On view from March 2 to June 30, 2024

Franka is one of the most popular Dutch comics. She also enjoys great international acclaim. Her stories have now been translated into French, German, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Galician, Catalan and Chinese. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the red-haired and enterprising protagonist's first adventure. To celebrate, from March 2 through June 30, 2024, the Spotlight Room at Museum Storyworld will be dedicated to this iconic comic book hero.

Storyworld Spotlight: 50 years of Franka
The Spotlight exhibition shows how this iconic Dutch comic has evolved over the years. In addition to hand inked comic pages and pencil sketches by Henk Kuijpers, you will see how this creator goes about his work. For Franka, he does extensive research and often personally visits the locations in the stories to take pictures and drawings. As a visitor to the exhibition, you can also work on making yourself aware of this process.

From supporting role to leading role 
In 1974 Henk Kuipers (Haarlem, 1946) made a short comic strip for the then immensely popular comic magazine Pep. Men play the leading roles in the strip, but somewhere in a corner of the first page a special script girl is depicted; a girl who sees to it that the film script is followed precisely. The editors of Pep are enthusiastic, and Kuijpers is hired to produce short stories and illustrations. Soon Franka gets the lead role and grows into the first independent female comic book hero of Dutch soil. Franka is smart, savvy, self-aware, independent and headstrong. Eventually, the scriptgirl earns her own business together as an art detective and travels the world.

Storyworld Spotlight: 50 Years of Franka can be visited from March 2 through June 30, 2024 at comic book, animation and game museum Storyworld in Forum Groningen.

© Photos by Bob de Vries
 

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