Heer I am

Margreet de Heer, that is.

Hi there!

I've been thinking about starting a newsletter about me and my comics for a while now, but it felt like I could never find the right 'angle': do I post about my educational comics? About my kids comics for Dutch magazines? About the graphic novel I made recently? Or do I just want a place to post random, off-the-cuff autobiographical comics, like I did before on Tumblr around 2015 and waaayyy before that on my own site, around 2005?

Today I thought: WHY NOT EVERYTHING?

And: WHY NOT START TODAY?

So here goes.

Let's start with an inventory: what am I working on today?

- I'm inking a new story of Casa Kiki, for comic magazine Tina. The comic has been running for a year and a half now, and it took me a while to get comfortable with the production process and pace, but I think I've got it down now. 

- I just made a sketch for a new comic in Tina, drawn by Dorith Graef: Marrie & Merrie. It's about a girl and her really cranky horse. Fun fact: when I mention Tina magazine, people often assume it's full of horse comics, since "girls like horses, don't they?". In fact, there hasn't been a horsey comic in Tina for a long time now, since readers weren't that interested at all. So Marrie & Merrie is a bit of an experiment.

- Talking about Tina: I really must make time soon for thinking up new plots for Ryoko, the comic I write for artist Juliette de Wit. Ryoko is the very first comic in Tina with some covert non-binary character content - talk about experiments!

I really like how Ryoko's world is turning out thus far:

- I'm preparing for a book signing next week in my beloved comic store Lambiek: I will be signing Jij gaat dood, a graphic novel about Munchausen by Proxy. This is a form of child abuse in which a parent or caretaker pretends or causes a child to be ill, just to get attention for themselves. Nina Blom barely survived the abuse at the hands of her mother, and I got to make her story into a graphic novel. Very proud of this!

- I must not forget to email back a few people who've asked about my Global Goals Comic. This comic that I made in 2015 is being distributed for free and has been translated in about 20 languages by now. I get mail at least once a week from educators and/or sustainability organisations asking for the printable files or even proposing to translate it into even more languages.

Yes please!

Spread the word - and the pictures too!

- I must also not forget to chill on my balcony today. It's going to be hot weekend here in Amsterdam, and our balcony is a veritable paradise.

With cats!

(This comic is actually an old one, from 2015; with an old cat, Toto - unfortunately no longer with us)

Anything else?

This newsletter is shaping up to be quite a mental to-do list. Well, anything helps - I've become quite a scatterbrain since menopause hit.

Oh! Must not forget to thank Betje for dragging me onto Substack. Thanks, Betje! Go check out her hilarious autobio-comix and contribute to her crowdfunding - only one more week to go.

Whew - after all these years I did it! I started a newsletter!

Thank you for reading it to the end. I hope you'll like my random ravings!

If you haven’t already, here’s a button with which you can subscribe to this newsletter so you’ll receive it in your mailbox. I promise I won’t spam, or if I do, it’s with good comics stuff!