The Low Countries. Jaargang 5

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Flemish Comic Strips Today

Morris & Goscinny: Lucky Luke.

There are few places in the world where the comic strip is so closely interwoven with daily life as it is in Flanders. Not only do newspapers and weeklies publish an unending stream of new episodes of cartoon series, there are also magazines devoted entirely to comic strips. Piles of new ones are to be found in every supermarket, and in the smallest of newsagents. For enthusiasts there are also markets, festivals, exhibitions, special issues and so on. Various popular comic strip characters can be seen in streets and parks in the form of statues or in murals. But in the main it is youngsters who devour them most voraciously. In spite of the wide range of other forms of entertainment (tv, computer games, etc.), Flemish children are still very happy to read the adventures of their favourite cartoon characters. In fact most of these books are tailored to a juvenile readership.

While other areas of popular culture in Flanders, such as pop music and the cinema, are highly Americanised, comic strips from abroad play only a minor part in the whole. But popular as native-Flemish comic strips may be within the bounds of Flanders, there is little market for them in French-speaking Belgium and abroad. It must be remembered that the most popular Flemish series appear in advance in the daily papers. Newspaper cartoons from abroad rarely succeed on the international market in book form, with the exception of a few American comics like Peanuts, Hagar and Casper and Hobbes.

When Flemish work is brought out by a French-language Belgian publisher it has a much greater chance of achieving an international breakthrough. The best example of this is undoubtedly the humorous Western series called Lucky Luke, created by Morris, who was born in Kortrijk. This series started in Spirou, a comic strip weekly issued by the Walloon publisher Dupuis, and is heavily influenced by American animation films and the Westerns of the forties. Morris, who has worked for French-language publishers almost his whole life, has by now sold about 278 million books world-wide. The popularity of the comic books led to Lucky Luke being adapted for the silver screen, both as a cartoon film and as a feature film starring Terence Hill, and for television. In 1984 the big American animation studio Hanna & Barbera made a series of 26 cartoon films for tv,

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but the rogue cowboy did have to exchange his cigarette for a blade of grass, which also brought him a prize from the World Health Organisation. The author himself attributes part of the success of his cartoon to its international flavour. In Lucky Luke Morris parodies classic Western scenes and incorporates historical events from the Wild West. And since the mid-fifties Morris has also employed the services of foreign scenarists, such as the late Goscinny of Asterix fame.

Nowadays quite a number of Flemish artists collaborate with scenarists who speak another language: Vance with Van Hamme (XIII), Jean-Pol with Cauvin (Sammy), Johan de Moor with Stephen Desberg (The Cow - La Vache / Kobe de Koe), Griffo with Dufaux (Giacomo C.), etc. They therefore also work with French-language publishers and their comic series are published in various languages. Comics produced by Flemish people alone appear to find it harder to cross the language border, with the exception of the phenomenal success of Bob and Bobette (Suske en Wiske; see The Low Countries 1995-96: 46-52) in the Netherlands and French-speaking Belgium. In addition to this there are a few comics such as Tom Carbon and Cowboy Henk that have appeared in several West European languages.

Flemish comics are currently almost always based on an ‘original’ scenario. They may, exceptionally, also be based on an existing story. Marvano has ventured into the adaptation of novels, such as the sci-fi Forever War by the American Joe Haldeman, about a war between the Earth and another planet at some time in the future. It is actually a metaphor for the crazy Vietnam War that Haldeman was sent to as a soldier. But Flemish cartoon artists generally write their scenarios themselves or work with a permanent comic strip scenarist; it is only exceptionally that someone from outside the profession is called upon. One example was Eric Joris, who engaged a number of Flemish writers and film-makers for The Dangerous Cooks (Les cuisiniers dangereux). Another striking fact is that, almost without exception, it is only men that earn their living from drawing cartoons; there are only a few female authors around, such as Erika Raven.

The publication of strip cartoons

In Flanders the majority of publishing companies are in Dutch hands, including those marketing comic strips. This is true, for example, of the largest producer of Flemish comic strips, Standaard Uitgeverij, which has almost all the top comic series on its lists, including Bob and Bobette and Red Knight (De Rode Ridder), and also publishes its own weekly comic strip book for children. About five hundred Dutch-language books of comic strips appear every year. Though work by Flemish authors makes up only part of the total, in absolute figures it has the largest turnover!

