Belgian Comics - Importance - Influence and Recognition

Influence and Recognition

Belgium has played a major role in the development of the 9th art. In fact, even the designation of comics as the 9th Art is due to a Belgian. Morris introduced the term in 1964 when he started a series about the history of comics in Spirou Belgium's comic-strip culture has been called by Time magazine "Europe's richest"., while the Calgary Sun calls Belgium "the home of the comic strip".

Recognition for the Belgian comics outside the fandom was slow to come, but in the 1970s more and more comics and authors got reviews and articles in newspapers and magazines. The first official stamp picturing a comics hero was made in 1979, showing Tintin, and most famous Belgian comics followed in the next decades. Major expositions were organized from 1969 on, and finally the Belgian Centre for Comic Strip Art, commonly called the Comics Museum, was opened in Brussels in 1989 in an old warehouse designed by Victor Horta. It grew rapidly, with 160,000 visitors in 1994 and 240,000 by 2000. Different Belgian towns have mural paintings and statues of the major comics, and some of the most famous artists have been knighted.

Belgian comics, the authors and the magazines are generally regarded as being central in the development of the European comic. Hergé, with Tintin, and Jijé, as a comics teacher, are considered as the most influential of the early Belgian authors. French author Tibet said that the comics artists consider Hergé as God the Father and Jijé as the Godfather. Jijé was not only the teacher of important Belgian authors like André Franquin, but also of major French authors like Jean Giraud and Jean-Claude Mézières. In the Hergé Studio worked French authors like Jacques Martin, and Swiss author Derib worked for years in the Studio Peyo. The comic magazines Tintin and Spirou were translated in different languages, and the major comics from the magazines were reprinted in the main comics magazines in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, or The Netherlands. Albums of the main series and authors have been translated in dozens of languages, and even many minor series have been translated in different languages in Western Europe. Artists like the Dutch Joost Swarte, American Chris Ware, Australian Bill Leak or Norwegian Jason are heavily influenced by the ligne claire of Hergé, while others like the Spanish Daniel Torres, Finnish Pora and French Yves Chaland more closely followed the "Atom Style" of Jijé and Franquin. More recent artists like Kamagurka and Philippe Geluck are especially popular in France. More recently, Belgian graphic novels have been translated in English as well, like Jean-Philippe Stassens Deogratias, while many older series are reprinted as well, though often with limited success.

Especially Hergé and Tintin have also had a lot of influence on other artists outside the circle of comics authors, like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. Hergé has also been recognised by a street and a statue in Angoulême, France, and both the French and the Dutch postal offices have issued stamps remembering Tintin.

Video games and animated and live action movies have been made for popular series like XIII, Tintin, Spirou et Fantasio, Spike and Suzy and Lucky Luke, and the long-running Hanna-Barbera series of The Smurfs became a worldwide success with massive merchandising, and the success continues as evidenced by the ratings animated cartoons based on the adventures of Tintin and Lucky Luke had in Germany and Canada in 2005 and 2006. But also more mature graphic novels like The Wedding Party by Hermann Huppen and Jean Van Hamme have been turned into movies.

Most major European comic artists worked for a while, often early in their career, in Belgium: French authors like Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny, Jacques Tardi, Jean Graton and Claire Bretécher, a German like Andreas, the Polish author Grzegorz Rosiński, the Portuguese Carlos Roque, Swiss authors Zep and Cosey... Even the major Italian author Hugo Pratt created many of his best known later works for Casterman.