I also really liked Gaston Lagaffe. I find it even more interesting now because of its 60s-70s world.

You should checkout the Fantasio series also by Franquin. It’s almost all in the 50s and 60s. It’s great! Interestingly, internationally, Franquin’s biggest success seems to have been the marsupilami. The art is amazing and he’s fun. I just wish it had been Gaston. M’enfin!

Spirou & Fantasio was an instrumental part of my childhood :) They even went grimdark at a certain point (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_qui_r%C3%AAve) though that wasn't very well received. That and Le Petit Spirou.

And the little jokes in every signature.

The great Belgian treasure is Peyo’s Johan et Pirlouit, which of course gave us the Smurfs. It’s sad only the latter ever achieved global notoriety, as the former is among the greatest heights of cartooning.

Just be thankful they didn't get modernized and mangled like the Smurfs. They ought to smurf whoever is responsible for that.

I loved Pirlouit, especially biquette.

Agreed, but the Smurfs were easier to adapt to various themes and that's what made the series live.

Including some hilarious ones like the smurfstrijd/taalsmurf, a play on the Belgian issue of language.

Peyo apparently struggled with the Smurfs adaptations, however, as Americans (in their typical fashion) tried to make every plot about money:

> "One key problem," said Delporte, "was motive. The Americans might envision a Smurf inheriting money, which then filled the other Smurfs with envy. Or they would picture a Smurf finding some treasure and these riches causing problems in the village. Or… a Smurf would try and sell Papa Smurf's secret formula. Everything they proposed, every plot, revolved around money."

Peyo tried explaining that, for his characters, gain and greed were not even concepts. But these explanations were received as unthinkable. Says Delporte, "All they did was mutter behind Peyo's back. The view was 'This is all so sweet it's giving me cavities.'"

https://www.tcj.com/behind-the-blue-the-story-of-peyo/

Culture clash. The Smurfs were originally just a sideshow, much like the Minions today. What's interesting is that the Smurfs world is already quite rich in and of itself and all of the characters are super funny without bringing in more elements from our own world. It's clear that they live more than a few hundred years ago. The way they interact and the various story lines as Peyo put them out probably simply don't appeal all that much to an American audience. Just like the Marvel/DC Comics universes (and everything that gets dragged into it, it's like a black hole) don't appeal all that much to me.

I remember TinTin from high school in India in the 1970’s.

I read them in India in the 90s and 2000s. IIRC the books were imported (price was printed in GBP) and made from very high quality paper, so they were too expensive for us to buy. But the book store owner was a school friend of my parents so he let me read them for free :D

It's pretty cool, that these comics have been read so far and for so long. Being from a bit later, I had no idea they were already famous all the way to India.

Oh man this brings back memories. Internet was not a thing and I couldn't afford to buy them. So we had these makeshift "libraries" where you can "rent" books. Id pester the owner of the rental to get me particular Tintin/asterix books that my friends had read before me!!

In order to not let the copy of Tintin deteriorate—-I would get them bound—-a few of them together. A faint memory recalls that they were in sequence eg. Explorers of the moon after Destination moon!

I wish I still had them.

All the treasure left behind when I moved to the United States.

Tintin was, and still is, immensely popular in my part of India. My parents were fond of Tintin while growing up, and they introduced me to it as a child in the mid-2000s. I loved reading the comic books; in fact, I read some of them many times over. One thing I found out later was that the names of the characters are changed across translations. For instance, in Bengali (the language I first read it in), Tintin's pet is called Kuttush, while in English it is Snowy. Anyways, it's interesting to think that one of the things I share in fondness with my parents is a comic book series from a country that is very far away from my own. Art can indeed transcend boundaries.

I travelled to India and Nepal right after high school from Los Angeles in 1982. I bought a copy of Tintin in Tibet in India and it is still on my bookshelf all these years later. Really nice to read the backstory about Chang.

I rank it equally with Astérix le Gaulois. They are part of a larger comic category, Bande dessinée. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bande_dessin%C3%A9e

Indeed, Astérix is French though! Other recommendations I can make are "Les Tuniques Bleues" (the Bluecoats) or Mélusine the Witch. For adult readers, "Largo Winch" or "XIII" are both excellent comics.

I'm not sure the French/Belgium split is that relevant for several reasons (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm French and don't want to wrongly appropriate Belgium culture):

- most if not all of those characters are french speaking

- lots of collaboration on those characters by French and Belgium author. For example Goscinny worked on Lucky Luke with Morris, the character of Spirou was created by Rob-Vel who is French, then worked on by Jijé and Franquin, etc

- though many were published in "Spirou", there were "Pilote", "Pig Gadget" and all which are French.

I think the whole concept is named "Bande dessinée Franco-belge" (at least here in France, maybe the point of view is different on your side of the frontier ^^)

Internationally they are mostly known as Franco-Belgian comics as far as I know. When people speak of specifically Belgian comics I tend to think more along the lines of Flemish Willy Vandersteen (Suske & Wiske).

