The Four Color Media Monitor

The Brussels Times has a history item by a writer about Belgium's contributions to European comics, and how, at least initially, it wasn't easy selling anybody on a tale set in Belgium proper as opposed to France:

When I started out, no one wanted to do a comic strip that took place in Brussels. Artists did not want their characters to fit into a typically Brussels or Belgian universe, because most of the readers were French. The references had to be either Parisian or French in general. Belgian characteristics would be removed from the stories.

While Hergé's Quick and Flupke was a rare comic strip for a Belgian audience, his better-known Tintin albums made almost no reference to Belgium or Brussels. There are of course small details. When you look closely at the Tintin books you can see some are set in Brussels.

Similarly, Belgian artist Edgar P Jacobs set two Blake and Mortimer stories in Paris and one in London, but none in Brussels.

So when I suggested doing an album in Brussels, I was told, "You're crazy, you're going to cut yourself off from the French public." But today, Brüsel is our bestselling book.

I think Yoko Tsuno, which originally began in 1970, is also set in Belgium, so there's one other strip that made a significant mark on Belgian comics history. But as the writer later notes:

Alas, Belgian comics are no longer the force they once were. We had an amazing run. Before the war there was Hergé, and then after the war, when we made masterpieces for a decade, when everyone came here, including Goscinny and Uderzo, the creators of Asterix. We had an exceptional moment: that rare time when a country or a city shines.

But afterwards, it slowly went downhill. While there is still some great art in Belgium, the concentration of authors of genius has shrunk. The Tintin and Spirou magazines lost some of their strength. The centre of gravity moved to Paris, Italy, and Spain – not to mention Japan, where manga exploded. Comic strips today are global.

And I think this is just skimming the surface. There's creations that've been sold to corporations, and in the long run, that's had a disastrous effect on their creativity, as they sunk into mediocrity or worse, became political vehicles. Even classic creations, whether owned by corporatism today or not, aren't immune to wokeness. Many scribes today won't even deal with serious issues like Islamofascism. And some would-be cartoonists have even caused scandals, and that too has brought down morale very badly. So why does this guy think European comics, or anywhere else, has suffered creatively as a result? It'll never do any good for anybody to look at the bigger picture through such a superficial lens.

Labels: comic strips, Europe and Asia, history