Dick Matena

Born in The Hague (b. 24/4/1943, The Netherlands), Dick Matena studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, but stayed there for only one year. He became an appretice at the Marten Toonder Studios in 1960. Soon, he was assigned to work on the comics production. He cooperated on the advertising project 'Het Geheim van de Gulden Gaper', and he became the penciller of the 'Panda' strip in 1961. During the same period, he cooperated on 'Tom Poes', and created his own series, 'Polletje Pluim'. He additionally illustrated 'Big Bad Wolf' stories for the Donald Duck weekly through the studios.Matena joined the magazine Pep in 1968, where he began such famous series as 'De Argonautjes' (1968-1973), 'Ridder Roodhaar' (1969-1971) (both scripted by Lo Hartog van Banda) and 'Grote Pyr' (1971-1974). He continued his career at Pep's successor, Eppo. He did the strip 'Kleine Pier', and became a scriptwriter for other artists. He did the artwork of the 'Storm' mini-series 'Kronieken van de Tussentijd' himself, using the pseudonym John Kelly. However, Matena's biggest fame came from his science-fiction comics. He changed his style and started out with the series 'Virl' in Mickey Maandblad in 1977, followed by stories for such magazines as Gummi and the American Heavy Metal. Matena did various comics for Eppo, Sjosji and Wordt Vervolgd, such as 'Dandy' and 'Alias Ego', as well as more adult one-shots that were published directly in album, such as 'Amen' (Yendor, 1980), 'Mythen' (Panda, 1984), 'Lazarus Stone' (SP, 1984), 'De Prediker' (Arboris, 1984) and 'Het Web' (Arboris, 1985). He revived the 'Tom Poes' balloon comic in 1997. Two new episodes appeared in Donald Duck in that year. In 2000, he began working on comic adaptations of famouse novels from Dutch literature, starting with Robert van Gulik's 'Rechter Tie'. In 2001 he commenced working on a comics version of the classic novel 'De Avonden' by Gerard Reve, which gave him wide media attention.