Pep is the title of a series of comic magazines published weekly by Illustrated Press in The Netherlands. The first Pep comic magazine was released on the 6th of October 1962 and ran through till September 1975. After this 13 year period, Pep comic magazine was merged with Sjors to form Eppo.

Pep is touted as being a comic book for readers who had outgrown Donald Duck, but wanted to keep reading comics.

When Pep commenced in 1962, it mainly contained foreign comic strips such as Michel Vaillant, Tintin, Dan Cooper, Hoempa Pa, Colonel Clifton, Chlorophyl, Asterix, Ton & Tineke, Olivier Blunder, Mickey, Zorro and Flippie Flink. Later, Dutch comics such as Agent 327, de Argonautjes, Ambrosius, Erwin, Vidocq, Blook, Eppo, de Generaal, Johnny Goodbye and Kraaienhove started to appear.

Besides comic strips, Pep also contained pages with letters to the publisher, puzzles, general knowledge articles, announcements, short stories and pop music articles. Even local talent show pieces would appear in the magazine.

Each edition contains approximately 32 pages and measures 21cm x 29cm, with full color internal pages. The edition number was reset as a new year would come around, so January of each year would see a new number 1 being released.

The Phantom (or Fantoom as he’s known in the Netherlands) appeared in edition numbers 50 to 53 in 1966 and then in edition numbers 1 to 8 in 1967, 12 editions in total. ‘The Veiled Lady’ comic strip appeared in these editions, with the Phantom only appearing on the cover of 1 edition, number 3, published in 1967.

Advertisements or comic strips can be typically found on the back covers of Pep.

---