ARCHIE: DE MAN VAN STAAL

Robot Archie, originally published in the British Lion weekly, had been reprinted in Dutch since 1963 in the weekly Sjors comic, Sjors' 1960s publisher, N.V. Spaarnestad, had collected some of the series as albums, De Man van Staal, as did subsequent Sjors publisher, Amsterdam Boek, in 1973. Meanwhile, Archie had been dropped from Lion in 1971, but Sjors, once they ran out of material to reprint, had turned to Dutch writer and artist Bert Bus, who had produced new Archie adventures, initially based on some of the Lion stories, and then, towards the end of Bert Bus' time on the series, two completely original stories drawn by Bus and written by Fenna Ridderbos: the 1973-74 Archie in de ijstijd, and 1974 Archie contra mister Magneto. From 1980 Sjors' then-current publisher, Oberon, collected the Bert Bus stories in a series of new albums, Archie: De Man van Staal. They published nine collections over the next two years, stopping in 1982. Twenty-two years later, Amor Vincent Omnia published a final, tenth volume in the series, in honour of Bus being awarded the prestidigious Bulletje en Boonestaakschaal award for his services to Dutch comics.