28 March, 2024
'Robbedoes door... Tulpen uit Istanboel' NL cover ("Spirou by... Tulips from Istanbul"; ill. Hanco Kolk; Copyright (c) 2017 Dupuis and the artist; image from dupuis.com)

Kolk’s Tulips from Istanbul

'Robbedoes door... Tulpen uit Istanboel' NL cover ("Spirou by... Tulips from Istanbul"; ill. Hanco Kolk; Copyright (c) 2017 Dupuis and the artist; image from dupuis.com)

The upcoming Spirou one-shot by Hanco Kolk, previously known as Het IJzeren Gordijn (“The Iron Curtain”), has a new title: Tulpen uit Istanboel (“Tulips from Istanbul”). It also has a release date, 25. October, and will also be released in a deluxe edition. For now, though, the album is only being released in Dutch, not French.

'Robbedoes door... Tulpen uit Istanboel' NL provisional cover ("Spirou by... Tulips from Istanbul"; ill. Hanco Kolk; Copyright (c) 2017 Dupuis and the artist; image from stripspeciaalzaak.be)
Earlier cover design for ‘Tulpen uit Istanboel’, which might be used for the deluxe edition.

Kolk has shared a few more excerpts from the album on Facebook, and there’s also a sample of a few pages on Dupuis’ page.

The publisher’s blurb describes the story:

1960, Rotterdam. On the eve of the first Floriade, the Count of Champignac asks Spirou and Fantasio to go to Rotterdam. He has received a mysterious message from Professor Petrow, who wants to defect from Russia to the West. The scientist is hiding in Hotel Topaz in Istanbul. But how do you get undetected from Istanbul to Rotterdam during the Cold War, while everyone from MI5 to the KGB is hunting you? On the occasion of the first Floriade, engineer and tulip aficionado Lucas Trappist is reenacting the historic journey of the first tulip bulb from Istanbul to Rotterdam. By mail coach, just as the trip went 400 years earlier. Spirou, Fantasio and the Russian scientist come along for the ride. It’s the beginning of a turbulent adventure, because on the mail coach there is a traitor!

Spirou Reporter

I grew up reading Spirou in Scandinavian translations. Now I'm learning French and trying to decode the originals.

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5 thoughts on “Kolk’s Tulips from Istanbul

  1. So, now there’ll suddenly be two different nostalgic Spirou albums only available in Dutch…

    Who’da thunk…?

  2. Funny as it sounds, I speak German, but find it easier to read in French than in Dutch, although everybody says it’s so close to German.

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