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Belgian comics are a distinct subgroup in the comics history, and played a major role in the development of European comics.
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] Beginnings
Belgium was relatively late to start producing comics, with the first serious production starting in the second half of the 1920s. Earlier, illustrated youth pages were still very similar to the Images d'Epinal and the Flemish equivalent, the Mannekensbladen. The few comics that were known came from France and were mainly available in the French speaking parts of Belgium, Wallonia and Brussels. The most popular were La Semaine de Suzette, L'Épatant and Le bon point illustré.XXXref page 13XXX
[edit] 1920s
In the 1920s, after World War I, many new youth magazines started, some as independent magazines like the bilingual Zonneland / Petits Belges made by catholic publishers Altiora Averbode; others as newspaper supplements. The most famous of these became Le Petit Vingtième, the weekly youth supplement to the catholic newspaper Le Vintième Siècle. Started in 1928, it employed the young artist Georges Remi as editor-in-chief and main contributor. Remi, better known as Hergé, had already made a comic for a scouts magazine, and launched in January 1929 a new series for the supplement: The Adventures of Tintin. Initially heavily influenced by the work of French comics authors Alain Saint Ogan and PinchonXXXref p 14XXX, Hergé soon developed his style and skill, and surpassed his examples. Tintin soon became very popular, and sales of the newspaper quadrupled on ThursdayXXXref p 15XXX. It would become the prototype for many Belgian comics to come, in style (the so-called Ligne claire, appearance rhythm (weekly), use of balloons (where other countries like the Netherlands would stick to comics with the text beneath the drawings for decades to come), and the method of using a first appearance in a magazine or newspaper and subsequent albums.XXXp105XXX
While Tintin was very popular, it would take almost a decade before the next successful comics magazine would appear. In the meantime, more and more youth magazines would publish some pages with more modern, Tintin-like comics.
Georges Van Raemdonck, the first major Flemish comics artist debuted even before Hergé did, but worked almost exclusively in the Netherlands until after World War 2. Still, he influenced some of the earliest pre-war Flemish artists like Jan Waterschoot and Buth, and as a newspaper artist with a daily comic stip, he paved the way for the typical publishing method of the Flemish comics when compared to the prevalent Walloon magazine publications. XXXp105-106XXX
[edit] 193Os
In the second half of the 1930s, most Walloon youth magazines made room for one or more comics by local artists: Jijé in Le Croisé in 1936 and in Petits Belges in 1939, François Gianolla in Jeunesse Ouvrière, Sirius in Le Patriote Illustré, ... a whole new generation, inspired by Hergé, debuts in the yeatrs before World War 2XXXref p 15-16XXX.
Dupuis, a publisher from close to Charleroi, had already success with its two family magazines Le Moustique and Bonnes Soirées. Charles Dupuis, son of the CEO, decides to start a youth magazine, centred around a new hero, SpirouXXXref p 16XXX. Initially, the experienced French artist Robert Velter was asked to create the main series, and the rest of the magazine is filled with popular American comics like Superman. Unusual was the decision, 8 months later, to publish the same magazine in Dutch as well as Robbedoes. This will have a profound influence on the development of the Flemish comics and will assure that Belgian comics will have a large part of their development in common. In 1939, Jijé joins the magazine. He will work for it until his death in 1980, and will be the driving force for its survival during and directly after the war, and its expansion and success in the next decades, as the inspirator for the most popular new artists of the 1940s and 1950s, known as the School of MarcinelleXXXref p 17-18XXX.
Some Flemish magazines start producing more modern local comics as well, with works by established artists like [Frans Van Immerseel]] in Zonneland and the expressionist painter Frits Van Den Berghe in Bravo, or new names like Jan Waterschoot in Zonneland or Eugeen Hermans (aka Pink) in Ons Volkske, a weekly newspaper supplement clearly inspired by Le Petit Vingtième. The most important comics writer for Bravo and Zonneland was the prolific John Flanders, who would continue to provide stories for the Flemish magazines until the 1960s.XXXp107-110XXX
[edit] World War 2
During the war, many magazines have to stop publication or scale back their activities. Petits Belges disappears with the invasion of the Germans, and Hergé started working for the collaborating newspaper Le Soir, where he has to change from a weekly double page of Tintin to a daily strip. Paper shortage also forced him to reduce the number of pages per album from the previous 120 to 62. To compensate for this, the editor Casterman decides to start publishing the albums in colour instead of black and white.XXXref p 21XXX This will become the post-war standard for all albums by the Walloon and Brussels' publishers: Flemish comics will only be produced in colours from the 1960s on.
