'Fishy Stories', with a reference to The Beatles' song 'Octopus's Garden'.
Vera Bekema is a Berlin-based Dutch graphic designer, who is also active in the indie comics scene with DIY zines like 'Hairy Lemons' (2022) and 'Fishy Stories' (2025).
Life and career
Originally from Eindhoven in the south of the Netherlands, Vera Bekema studied Animation at the St. Joost School of Art & Design in Breda, graduating in 2004. Since then, she has been working as a graphic designer, for instance for the Eindhoven art center and publishing imprint Onomatopee. During the early 2010s, Bekema and her husband, animator/cartoonist Dirk Verschure, moved to the German capital of Berlin, where she continued her work as designer and on personal DIY art projects. She has also performed as a voice actor in her husband's animated short 'Birds Whose Legs Break Off' (2022).
Comic art by Vera Bekema.
Comic zines
Active in Berlin's indie comics scene, Bekema's comics have appeared in Kutlul (2016-2023), the Dutch-German "mega-zine" co-edited by Dirk Verschure and Joost Halbertsma. In 2024, she contributed to Hairspray Magazine, an all-female comic anthology produced by Berlin-based cartoonist Karla Paloma. Internationally, Bekema's art was featured in the Danish Radbrækket magazine as well as Bernadette Magazine #1 (2024), an American anthology with female and non-binary artists, edited by Angela Fanche and Katie Lane. In addition, both Vera Bekema and Dirk Verschure have been self-publishing DIY zines and riso prints with their own comics, each showcasing a preference for the surreal and the absurd. Bekema's comics are populated by jealous lemons, cucumber zombies and various fish who try to "live their lives despite everything in a world dominated by textures and patterns". Her 2022 solo zine 'Hairy Lemons' collected the stories contains 'Cucumber Zombies', 'Life on a Thread', 'Bert With an extra Head', 'Where are the Dead Birds', 'Chicken Peanuts' and 'Hairy Lemons', while its follow-up 'Fishy Stories' (2025) contained six short fish stories.
'Cucumber Zombies'.