Belgian comics
Belgian comics are a distinct subgroup in the comics history, and played a major role in the development of European comics, alongside France with whom they share a long common history. While the comics in the two major language groups and regions of Belgium each have clearly distinct characteristics, they are constantly influencing one another, and meeting each other in Brussels and in the bilingual publication tradition of the major editors. As one of the few arts where Belgium has had an international and enduring impact in the 20th century, comics are known to be "an integral part of Belgian culture".
History
Before 1940
The first large-scale production of comics in Belgium started in the second half of the 1920s. Earlier, illustrated youth pages were still very similar to the Images d'Épinal and the Flemish equivalent, the Mannekensbladen. The comics that were available came from France and were mostly available in parts of Belgium where the French language dominated. The most popular were La Semaine de Suzette, L'Épatant and Le bon point illustré. French authors like Marijac contributed to Belgian magazines as well.The 1920s saw the formation of many new youth magazines, some independent like the bilingual Zonneland / Petits Belges from Catholic publishers Altiora Averbode or scout magazines like Le Boy-Scout Belge, where Hergé debuted; others were published as newspaper supplements. The most famous of these was Le Petit Vingtième, the weekly youth supplement to the Catholic newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. Founded in 1928, it employed the young artist Georges Remi as editor-in-chief and main contributor. Remi, better known as Hergé, 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 Pinchon and the American George McManus, Hergé soon developed his own style. Tintin soon became very popular, and sales of the newspaper quadrupled on Thursdays, when the supplement was included. It would become the prototype for many Belgian comics to come, in style, appearance rhythm, use of speech balloons, and the method of using a first appearance in a magazine or newspaper and subsequent albums.
While Tintin was very popular, it would take almost a decade before the next successful comics magazine would appear. In the meantime, an increasing number of youth magazines would publish some pages with comics influenced by Tintin.
George Van Raemdonck, the first major Flemish comics artist, worked almost exclusively in the Netherlands until after World War II. 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 strip, he paved the way for the typical publishing method of the Flemish comics when compared to the prevalent Walloon magazine publications.
More situated in the classic arts than in the mainstream comics publishing was Frans Masereel, a Flemish wood engraver whose 1926 "Passionate Journey", a wordless story told in 165 woodcuts, is sometimes considered as the first graphic novel.
In the second half of the 1930s, most Walloon youth magazines made room for one or more comics by local artists. Examples are Jijé in Le Croisé in 1936 and in Petits Belges in 1939, François Gianolla in Jeunesse Ouvrière, and Sirius in Le Patriote Illustré. Dupuis, a publisher based in Marcinelle near Charleroi, was already having success with its two family magazines Le Moustique and Bonnes Soirées. Charles Dupuis, son of the CEO, decided to start a youth magazine centred around a new hero, Spirou. It debuted on April 21, 1938. French artist Robert Velter, a former assistant of Martin Branner, was asked to create the title series, and the rest of the magazine was filled with popular American comics such as Superman. 8 months later, in an unusual move, the magazine was published in Dutch under the name Robbedoes. This would have a profound influence on the development of the Flemish comics and assured that Belgian comics would have a large part of their development in common. In 1939, Jijé joined the magazine. He worked there until his death in 1980, and was the driving force of the magazine during and directly after the war. He was responsible for its expansion and success in the next decades, and was as the inspirator for the later generation of comics artists in the 1940s and 1950s which is known as the Marcinelle school. Apart from Hergé, Jijé's main inspiration came from American artists such as Milton Caniff and Noel Sickles.
Some Flemish magazines started 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 in Ons Volkske, a weekly newspaper supplement inspired by Le Petit Vingtième. The most important comics writer for Bravo and Zonneland was John Flanders, who would continue to provide stories for the Flemish magazines until the 1960s.
World War II
During the war, many magazines had to stop publication or scale back their activities due to paper shortage and the limitations imposed by the German occupiers. Le Petit Vingtième was dissolved after the German invasion, and Hergé started working for the collaborating newspaper Le Soir, where he had 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 decided to start publishing the albums in colour instead of black and white. This became the post-war standard for all albums by the Walloon and Brussels publishers: From the 1960s on, almost all Flemish comics have been printed in colour.Other magazines tried to continue publication, but had to replace the forbidden American comics with local material. This was an opportunity for new talent to emerge. In Spirou, Jijé was joined by Sirius and the young illustrator Maurice Tillieux.
The Flemish magazine Bravo, started in 1936 with almost exclusively American comics, had to change course in 1940, and created a French-language version as well, attracting 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.
Another way out for young artists were a number of small animation studios, created when the popular American animated movies of the 1930s might no longer be shown. In Antwerp, Ray Goossens and Bob de Moor started with AFIM, and in Brussels, André Franquin, Eddy Paape, Peyo and Morris worked for CBA.