At present, the three best-selling comic strips in Flanders are Bob and Bobette, Jommeke and Jo & co (Kiekeboe). These are all series which regularly appear in advance in newspapers or weeklies and of which three to five new books are published per year, in editions of about one hundred thousand. The books are printed in four colours, have a paper cover and a set number of pages (32 or 48). The average price of one of these books is about 130 bf (roughly $ 4 or £ 2.50), which is slightly more expensive than

Willy Vandersteen: Bob and Bobette (Suske en Wiske).

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Marc Sleen: Nero.

Jef Nys: Jommeke.

an American comic book but considerably cheaper than a French cartoon book with a hard cover. One-shots, self-contained books which do not form part of a series, are fairly rare in the Flemish comic strip world.

The way a comic strip is published may seem to be independent of its method of creation, but nothing could be further from the truth. To start with, authors of comic strips who have to provide a newspaper with two strips of cartoons every day are under a certain constant pressure year after year. Comic strips created in such circumstances are therefore both literally and figuratively serial products, usually being made by a small group of people with a fixed division of labour. Advance publication in a newspaper also influences the form and content of the comic strips. Since every page in a book has to be divided in two for the newspaper edition, the authors' page is composed of four rows of pictures. This also has implications for the story's continuity: it is preferable that each episode (consisting of two rows) in the newspaper should end on a note of suspense. By publishing in a newspaper, an author can at the same time make use of hot topics, as Marc Sleen has been doing for half a century in his Nero series. Comic strips of this sort have to be read in their context, if all the allusions and references are to be understood. For technical reasons with regard to printing, clear line drawing has become the dominant style in Flemish newspaper cartoons. In newspapers, of course, only the black ink drawing is used; colours are added for the book edition.

Major genres

Any attempt to delineate clearly defined genres is condemned to make use of unfair generalisations. Even so, I shall try to distil a number of distinguishing features from the multiplicity of Flemish comic strips. In the first place, most Flemish comic strips are made to be accessible to children, with simple chronological narrative structures, a clear and meticulous drawing style, a transparent use of language, and when there is humour it has to be fairly obvious; in other words these comic strips are highly readable and popular in style.

However varied the range of Flemish comic strips may currently be, there are certain genres that appear rarely or not at all; these include violent superhero comics, erotic and porno comics, documentary cartoons, biography and autobiography, experimental comic strips and religious comic strips. Genres that are popular are the family comic, the humorous comic and the adventure comic. These genres often merge into one another, since the Flemish family comic generally blends humour with elements of adventure; the latter is less commonly found in the American family comic, for example. The Flemish comic family (Bob and Bobette, Nero, Jommeke, Jo & co and Urbanus) is usually very varied in its make-up, both with regard to age and to appearance and character. These Flemish cartoon characters are everyday figures, not real heroes like Tintin and Tarzan. Take Nero, for example, an archetypical middle-aged ‘Belgian’, a hero in spite of himself, and in fact devoted to his armchair and slippers. Another interesting archetype in the Flemish comic strip is the often unworldly ‘professor / inventor’, like Nero's son Adhemar or the absent-minded Gobelijn in Jommeke. Nys'

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Jommeke is a boy of about ten with a very characteristic haircut (a ‘thatch’). Together with his group of friends he has all kinds of highly imaginative and exciting adventures, in which there is not a trace of violence. All of Jommeke's adventures have a happy end. Though the happy ending may have become almost a permanent feature of Flemish family cartoons, a series like Jo & co sometimes risks a departure from this rule. Merho, its author, is apparently not very optimistic regarding certain present-day world problems (e.g. the democratisation of former dictatorships). The most daring family cartoon is undoubtedly the risqué Urbanus. Linthout's style of drawing is disarmingly naive, but there is a great deal of social criticism mixed in with the ruthless humour.

The humour in Flemish comic strips has come a long way since the Second World War, but it remains less varied than in other comics such as the French or American ones. One particularly strong trend in Flanders is nonsensical or absurd humour, the leaders here being Kamagurka & Herr Seele. By contrast, social satire, the chief genre in nineteenth-century European comic strips, appears very rarely. In The Cow, by Johan De Moor and Stephen Desberg, the satire is hidden beneath a form that is mischievous and playful. Kobe looks like an ordinary cow, but sometimes she goes out into the wide world as a secret agent and takes up the cudgels against pollution and other contemporary excrescences.

