinée de Drs. P' - the title referring to the rhyming titles Drs. P used for his own musical albums - was published in book format by Concertobooks in April 2022. Smid's original drawings have been exhibited in the Kunst en Kitchen restaurant in Den Helder.
'Het Trapportaal' (La Bande Dessinée de Drs. P, 2022).