Sometimes rooting around on Facebook can bring up quite cool results. I was clicking around on some galleries and came across these gems by Flemish illustrators that I hadn’t even heard of before : Stef Van Hyfte (above) and Brecht Vandenbroucke (below). Check them out !
(With thanks to Serge Baeken)
Today the largest comic panel in the world was revealed on the Grand Place in Brussels. OK, it was a reproduction of the famous full page panel that appeared on p. 42 of Objectif Lune, which showed the iconic red-and-white moon rocket in all its glory for the first time. And at 32 x 21 meters, it’s still quite impressive.
Incidentally, you can spy on the people watching the exhibit live via the official Bruxelles Grand Place Webcam.
Big news in the Belgian daily De Standaard : everybody’s favorite all-american disfunctional youngster Bart Simpson turns out to be a Tintin fan. In the episode In the name of the grandfather, the Simpson family takes a trip through Europe, and is greatly impressed by the beauty of Ireland. “It’s whole lot prettier than Belgium”, Bart says. His mother, Marge berates him: ‘If you hate Belgium so much, then I might as well take away your Tintin albums. ” Bart looks terrified and clings his copy of The crab with the golden claws to his chest. Neat !
Just so you know, at least in 1955 Belgium, Spirou and Tintin (along with Mickey Magazine) were considered to be “good literature” by the Catholic side of life…
There’s something you need to know about Belgians. Just like Italians claim that the telephone was invented by an Italian, we just know that fries aren’t French, but Belgian. The world may err, we know better. It’s the same thing with how to eat them. You don’t drown them in ketchup, you eat them with your hands, from a paper bag, doused in mayonaise. And preferably with some kind of deliciously processed meat on the side.
However, since the world won’t be taught, we stick to remembering ourselves of our great contribution to world’s quisine. And so we ask Urbanus, famous comedian and co-creator of a best-selling comics series featuring himself, to create a plastic fork, which should help sophisticated fritoholics to eat their favorite food without getting their hands all greasy.
Urbanus, who is a trained graphic designer, provided the graphics for the fork himself, and, rather than emulating cartoonist Willy Linthout’s version of his persona (Linthout being the illustrator of the Urbanus comics), he made a new version. Which turns out to be more up to date with how he looks these days (he’s 60 this year) than the cartoon would let you believe…
One of the first posts I ever did for this blog in its current format, was about the illustrations Johan De Moor made for the Belgopocket in 2005, and how he used his father Bob De Moor’s character Balthazar in them.
It’s 2009 now, and the already infinitely labyrinthine Belgian administration has become even more intricate in the mean time, so it was time for a new edition. The brochure structured in roughly the same way as the previous one, and the original illustrations were reused. There is a new cover, though, lampooning that most famous of Belgian comic covers : the one to Blake and Mortimer’s adventure La Marque Jaune by Edgar P. Jacobs.
If you want the full monty on this, you can download the brochure in Dutch, French or German from the official Belgopocket website.
With Brussels gearing up for a year-long comic festival, it’s probably a good idea to spotlight a more hidden comics gem to prospective tourists. If you visit the Porte de Hal métro station, it’s like you enter a parallel world, much like when you read Benoît Peeters and François Schuiten’s Les Cités Obscures.
Instead of creating a work of art for this particular station, Schuiten turned it into a complete installation, called Le Passage Inconnu (the Unknown Passage). It features mosaics, miniature cars and even real-life, 3D trams bursting through the ceiling, as if they cross over from a different reality. It’s a beauty, even fifteen years after it was unveiled.
For more information on comics murals and public artworks, check out the blog BD et Fresques Murales, which continuously spotlights new initatives.
Sebastiaan Van Doninck is a Flemish illustrators of children’s books who also likes a pinch of scary in his drawings. Check out his blog for more examples…
(illustrations © Sebastiaan Van Doninck)
Flemish cartoonist Tom Bouden, best known for his series of gay comics, recently published a quite lovely album called “Paniek in Stripland” (Panic in Comic Land). It’s a book that pays hommage to everything that made classic Flemish comics great, and features every Flemish comics character that has been around since the sixties.
The storyline is quite simple : a plot by the united comics villains has resulted in the disappearance of all comic heroes. After an urgent meeting by the united comics creators, two lesser-known hopefuls, Kroepie and Boelie Boem Boem are asked to come to the rescue.
While most of the story will be beyond everybody who wasn’t raised on a steady diet of Jommeke, De Rode Ridder and Suske & Wiske (not to mention Thomas Pips, Dees Dubbel and others), some of the scenes might be quite intriguing for those interested in Eurocomics. Take the scene pictured above, presenting the cartoonists council mentioned before. We see Hergé presiding over the meeting, but the careful observant also will recognize many more comics luminaries.
In the top-right frame the following cartoonists are present : Pom (of Piet Pieter & Bert Bibber fame), Marc Legendre (Biebel), Erik Meijnen, Marc Sleen and Jan Bosschaert. In the frame directly below, we see, a.o. Jef Nys, Dirk Stallaert, Paul Geerts, Maurice De Bevere (Lucky Luke), Bob De Moor, Raoul Cauvin and André Franquin. The older guy with the sideburns in the third strip is Willy Vandersteen, creator of Suske & Wiske and one of the founding fathers of Flemish comics.
Vedeze is a Belgian cartoonist who uses existing photographs to create his satirical and topical imagery. Most of his work is focused on the current Belgian socio-political situation (Vedeze is also a supporter of the “Save Solidarity” movement, which aims at saving the bonds between Flemings and Walloons). Some, as this example proves, will probably also be understood by viewers from other countries.
And there’s comics content to boot.
(thanks, Arf Lovers, altough I think it’s a bit sad that I had to learn about this site via an American one…)
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