The Ephemerist

A silly-but-wicked cartoon by Bart Schoofs, from the latest issue of Uitweg, the Flemish Government’s mobility magazine.
(”Ask if they can send an octowtruck”)

One of the best kept secrets in the Flemish illustration/comics world, is Bart Schoofs. Over the years he’s had short or longer stints on major outlets like De Standaard or De Tijd (two of Belgium quality newspapers), Uitweg and Yeti (publications by the Flemish government on public transport and education respectively); he’s published three episodes of his comic “Braaf Varken” (sweet pig), but nevertheless, he’s never had a major breakthrough with the larger public.

So, here’s some examples from his work. The first is a cartoon from Yeti, alluding at the famous Zidane incident.

Materazzi : “My chest hair is itching. Would you care to cratch ?”

The second one is from “Uitweg”, and illustrates the preference rule on the Belgian public roads :

“Exceptions to the preference rule :

Preference of Duck

Preference from Above

Preference of Monster Truck”

As you can see, good, clean (if somewhat zany) fun, fit for the whole family ! So, If you like this, give the bloke a chance ! Let me know, and I’ll pass it on.

Yeti is the Flemish education department’s official magazine for kids in primary school. Rather than make it a dreary, stuffy journal, they opted to pimp it up and took on board two of the best cartoonist this country has to offer : Marnix “Nix” Verduyn and Bart “brt” Schoofs. Here’s a few examples from the latest issue. They’re (almost) textless games, so all you monolingual Anglosaxons should have no trouble understanding them

The first one is a “spot the errors” cartoon by Bart :

The second one features Nix’s heroes Kinky and Cosy. Kinky (the one with the white rimmed glasses) has had an accident. One of the shards does not belong to her glasses. Can you spot which one ? And also, can you find out exactly how this accident took place ?

(check out the Yeti site for a complete downloadable version of the latest issue)