Maarten Toonder's Work

When he was 19 years of age, his father, a captain in the Dutch merchant navy, offered him passage aboard his ship which called at various South American ports. In Buenos Alles, Toonder got acquainted with the work of the well-known Argentine artist Dante Quinterno, who ran a studio producing comics. Quinterno's creations impressed him to such a degree that he decided to become an artist himself.

he commenced his career by drawing the short-lived comics 'Bram's Avonturen' (or 'De Lotgevallen van Bram Ibrahim') for the daily De Nederlander and 'Tobias' for the periodical Ideaal (both in 1933).

In October 1933 he found employment with the Nederlandsche Rotogravure Maatschappij (a printing and publishing house) as an all-round illustrator. In that capacity he produced a great many gags, drawings and paintings as well as several comics for weekly magazines.

He designed the adventures of 'Thijs IJs', which ran from March 1934 till October 1938 in the daily Nieuwsblad van het Noorden and in some affiliated newspapers.

In 1939 he decided to set up for himself, and apart from the artwork which he continued producing for his former employer, he started designing full-colour book covers and pen-and-ink illustrations for various publishers.

On 16 March 1941, as a result of the war, the Mickey Mouse comics disappeared from the news paper and Maarten's comics 'Tom Puss' made its first appearance in Holland's biggest daily, De Telegraaf. Toonder's wife Phiny Dick (herself the author of various children's' books) wrote the captions for its initial six publications, but then left it up to her husband to provide both texts and illustrations.

Toonder had to engage additional artists and soon found himself heading a studio. He co-founded Geesink-Toonder Produkties in Amsterdam, with Joop Geesink, producing comics and animations. Together they made advertising movies for the Dutch Railways and Philips in 1942. This collaboration lasted until 1943, when Geesink began to devote himself to puppet animation and Maarten starts his own Toonder Studio's in Amsterdam.

When in 1944 De Telegraaf is run by an editor who is a German SS member, Toonder withdraws Tom Puss from the news paper by having himself declared manic-depressive. This allows him to quit working without having to go into hiding. Just like his brother, Maarten draws political cartoons for the illegal paper Metro, that ran from November 1044 until July 1946.

When the War was over, the Toonder Studios came to life again, slowly but surely. The national and international demand for comics was such that new series were started up. In 1946 The Tom Puss comics appear in 50 national and international news papers and Maarten also starts new comics. He made a total of 177 stories for the news papers and in 1947 the first comic book of Tom Puss was published. The Toonder Studio also start producing more and more cartoons.

In his third adventure Tom Puss was joined by a new character: 'Mr. Oliver B. Bumble' ('Olivier B. Bommel' in Dutch), who soon proved to be indispensable and who was to become the key figure in the 174 stories to follow.

In the course of 1965 year Toonder left the ownership and management of the Toonder Studios to others, enabling himself to fully concentrate on the 'Tom Puss and Mr. Bumble' saga. From then on the stories were the products of his personal imagination and he took on the full inking himself. The overall quality of the series became such that their publication in paperbacks (in addition to their daily appearance in the papers) resulted in 44 best-sellers.

In 1985, at the age of 72, Toonder decided he had told all he had to tell, and on 20 January 1986 the papers published the last installment of the last story. The event received nationwide coverage and public sentiments were running that high that the NRC Handelsblad decided to republish a great many of the stories.

Twelve years later the newspaper finally replaced the adventures of 'Tom Puss and Mr. Bumble' in spite of protests by its readership and condemnation by Holland's leading captains of industry. Sweden's leading daily, Dagens Nyheter, commenced publication of Tom Puss's adventures in February 1947 and fifty years later the newspaper was still re-running the series.