Jan Kruis' Work

In 1957, Jan Kruis was contacted by Jan de Bruine. He was a friend from the Academy and worked for the advertising bureau Maanen in The Hague. Jan was asked to do some work for Maanen and ended up working for them for about 7 years, mainly doing advertisements and illustrations for Shell and Niemeijer.

Between 1959 and 1965 he did several projects. He developed a new comic called Tommie, for Shell's youth magazine Olidin. In that same time period he also got introduced to Maarten Toonder by Waling Dijkstra, who worked for Toonder. Jan drew several illustrations for Toonder, but they never got published.

He made some more comics for Olidin and the Shell Junior Club and his characters were also used for advertisers like Niemeijer, Mars, Treets, Bounty and Milky Way. Those advertisements appeared on the back of Donald Duck.

Jan's career took off and he did a lot of work for magazines, record companies and books. Around 1966 he met Georges Remi, aka Hergé and did about 24 comics for him, which were known under the name Gregor.

After that, Jan tried to get work and became advisor and illustrator for the well known dutch youth magazine Sjors and Sjimmie. After working for this magazine for one and a half years, he allowed himself to be bought out.

Jan Kruis was asked to do a comic strip for women's magazine Libelle and on December 12th, 1970, Jack, Jacky & the Juniors was published for the first time. His inspiration for this comics Jan got out of his immediate environment and life.

The comics became his life-work and were a great success. It was sold to Sanoma publishers upon Jan's retirement, with the restriction that Jan could still draw the comics for charity purposes, which he did.

The comics continued in Libelle magazine by Studio Kruis, illustrators especially educated in drawing Jack, Jacky & the Juniors.

Artwork © 2008 Jan Kruis