The Ephemerist

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.

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When I saw the above illustration from ‘The Magic Pencil’ by Dwight Sturgess (courtesy Stripper’s Guide), the scene below came to my mind immediately.

This strip is from Willy Vandersteen’s Suske en Wiske comic ‘De Briesende Bruid‘ (’The Roaving Bride’, 1968), in which Auntie Sidonia, an unmarried-but-hoping woman, finally gets a chance to find a mate. She travels through time to meet all kinds of legendary lovers, and in the end settles for a folk singer from her own time.

Which, to use Star Trek lingo, clashes with the Prime Directive of comics : “Nothing shall disturb the equilibrium”. In other words, the situation that the characters find themselves in after an adventure should be as similar as possible to the one they were in before it started. Now, how to end this story in a logical way (with Sidonia married) and still allow for new stories starting from the comic’s premisses (with Sidonia unmaried-but-hoping) ?

To solve this Gordian knot, Vandersteen used the same device that Sturgess used at the end of his comic : he draws himself simply erasing the story, and starting anew. An extra nice touch is the way Vandersteen explains himself to his readers (and, in turn, his characters) :

“I know Sidonia’s desires and after having her faithfully play her part in my stories for years and years, I simply had to make her very happy for once. But I really can’t miss her, and so nothing will come of this marriage. Tomorrow they will all be on paper again, and they will remember nothing of what happened here. Those are the benefits of the job !”

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