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The comic Monus, Man van de Maan, with the text by A.D. Hildebrand, was made for Hildebrand's well-known radio play Monus, the Man van de Maan (1951-1953) and his four Monus books (1952-1953). The publisher incorrectly refers to the comic on the cover and elsewhere as "Monus Man van de Maan" (without "the" for "man"). Henk Sprenger originally drew part 1 for the magazine Rob's Vrienden, of which A.D. Hildebrand was editor-in-chief. The strip was announced in No. 27 dated 9/26/1952 and appeared in the period 3-10-1952 to 13-2-1953. The timing of the publication of the comics is interesting. The first series of radio plays was broadcast from October 28, 1951 to June 1, 1952; the beginning of the second series, which ran from 10/5/1952 to 5/7/1953, coincided with the start of the publication as a comic at the end of September 1952. Part 2 was drawn by Ferry Zipper and originally appeared in the magazine Rob's Friends 20-2-1953 to 31-7-1953. The album also includes two other Sprenger comics, Demoneneiland and Patava the Cave Boy. Patava was a book by the well-known children's author Wilkeshuis; who also wrote the text for the comic. Part 1 of Monus corresponds to the book Monus the Man of the Moon and consists of sixty episodes (30 pages). Volume 2 corresponds to the book Monus' adventures on Earth and consists of 72 episodes (36 pages). Calculations show that each 'episode' must have consisted of three episodes. On page 45 there is a brief introduction from which the above information has been taken; However, the order of the Monus books is incorrect: Monus and the Flying Saucers is the third book and Monus to Mars is the fourth book. The last sentence 'Monus gained great fame as a radio play in the fifties' does not do justice to the fact that the radio play preceded the books; the books are, as stated therein, an adaptation of the radio play. Pages 43-44 contain the cover of the book Monus' adventures on earth and illustrations from the book Monus the Man of the Moon. The impression is wrongly created that the cover and illustrations were made by Marten Toonder. Publisher Boumaar has printed the cover of the first-mentioned book (which is the second of the series) with the illustrations of the latter book (which is the first book). The cover of Monus' adventures on earth on page 43 is indeed by Marten Toonder, but the illustrations from Monus de Man van de Maan are by Rein van Looy. The reverse has happened on pages 78-79. Here we find the cover of the first book Monus de Man van de Maan, indeed made by Rein van Looy, but the illustrations come from the second book Monus' adventures on earth and were made by the Marten Toonder Studios. Finally, on page 119 we find the cover and illustrations from the third book Monus and the Flying Saucers, all made by Marten Toonder (which is not mentioned). Some notes 1) Zipper is also mentioned as the draftsman of a series of Monus decals once (when?) Published by American Chewing Gum Cy [= Company], Breda. They were meant to be pasted into an album, but it is unknown whether that ever appeared and the chewing gum factory is also untraceable. Given the French translation of the Dutch text on the back, the publication is also intended for the Belgian market. In terms of style, the pictures correspond with the drawings of Zipper in part 2 of the comic and not with the style of Henk Sprenger, who had drawn part 1 of that comic. 2) Leo Kindt gave a lecture about Monus at the SF-convention Fryscon in Franeker in 2005; an adaptation of this appeared in Holland-SF # 224 April 2006; in this same issue of HSF an earlier version of this article about the Sprenger comic. 3) Research in the archive of the VARA has later learned that there was a third series of radio plays in the 1954-1955 season, on a different weekday, namely on Wednesday afternoons and with a different director and also another actor for the role from Monus. No book has been made of this series of radio plays, which was also broadcast under the title Monus de Man van de Maan. 4) The first book by Monus also appeared as a paperback in 1967 in the Workers' Press. 5) A German translation of the first Monus book was published (without year but probably in the late 1950s; bound edition) under the title Monus der Mann vom Mond - eine utopic Erzählung für die Jugend by Gebr. Weiss Verlag, Beriin-Schöneberg.
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