Other magazines try to continue publication, but have to replace the forbidden American comics with local material. This is an opportunity for new talent to emerge. In Spirou, Jijé is joined by Sirius and the young illustrator Maurice TillieuxXXXref p18XXX.
The Flemish magazine Bravo, started in 1936 with almost exclusively American comics, has to change course in 1940: it starts a French language version as well, and attracts a number of young Belgian artists like Edgar P. Jacobs, Jacques Laudy, Raymond Reding and the Flemish Willy Vandersteen, together with the already well-known illustrator Jean Dratz.XXXref p 19XXX
Another way out for young artists is a number of small animation studios, created now the popular American animated movies of the 1930s may no longer be shown. In Antwerp, Ray Goossens and Bob de Moor start with AFIM, and in Brussels, André Franquin, Eddy Paape, Peyo and Morris work for CBA.XXXref p 20XXX
[edit] 1944-1958
The end of World War 2 is a second caesure, with again many magazines disappearing or changing hands, while a huge amount of new magazines appear now that censure and paper shortage are coming to an end. Spirou, which had disappeared at the end of 1943, reappears in 1944 with the same authors. Bravo on the other hand, gets new owners, and the main contributors seek new publishers. Le Soir as well gets new owners, and there is no more room for Hergé.
In 1946, Raymond Leblanc wants to start a youth magazine to expand his small publishing house Lombard, and decides to use the already very popular Tintin as the main hero for Tintin magazine. It starts in 1946 with a French and Dutch language version (the latter called Kuifje), as has become the custom for Belgian comics magazines. A version for France follows in 1948. The magazine immediately works mainly with Belgian artists, most coming from Bravo: Jacobs (who already had collaborated with Hergé), Laudy, and the young debutant Paul Cuvelier. It is an instant success, and soon other names join, including Jacques Martin. To get the same success with the Flemish version (where Tintin is not so well known yet), some of the best new Flemish artists are contacted: Bob de Moor and Willy Vandersteen.XXXp33XXX
Many other magazines only survive for a few years, and their best artists then join either Spirou or Tintin. Magazines like Bimbo, Story or Wrill mainly have regional success and lack a truly popular main series.XXXref p22-29XXX. Tillieux worked for Bimbo, Martin for Wrill, André-Paul Duchâteau starts his writing career in the new version of Bravo. Petits Belges / Zonneland continues to be published, but only devotes a few pages to comics. The main artist in these days is Renaat Demoen.
The main competitor for Tintin and Spirou in this period is Heroic-Albums, which has a different publishing method: instead of a number of continuing stories whic often appeared continuously with a rhythm of one page a week, Heroic publishes one complete long story every week. The main artists are Tillieux, Fred Funcken, Tibet, François Craenhals, Greg, ... XXXref p29XXX. Due to being censored in France, the magazine finally disappears in 1956.
In Flanders, there is a similar boom of new magazines, but the most important artists and comics in the long run work mainly for the newspapers: Marc Sleen fills many pages in the magazine 't Kapoentje, but his main series Nero appears in the newspaper Het Volk from 1947 on. Willy Vandersteen works for a whole series of magazines, both in Dutch and French, but his main series Spike and Suzy appears in De Standaard from 1945 on.
These two artists will dominate the Flemish comics scene until 1980, but even though Nero gets translated in French and German, the only success outside Flanders is Spike and Suzy, which becomes the most popular comic of the Netherlands and gets a sizable audience in Wallonia as well, mainly because of the appearance of seven specially created stories in Tintin, which are commonly considered to be the best of the series. Due to this success, Vandersteen opens a Studio which will produce hundreds of comics and gives many young local artists a steady job. However, contrary to the School of Marcinelle and to a lesser degree the Studio Hergé, very few artists will have a successfull independent career after leaving the studio. One of the major series of the Studio is Bessy, which is originally made for the Walloon newspaper La Libre Belgique in 1952 and will only later find its way to Flanders and finally to a series of more than 1000 comic books in Germany. XXXp113-120XXX
In the 1950s, the comics scene in Belgium is dominated by three main publishing methods: the main magazines Tintin and Spirou, coupled with the albums published afterwards by the editors Lombard and Dupuis; the daily newspaper comics in Flanders, with the cheaper black and white albums afterwards by De Standaard and Het Volk: and the weekly newspaper supplements of the French language newspapers, which mainly lacked subsequent albums. The number of other magazines slowly decreased, and the independent comic albums pubmishers disappeared with the exception of Casterman, publisher of the comics by Hergé and a limited number of other comics.