A separate trend is the humorous comic that focuses on a famous tv personality, such as a comedian, a pop singer, a politician, a sex symbol or a children's idol. The great majority of these merchandising comics are substandard and quite ephemeral. The only ones which have been successful in appealing to a broad readership for a longer period are Urbanus and Samson & Gert (based on a tremendously popular tv series for young children, centred on a fluffy dog called Samson).

Another widespread genre is the ‘naughty boy’ comic, about children who get up to mischief. The former ‘cheerful rascals’, conversant only with innocent pranks, have now given way to brash and independent cartoon children like Legendre's Biebel.

Whereas the Japanese manga and American comic books explode with action, in Flemish comic strips it's relatively peaceful. Flanders produces no pure action comics containing violence for violence's sake. Action is in most cases used in thrillers or crime stories. XIII, by William Vance, is a deftly drawn, exciting macho adventure series. The scenario is by one of Europe's most popular scenarists, the French-speaking Belgian Jean van Hamme, who likes to borrow ideas from novel writers and film scenarists. In the case of XIII he drew part of his inspiration from the books of Robert Ludlum.

The great majority of Flemish comic strips are set in the present day, but there are also those that are set in the past (e.g. Bakelandt, set during the eighteenth-century French occupation) or the future (e.g. Forever War). Generally speaking, Flemish comics are interested in only a limited number of historical periods and in specific locations. The Middle Ages in Europe remain popular. The stories are always fictional, though employing historical elements. The more fantastic genres such as science fiction, tales of heroes and sword & sorcery occur less frequently but do play a major part in Red Knight. It was started in 1959 by Willy Vandersteen as a Flemish version of the American Prince Valiant by Hal Foster. In the hands of Karel

Merho: Jo & co (Kiekeboe).

Karel Biddeloo: The Red Knight (De Rode Ridder).

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Herr Seele & Kamagurka: Cowboy Henk.

Vance & Van Hamme: XIII.

Linthout: Urbanus.

Biddeloo Red Knight evolved during the seventies into a baroque comic with an unlikely mixture of historical fact, myths, science fiction and fantasy. Biddeloo is also one of the first mainstream Flemish comic strip authors to have introduced numerous good-looking female characters. ‘Good’, for example, is personified in the blonde Galaxa, a pin-up with the proportions of Pamela Anderson, while ‘Evil’ is represented by her ravenhaired counterpart Demoniah, who shares her rival's vital statistics. This comic series differs sharply from other Flemish newspaper cartoons in graphic terms too, by its use of found images (e.g. photocopies of photos of castles) and its almost psychedelic colouring.

On the fringes of these big commercial editions there are also a number of alternative and more experimental comics by younger people whose periodicals (BILL, Verdomd Goed Tijdschrift, etc.) and books they mainly publish themselves. These ‘autarchic’ or small press comics, so called because of their small scale and limited editions, are an international phenomenon, with a great deal of interchange between the various authors and collectives.

One might lament that adult comics are still in their infancy in Flanders, but the main aim of the vast majority of Flemish comic producers is to create unpretentious entertainment, since that is apparently the only thing that yields a profit. This popular cartoon culture does have a considerable economic value, not only in terms of turnover, but also in providing employment.

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Sometimes mom is a bit absent-minded...but she makes great pancakes (by Steve Michiels in the second issue of BILL).

The authorities do not concern themselves with the comic strip industry. In contrast with their colleagues in the literary, visual and performing arts, the film world and radio and tv, the authors of comic strips cannot benefit from working grants or subsidies. In Flanders comic strips are still unjustly seen as purely consumer products. This, despite the fact that comic authors like Spiegelman, an American, Breccia, an Argentine, and Mattotti, an Italian, have already proven that the comic medium has other, artistic, strengths.

pascal lefèvre

Translated by Gregory Ball.

List of translations

marvano and haldeman, Forever War. nbm.

merho, Jo & co: The White Blood. Standaard.

morris and goscinny, Lucky Luke: The Stagecoach. Flight Publishing.

seele, herr and kamagurka, Cowboy Henk: King of Dental Floss. Scissors Books.

vance, william and jean van hamme, XIII. Catalan Communications.

vandersteen, willy and paul geerts, Bob and Bobette. Ravette Books.

Alternative work of the ‘small press’ can be found in: BILL. Bill Productions (since 1993).

Formaline. Bronzen Adhemar Stichting (1995).

Further information

Belgian Centre for Comic Strip Art

Zandstraat 20 / 1000 Brussels / Belgium

tel. + 32 2 2191980 / fax [phone]