The Adventures of Tintin started as a modest weekly installment in “Le Petit Vingtième,” the youth pages of a small Catholic Belgian newspaper, “Le Vingtième Siècle” (The 20th Century). Its creator, Hergé (1907-1983), was totally taken by surprise by the success of this character, whose adventures were soon published in other Catholic magazines abroad [...]
Suske en Wiske, created by Willy Vandersteen, is unquestionably the most famous comics series in Flemish Belgium. Published since 1945, counting more than three hundred stories, Suske en Wiske – known in French as Bob et Bobette and in English as Spike and Suzy – is a classical family adventure. The prototypical characters – [...]
In a sense, it could be argued that the Genevan artist Rodophe Töpffer (1799-1846), generally considered the founding father of modern Francophone (and European) comics, invented most of the features of modern comics storytelling. His work was a radical innovation to the tradition of the single broadsheet, poorly colored and heavily captioned, woodcut storytelling [...]
Typically dressed in a red bellboy outfit, Spirou is, along Tintin, the quintessential Franco-Belgian comics character. Created in 1938 as the flagship of the eponymous periodical, he is a symbol of the “Golden Age” of francophone comics, especially identified with the contribution of André Franquin. Already with the popular magazine Le Moustique under his [...]