In this period, the Belgian comics have their Golden Age, a period of constant growth and expansion, with the start and continuation of many of the most popular Belgian series.
Spirou expands from 12 pages of newspaper quality to 52 full colour pages, and the number of American comics, reintroduced after the end of the war, dwindles to near nil in 1950. Their place is taken by Victor Hubinon and Jean-Michel Charlier (Buck Danny), Maurice Tillieux (Gil Jourdan), Eddy Paape, Will, and most importantly André Franquin, Morris, and Peyo. Their series Lucky Luke, The Smurfs and Gaston Lagaffe become international bestsellers. While the first generation learned much of the art while working with Jijé, many younger artists start their professional career in the Studio Peyo before creating their own series, assuring the continuation of the School of Marcinelle. The humour aspect of the magazine is assured by the editor-in-chief Yvan Delporte, writer for Franquin, Will and Peyo. XXXp 39-42XXX Together with the main artists of Tintin, they will define the Franco-Belgian comics for decades to come.
Tintin has a similar story, with rapid success and expansion. New artists like Jean Graton (Michel Vaillant) and Raymond Macherot reach new audiences. Hergé starts his Studio to help him with the work on the Tintin comics, and it will define the style of many artists like Bob de Moor and Roger Leloup.
The styles of the two magazines are distinctly different, with the Ligne Claire and the more serious, didactic tone of Tintin contrasting with the humorous, more caricatural School of Marcinelle of Spirou.
In Flanders, no local magazine can equal the success of the two translated Walloon magazines, and to survive this period, they disappear as independent magazines and become weekly newspaper supplements. The most important is 't Kapoentje, which publishes the work of Buth and Rik Clément, but which has no influence outside Flanders. The only new artist to become truly successful in this period is Jef Nys with Jommeke, which debuts in 1955 and becomes the third major daily newspaper comic in Flanders.XXXp121-123XXX
Other artists like Pom, Bob Mau or Renaat Demoen either are less successfull and have only a limited audience, or start working for the French langauge magazines, following in the footsteps of Morris in Spirou and Bob de Moor in Tintin. The most successful of those in this period is Berck, who starts in this period in Tintin.
[edit] 1959-1978
From 1959 on, the dominance of Spirou and Tintin slowly disappears. The first generation of artists cannot continue the publication rhythm of the previous decades, and French magazines reach new audiences, helped by the protectionistic censoring by the French authorities. French artists like René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, who previously worked for Belgian magazines and newspapers, start their own magazine Pilote, and the less restrictive atmosphere there attracts some of their main colleagues from Spirou like Morris, Jijé, Charlier and Hubinon. Apart from Morris, they will all continue working for Spirou, but the decline has started.
Tintin suffered from the lack of new stories by Hergé. Greg becomes the new editor-in-chief in 1962 and will continue this until 1975, introducing a new, more adult style and content to the magazine, and introducing some major new artists like Hermann Huppen, William Vance, Jean Van Hamme and Arthur Berckmans. But despite the critical acclaim of these authors, the circulation slowly declines from the record high of 270,000 copies a week in France alone, and the different editions of Tintin disappear over the next decade, but not before launching a last major series with Thorgal by Rosinski.XXXp36-37XXX
Spirou as well had to introduce new artists and series to fill the pages and keep their readers. It takes many of them until around 1970 to become real stars, with the rise of Raoul Cauvin as the new main writer of the magazine. The biggest new series of the 1960s is Boule et Bill by Franquin-collaborator Jean Roba. It becomes the most popular series of the magazine together with Gaston Lagaffe after the disappearance of Lucky Luke in 1967. Around 1970, Berck (Sammy), Lambil (les Tuniques Bleues), François Walthéry (Natacha), and Leloup (Yoko Tsuno) are the main new artists and series. XXXp42-47XXX
In Flanders, the situation is very stable, with the limited local publication possibilities all taken by the established authors of the 1940s and 1950s, leaving no room for new talents after the disappearance of most magazines. New artists either start working in the large Studio Vandersteen or try to get into Spirou and Tintin, thereby strengthening the bond between the cmics scenes of both language groups.
