Belgian comics
| Belgian comics | |
|---|---|
| Earliest publications | Late 1920s~ |
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| Related articles | |
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 (Flanders with the Dutch language and Wallonia with French) 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".
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 (Wallonia and Brussels). 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 (Georges Remi) 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 (the so-called ligne claire), appearance rhythm (weekly), use of speech balloons (whereas comics from other countries like the Netherlands and Denmark would keep 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.
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