In february of this year, Humo ran a series of interview with young teens who suffer from a severe and even terminal illness. Ever Meulen provided the illustrations, which, as always, were bang on and gripping.
In 1998 the Flemish daily De Standaard published a series of articles on the thoughts, ideas and perspectives of boys and girls in modern society. They asked Tom Cartoon to provide some eye-catching illustrations, and he did. He used the popular comic characters Suske And Wiske to illustrate that girls are getting stronger (left), and later that they still need to be better than boys to attain the same goals (right). The cool part is that Tom also referred to a well-known (well, over here at least) iconic use of these characters, namely in the illustration on the back of each album, as used here.
It seems like Belgium is preparing for a glut of Tintin-related stuff, what it being Tintin creator Hergé’s 100th birthday. Today, the weekly Knack published a special edition about Tintin, complete with an exclusive stamp from the sheet that has been announced for later this month.
Earlier, the country’s cartoonists have been making some noise as well. Here are two examples : Kim (from De Morgen, above, trying to visualize what a Tintin movie by Steven Spielberg would entail) and Karl (from Trends-Tendances, below.)
More, undoubtedly, as it happens…
This post is to prove a point. If I were to tell you that the following comic was self-published by a hot new independent Flemish cartoonist called Yves De Langhe, it would be a rave. In reality, this picture book was a freebie with the Flemish toddler’s magazine Doremi. It only goes to show : comics are everywhere, you just have to keep your eyes (and mind) open…
A double bill of cartoonist’s self -portraits today. As blogged before, the Flemish weekly Focus Knack is running a feature in which they have a short interview with some sort of VIP, and ask him or her to draw a self-portrait. Most of the times this is well tried at best, but sometimes, especially when it’s about real artists, the result is quite good. For example.
Robert Merhottein, or Merho, is the author of Kiekeboe, one of the most popular Flemish comics (and moustaches) of today, which celebrates its 30th anniversary. In fact, it has been the very last series to make it through the typical Flemish comic route, starting in a newspaper, over cheap, black and white album editions to more expensive, colored ones. Later this year, Merho and Kiekeboe are guests of honor at the Flanders Comic Festival in Turnhout. The portrait above was published on february 14.
