The Mighty Barribal

October 4, 2016 5:38 PM

A classic Dutch comic from the 1960s is being published in a local New Jersey newspaper. 'Tales from the life of Olivier B. Bomble, gentleman,’ was serialized in Dutch newspapers for many years, and Squire Bomble, his good friend Ocelot and many others have become household names in the Netherlands.

The language of Marten Toonder is notoriously hard to translate so the comic is not well known outside of the Netherlands and Belgium.

posted by joost de vries (13 comments total)

"Tom Puss" was published in one of Sweden's major dailies from 1946 onwards (and also published as albums) and they kept going long after Toonder had stopped making new episodes. I seem to recall liking it as a kid, but tbh I don't remember any stories...
posted by effbot at 5:58 PM on October 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Holy crap this is gorgeous. WIsh the images were larger so I could really revel in all that lovely brushwork.
posted by egypturnash at 7:28 PM on October 4, 2016

effbot I didn't know that. Nice to hear that it was popular in Sweden as well.

egypturnash it's true that the images tend too be too small. That's because they fight for space with the text.
They published a book with original scale drawings once. It's called Met Uw Welnemen. It's easy to google. But it's in Dutch of course.
posted by joost de vries at 9:36 PM on October 4, 2016

Calling Bommel a comic from the sixties is a bit misleading; it dates back to 1941 after all and continued well into the 1980s. It's one of those rare strips that, once it hit its stride and settled into a format, it kept up its high quality until the end. Perhaps the only comic to be truly appreciated as literature in the Netherlands (to the point where its original newspaper accidentally once ran the text without the pictures and nobody noticed, save for irate comics fans).

Bommel himself is an archetype for a particular kind of gentleman: vain but kind, slightly old fashioned in habits and language, not the brighest, pompous but charming and when the chips are down, a dependable friend. Even if it's usually Tom Poes -- a white tomcat with no distinguishing features or characterisation -- who gets him out of trouble.

The language, as said, is the greatest charm of the Bommel strip is its language, inventive, playful and utterly unlike anything else. It's not just the creation of words like denkraam, literally thought window or thought frame, but also the use of recuring phrases that found its way into the language -- jonge vriend, eenvoudige doch voedzame maaltijd, heer van stand, etc.

Bommel got married off in his very last appearance -- het einde van eindeloos/The end of unending -- but of course there's also more than a hint of the queer in having an elderly, rich gentleman living together with his younger, lower class friend and going on adventures with him.

Marten Toonder himself could best be described as the Dutch Walt Disney, to use a hoary old comparison. He wasn't just a successful cartoonist, who besides Bommel started a good half dozen other long running strips, he was also a great businessman who founded Toonder Studios, which started with creating comics but also did advertising and animation projects, culminating in a Bommel feature film in the 1980s (Zweeelgje!).

Toonder Studio employed some of the best talents in Dutch comics: Hans Kresse frex, whose Erik the Viking is on a par with Hal Foster's Prince Valiant as a historical adventure comic and whose Indianenverhalen are some of the best western comics ever created. But also young talent like Dick Matena, who got his start at Toonder and later became one of the Netherlands' greatest underground cartoonists (published in English in Heavy Metal and Raw), Thé Tjong-Khing, Lo Hartog van Banda, Piet Wein, Jan Kruis all of whom went on to create long runing comics strips of their own. But also somebody like Børge Ring, who you might know for his 1985 Oscar winning animation anna and Bella.

Toonder therefore left a legacy not just through his own strips, but also through the talent he and his company nurtured.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:59 PM on October 4, 2016 [13 favorites]

Came here a bit late, and MartinWisse took care of a lot of things I wanted to say. The additions the strip made to the Dutch language are too numerous to list.. but let me at least mention bovenbazen, kommer en kwel, verzin een list, als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel...

As a young kid his strips did get me hooked on the intricacies of playing with language...
posted by DreamerFi at 1:50 AM on October 5, 2016

At first sight the translator is doing a decent job in rendering Toonder's language, which is a curious blend of archaisms and neologisms. "The Old Flash trundled on" is a good example. I don't have this particular story in Dutch, so I can't check the translation, but it seems to capture the spirit of Toonder's vocabulary, where a ship is a "hulkje" and the bushes are "het struweel", words that no one uses, but most readers are likely to recognize.

Regarding the relation between text & drawings: someone (Jan Wolkers?) remarked that "Finally this publisher has a writer willing to tackle society's problem, and then they decide to have silly animals re-enact the story in drawings." These are really remarkable stories, addressing deep subjects such as religion vs science, capitalism and society, nature and nurture, ....
posted by victotronics at 2:47 AM on October 5, 2016

“It’s about a giant! An angry giant from the mountains. And he’s after me because I once said that I didn’t believe in him!”

“So there’s your solution!” exclaimed Squire Bomble, who at last seemed to understand. “Stop believing in him not once but altogether and he’ll go away quietly, simple as that.
posted by Slap*Happy at 10:19 AM on October 5, 2016

Thanks, this is awesome. I read Bommel in Dutch growing up in Rotterdam in the 50s, and having drifted into the newspaper business stateside by and by, I always wondered why US papers had nothing similar, ie., a comic strip combined with narrative text.

Strictly speaking, that New Jersey publisher, TapInto, is not a newspaper but an online-only local website. I found their introduction to the series here. It says that the text was translated into English by Adrian Meerman, a resident of Sparta, N.J., one of the towns covered by the website. Here's some more about Toonder and Bomble in Wikipedia (which has the name as Oliver B. Bumble).
posted by beagle at 10:28 AM on October 5, 2016

victronics I like your characterisation of his language. And I agree that his stories address deep subjects. So intrigueing. And then the drawings often showed such mythical spaces: forlorn mountain ranges with unfriendly inhabitants, strange woods with gnarly old trees dripping with moss, a totally white futuristic city... But also the fearful thing that you can almost see from the corner of your eye (de niks) or a small arch standing in a plane and when you stroll through your in a different space etc etc. One of stories that stayed with me is De Bommellegende: how he sees the aeons whir by while he's getting calcified into a stalagmite. If I recall correctly the story had a recursive time travel structure.

I had a magical time reading these comics as a child. And it makes me happy that a Dutch American took it upon himself to translate these as a labour of love into English.

Apparently he sees some parallels between The Mighty Barribal and the ongoing elections. That's why the series is being published in the weeks until the election itself.
posted by joost de vries at 1:19 PM on October 5, 2016

egypturnash I've done "view image" on a few of the drawings. Turns out that the images are really big. Give it a try.
posted by joost de vries at 1:23 PM on October 5, 2016

This is neat! The translations seem to be well done, which is no small feat because they're notoriously hard. Bomble is a decent name. As for calling Tom Poes Ocelot... the only thing I can say about that is:
'Hm'.
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:18 AM on October 6, 2016

So far, it's far more reminiscent of religion. "If you do bad things, a big powerful man you have never directly witnessed will punish you! Even doubting his very existence will incur his wrath!"

I'm in love with Professor Zicboq's design and his concept, as discussed here - he is the anti-Bombal, brains without heart. Not emotionless, but shunning friendship and perhaps even a moral compass.
posted by BiggerJ at 4:15 AM on October 6, 2016

Somewhat related: Tom Poes
posted by farlukar at 11:36 AM on October 6, 2016