Comics fandom, started in the Netherlands and France in the 1960s, starts in Flanders in 1966 with the different publications by Jan Smet, who also creates the first Flemish comics award in 1972. This will develop into the Bronzen Adhemar, the most important comics award of Flanders.XXXp152XXX In Wallonia, it only seriously starts in 1971, with the first awards (the Prix Saint-Michel in Brussels) and fanzine (Rantanplan), both by André Leborgne, and the first specialized shop and republisher of old material, Michel Deligne. The Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels starts with a comics department with teachers like Eddy Paape, and will be largely responsible for the new, more adult-oriented authors who will come to the fore in the 1980s and 1990s. Ecpositions with the major artists can be seen throughout the country, some organised by amateur enthusiasts, some endorsed by the government. XXXp48-49XXX
[edit] 1979-now
The last decades have shown the further decline of the traditional publication systems of the Belgian comics, and the end of the dominance of the Belgian authors in European comics.
Reflecting the shift from the dominance of weekly youth comics to longer adult comics is the demise of Tintin and the start of A Suivre, the more adult oriented monthly magazine of publisher Casterman. It publishes longer "chapters" of the main European authors of graphic novels, with artists like Hugo Pratt and Jacques Tardi. Among them, room is still reserved for the best Walloon and Brussels' talents, including Dider Comès, Benoît Sokal, and François Schuiten. The magazine, seen as the more intellectual reply to French magazines like Métal Hurlant who are more oriented towards graphical innovation, is a big success and has a lot of influence, but turns out to be shortlived and disappears in the early nineties, further demonstrating the disappearance of the magazine format in a market where most people prefer to immediately buy the albums.
In Flanders, a final experiment with a youth comics magazine is started in 1993 with Suske en Wiske Weekblad by Standaard Uitgeverij: with a mix of classic comics and new series and carried by the most popular Dutch language series and a sizable promotional campaign, it gets a sizable audience at first, but slowly loses momentum and disappears in 2003.
The only comics magazine to survive is Spirou, but with the end of the Dutch version Robbedoes in 2005, when the circulation had dropped to only about 3,000 copies, no mass-market comics magazines for the Flemish audience remain, making it hard for young Flemish artists to gain a larger audience.
Spirou, meanwhile, keeps after a decline during the 1970s and 1980s from 280,000 to 160,000 copies a quite steady circulation, and is a mix of a showcase for Dupuis and a method to test new artists and series before doing the sizable investment of an album series. After experiments to target a more mature audience in the late 1970s and in the 1980s with the supplement Le Trombone Illustré and the publication of comics like XIII and Jeremiah, the focus is again fixed on humour series and an audience of young teenagers. Now famous artists like Bernard Hislaire, Zep, Tome, Janry or Midam debut or still publish in the magazine.
But next to the magazine, Dupuis, like all the other editors, targets the older audience as well with a collection of graphic novels.
Both Lombard and Dupuis have since been bought by the French media concern Média Participations, but retain a large degree of independence.
In Flanders, this period starts with the appearance of two new successful newspaper comics, Bakelandt by Hec Leemans and the extremely successful Kiekeboe by Merho.XXXp131-132XXX But they seem to be at the same time the final successes of a slowly dying system, and comics in Flanders are more and more centered around albums as well. Successfull series and authors are few and far between, and most, like Urbanus, are only a local success. A few peripheral figures like Ever Meulen, who is mainly an illustrator, or Kamagurka, who is more of a cartoonist, do become successful in Wallonia, France and the NetherlandsXXXp140-142XXX, but apart from those exceptions, the main method for Flemish comics artists to become successfull is still being published by the three French language publishers.
The most successful of these since the 1960s are William Vance, Jo-El Azara and Jean-Pol.XXXp147-150XXX
[edit] Importance
[edit] Notes
- ^ De Laet, Danny and Varende, Yves (1979). De Zevende Kunst Voorbij. Geschiedenis van het Beeldverhaal in België. Brussel: Dienst Voorlichitng der Diplomatieke posten van het Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken.
[edit] External links
* Belgian comics
