The Ephemerist

Energy prices are on the rise in Flanders (as they are everywhere else, I gather). How to keep ourselves warm ? Kim has a few ideas in Knack.

(art © Kim Duchateau)

When Pieter De Poortere’s Boerke finds himself in dire straits, a less than adequate super hero comes to the rescue !

(from Focus Knack, Boerke © Pieter De Poortere)

What is that smell ? Olivier Schrauwen illustrates an article in Knack Magazine on nostalgia…

(art © Olivier Schrauwen)

Kim Duchateau, blogged about before, is becoming one of the regular cartoonists for the Flemish weekly news magazine Knack. These illustrations were made for two special editions of Knack, the literary yearbook (above) and the End Of Year special. If you can spot all the references to local news in the latter, you’re either from around here, or you’re too focused.

Here’s a final set of examples on how Tintin and related elements are used as a cultural icon in journalism and topical cartooning. Above, the front page of the april 3, 1987 edition of the Flemish daily De Morgen. It shows La Castafiore singing her famous aria, only now it’s not seeing her beauty that makes her laugh, but the scandals, shennanigans and goings-on that plagued the National Opera at that time.

Below, the Thompson twins (who, in fact, are not even brothers) are used by Flemish cartoonist Gerard Alsteens to comment on the Mexican elections somewhere in the mid-80’s, where everybody claimed they had one.

“I win”
“I would even state, ‘I win’”

I posted about Pieter De Poortere earlier, here and on the FPI blog. Here are some examples of the strips he creates about his anti-hero Boerke (published in English as Dickie). These books are amongst the best humor-with-a-twist anthologies to appear in the last few years. So, buy them.

Read on for more…

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“Is hungry…”

Beestenzooi by flemish cartoonist Joffe is one of the strips published by Belgian weekly Focus Knack in their year-long quest for new cartooning talent. I quite like these strips : the idea and execution are simple and unassuming, but you can see real promise lurking underneath…

“… escapes”

(Artwork © Joffe, I suppose)

Prince gave away his latest CD for free with UK newspaper Mail On Sunday, while Thom Yorke’s Radiohead are selling their latest via their website only for as much as you care to pay for it. To say that the industry is in a turmoil is an understatement.

But it’s a good reason to showcase my countrymen’s illustration talents once more. The image above is by cartoonist Serge Baeken and was published in the most recent issue of Focus Knack.

Here’s another of Pieter De Poortere’s great bird’s eye view illustrations that I blogged about earlier. This one was published on the cover of Focus Knack, to announce a lenghty article about the current state of Flemish cartoon and comics, which quotes Top Shelf’s Brett Warnock with an enthousiastic laudatio to the Flemish comic :

“Your flemish artists at least have a really unique and fantastic vision. Far to many Americans create comics full of talking heads, whereas Flemish, and also a lot of French authors dare to explore wild and boisterous ideas in brave artistic styles. I only whish American authors took them as an example.” (This, btw, is very weird, as I had to translate this from a Dutch translation of an English text - I only wonder how much I changed in it).

The article also contains profiles of six hot Flemish talents (Pieter De Poortere, Conz, Olivier Schrauwen, Judith Vanistendael, Brecht Evens and Simon Spruyt) and announces the great Belgian Cartoon Clash, a contest for new, undiscovered cartoonists who get a chance at winning 52 pages in Focus. More about that, along with an overview of the participants, here (in Dutch)…

On the cover of Focus Knack this week, a new and delightful illustration by the one and only Pieter De Poortere, known amongst Eurocomics cognoscenti for his peculiar humour, at once zany and profound, which he lavishly spread across books like Boerke and Joe The Eskimo (Check my review at the Forbidden Planet Blog Log).

The theme of this week’s issue is the Cannes Film Festival, and the Focus people wanted an original competition. And so Pieter provided them with a challenge : he has hidden references to 14 films or personalities from film and TV. Can you find them all ? I only got 13, so let me know !