The Ephemerist

Belgian comics magazine Spirou celebrates its seventieth birthday, and Plunk creator Luc Cromheecke celebrates this with a cartoon which is totally him !

Belgian tennis godess Justine Henin has invested in the Belgian basketball team Spirous (Charleroi). Hence this cartoon by Vincent Rif from L’Echo de la Bourse.

By the way, hello to all readers from the Justine Henin forum ! Welcome to another Belgian corner on the web…

(translation : “Your racket was full of holes, so I invested a little”…)

Late last year I visited the “World of Franquin” exhibition in Brussels with my kids.

It was a great show, with lots of real life objects that were lifted from several Spirou and Gaston stories that Franquin did. I was amazed at seeing the Turbotraction cars “in the metal”, as it were. Enjoy the pictures.

This is the last post I’ll write about the fake stamps that were included with the comics weekly Spirou in 2001. In order to make enough fuzz about this campaign, the first issue also contained a few stamp-themed features and strips, such as the cartoon above about “Les Tuniques Bleues” creator Willy Lambil who is famed for the large size paper he uses for his battle spreads.

(The editor is saying : “Are you sure, my good friend, that I didn’t give you any indication as to the format ?”)

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I mentioned the fake stamps that were added to four issues of the Francobelgian weekly “Spirou” in february-march, 2001 once or twice before. As I managed to buy these issues from a guy in Brussels who was selling his complete collection on Ebay, I’ll just go on about them for a while.

It must have been quite a big deal, as for three of the issues special a stamp-themed cover (see above).

I scanned the for sheets on 200 dpi, so as to make the scans And so, I present you large scans of all four sheets.

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Earlier I blogged about some very beautiful fake stamps I found on Ebay that supposedly had been issued as a supplement with the Belgian comics magazine Spirou in 1961.

Tout Spirou, a wonderful website covering everything about that magazine, gives the lowdown on the stamps, and also shows some more recent examples, from 1972 and 2002 (see below) respectively. Well worth the read…

In 1961, the Belgian comic weekly Spirou produced a few very nice stamps as a freebie for their readers. The stamps featured popular heroes, such as Benoit Brisefer, Tif et Tondu, Jerry Spring, and others. Enjoy (and yes, I nicked these images from Ebay)…

Earlier this week Yvan Delporte died, one of the last Grand Old Men of the Belgian comic scene. The comic weekly Spirou has set up a memorial site, witch some very fine contributions by a variety of artists.

(Image by Sergio Halma)