1944–1958
The end of World War II was a second caesure, with again many magazines disappearing or changing hands, while a huge amount of new magazines appeared now that censure and paper shortage were coming to an end. Spirou, which had disappeared at the end of 1943, reappeared in 1944 with the same authors. Bravo on the other hand got new owners, and the main contributors searched new publishers. The newspaper Le Soir replaced its wartime version and all the staff with the pre-wartime owners and staff, and Hergé was left without a publication outlet for nearly two years while allegations of collaboration with the Germans were investigated.In 1946, Raymond Leblanc wanted to start a youth magazine to expand his small publishing house Lombard, and decided to use the already very popular Tintin as the main hero for Tintin magazine. It started in 1946 with a French and Dutch language version, as had become the custom for Belgian comics magazines. A version for France followed in 1948. The magazine immediately employed mainly Belgian artists, most coming from Bravo: Jacobs, Laudy, and the young debutant Paul Cuvelier. It was an instant success, and soon other names joined, including Jacques Martin. To get the same success with the Flemish version, two of the best new Flemish artists were contacted: Bob de Moor and Willy Vandersteen. De Moor stayed with Hergé and Tintin until the end of his life, but Vandersteen left the magazine again after 11 years.
Many other magazines only survived for a few years, and their best artists then joined either Spirou or Tintin. Magazines like Bimbo, Story or Wrill mainly had regional success and lacked a truly popular main series. Tillieux worked for Bimbo, Martin for Wrill, André-Paul Duchâteau started his writing career in the new version of Bravo. Petits Belges / Zonneland continued to be published, but only devoted a few pages to comics. The main artist in these days is Renaat Demoen, later joined by François Craenhals.
The main competitor for Tintin and Spirou in this period was Heroic-Albums, which had a different publishing method: instead of a number of continuing stories which often appeared continuously with a rhythm of one page a week, Heroic published one complete long story every week. The main artists were Tillieux, Fred Funcken, Tibet, François Craenhals, Greg,... Due to being censored in France, the magazine finally disappeared in 1956.
In Flanders, there was a similar boom of new magazines, but the most important artists and comics in the long run worked mainly for the newspapers: Marc Sleen filled many pages in the magazine 't Kapoentje, but his main series Nero appeared in the newspaper Het Volk from 1947 on. Willy Vandersteen worked for a whole series of magazines, both in Dutch and French, but his main series Spike and Suzy appeared in De Standaard from 1945 on.
These two artists dominated the Flemish comics scene until 1980, but even though Nero gets translated in French and German, the only success outside Flanders was Spike and Suzy, which became the most popular comic of the Netherlands and got 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 opened a Studio which produced hundreds of comics and gave many young local artists a steady job. However, contrary to the School of Marcinelle and to a lesser degree the Studios Hergé, very few artists had a successful independent career after leaving the studio. One of the major series of the Studio was Bessy, originally made for the Walloon newspaper La Libre Belgique in 1952, and which would only later find its way to Flanders and finally to a series of more than 1000 comic books in Germany.
Meanwhile, many artists who would later become famous debuted on a small scale in the Walloon newspapers: Peyo, Greg, Albert Uderzo, René Goscinny,...
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 publishers without a magazine 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 had their Golden Age, a period of constant growth and expansion, with the start and continuation of many of the most popular Belgian series.
Spirou expanded from 12 pages of newspaper quality to 52 full colour pages, and the number of American comics, reintroduced after the end of the war, dwindled to near nil in 1950. Their place was taken by Victor Hubinon and Jean-Michel Charlier, Maurice Tillieux, Eddy Paape, Will, and most importantly André Franquin, Morris, and Peyo. Their respective series Gaston Lagaffe, Lucky Luke and The Smurfs became international bestsellers.
While the first generation learned much of the art while working with Jijé, many younger artists started 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 was assured by the editor-in-chief Yvan Delporte, writer for Franquin, Will and Peyo. Together with the main artists of Tintin, they defined the Franco-Belgian comics for decades to come.
Tintin had a similar story, with rapid success and expansion. New artists like Jean Graton and Raymond Macherot reached new audiences. Hergé started his Studio to help him with the work on the Tintin comics, and it defined the style of many artists like Bob de Moor and Roger Leloup.
The styles of the two magazines were distinctly different, with the ligne claire and the more serious, didactic tone of Tintin contrasting with the humorous, more caricatural Marcinelle school of Spirou.
In Flanders, no local magazine could equal the success of the two translated Walloon magazines, and to survive this period, they disappeared as independent magazines and became weekly newspaper supplements. The most important was 't Kapoentje, which published the work of Buth and Rik Clément, but which had no influence outside Flanders. The only new artist to become truly successful in this period was Jef Nys with Jommeke, which debuted in 1955 and became the third major daily newspaper comic in Flanders.
Artists like Pom, Bob Mau or Renaat Demoen were less successful and had only a limited audience, while other Flemish artists started working for the French language magazines, following in the footsteps of Morris in Spirou and Bob de Moor in Tintin. The most successful of those in this period was Berck, who first appeared in this period in Tintin before moving to Spirou.