From your username I guess you're dutch? Which may be relevant context to why you / people you know refer to the non-Flemish Belgian comics (and perhaps things other than comics?) as 'Franco-Belgian' if using French language while assuming that 'Belgian' without the specifier means Dutch language?

I.e. the same way we all, wherever we're from, add extra words to define stuff that's not our default expectation ("a new neighbour moved in" if they're someone from the same place as us vs. "a new dutch neighbour" moved in if they're from that other country; or buying cheese in the shop vs. buying french cheese), just as a (subconscious often) time saving measure that there's no need to give the adjective when it fits the normal expectation.

Not that I'm an expert on the international nomenclature of bande dessinée comics - though anecdotally, as a Brit (England, not Brittany haha) who grew up reading Asterix and above all Tintin, I thought of them (and think my parents called them) separately as French and Belgian respectively.

Culturally speaking I think there's very little difference and you're right. Historically speaking though, many people associate the French language with France and we get told all those cartoons/comics are French which ruffle our Belgian feathers! Not a big issue to be frank, mostly that old rivalry between neighbors where we are the little guy =)

In one book, there is a contest of potions that panoramix goes to and there is a Belgian Gaul whose potion gives him the ability to remove fries from hot oil with his hands

Don’t forget Yoko Tsuno, Achille Talon (they were my dads I didn’t understand them), Agent 212, les 4 as, Blake and Mortimer, le chat, and so many more. Most of these are ligne claire style and I think that’s herge’s influence.

Yoko Tsuno and Blake&Mortimer were amazing sci-fi for a kid like me. Definitely big imagination-boosters.

Definitely, as a little kid Yoko Tsuno was much more understandable. But even though Blake and Mortimer was tougher, the art itself is amazing.

> tougher

So much text, more like an illustrated book :)

Btw, did you know that Jacobs helped Hergé redrawing the backgrounds of some of the Tintin comics after the war? And Leloup (Yoko Tsuno) also worked for Hergé before starting his own series. There is an interview with him on youtube.

> So much text, more like an illustrated book :)

Speaking of walls of text, remember the explanation of the inner workings of an atomic reactor in Destination Moon? That's how 5 y.o. me discovered nuclear physics :]

Just checked, you are right. Not only the explanations of the reactor, but from the moment they arrive at the secret research facilities, the dialogs become unusually long.

I did not! Thanks for the pointer, I’ll check it out!

Omg I cant believe people still remember Yoko Tsuno and are still fond of the whole serie

And the series is still going -- the latest book in the series just came out last year. Cinebook is publishing English translations of the series, too.

Yes!! Yoko Tsuno is my all time favourite, plus De Minimensjes (Les Petits Hommes)

They were the first french books I'd read. I loved Snowy and wanted to have a pet dog just like him.

Tintin is surprisingly portable across generations, cultures, and genres.

Growing up in India, I had been a huge fan of Tintin. Reading books, and buying them, you had to be at least middle class, it wasn't accessible as libraries in the West. But still, was popular as I recall amongst the well educated since at least the late 90's and early 00's (when I grew up) I think.

There was an animated series that ran on Nickelodeon, a popular US kids' channel in the 90's, so I'd imagine that many Americans (like myself) are familiar with it for that reason. It also got me to read the comics which then lead to some questions about why my local library didn't carry certain ones.

Hello fellow Belgian! It's always been tough to maintain the collecting overseas, what with expensive shipping costs. I've always found it peculiar that scanned francophone comics are not as prevalent as both American and Japanese comics.

I feel like any graphic novel fan would eat up our classics like XIII

The lacking scans might be because you can get them for free in most libraries round here. I borrowed loads of them at my local library in our tiny town, great comics! They were even translated to Swedish so I could start on them very early in life.

And you too, fellow Belgian. But.. what are scans? You mean using a scanner instead of buying them?

What I meant is that there's a large electronic reading scene for both American and Japanese comics. Both have had large pirate scenes for decades, but recently more and more legal avenues have popped up too for reading electronically.

I'm not aware of such a culture around francophone comics.

And to the sibling comment: I'd say in the origin countries the same is true. In Japan, kids buy physical manga at the convenience store. In the US, we go to the comic book store and pick up a batch of new releases. Yet somehow both of those have large communities of people scanning/translating/occasionally licensing the works. I wonder why it's different with French ones!

I grew up reading Asterix and Tintin in the UK. Plus a lot of other French/Belgian comics which I've since forgotten. And of course British classics like Dandy and Beano.

The thing with the French/Belgian comics is that the stories weren't just short skits but real stories. Self-contained in the case of Asterix and Tintin.

As an adult I discovered manga and have never looked back. I've been reading one series for 20 years now (One Piece) and have finished countless others.

Also British, and old to boot. I read Tintin extensively as a child and a bit of Asterix. Strangely I never really thought of them as comics before this discussion here, precisely because they were a single long form story per book. I actually remember most Tintins I read being proper hard back affairs loaned from the library.

I read the Beano weekly which is my understanding of what a comic is, lots of two to three page skits as you say.

I never really got into American comics such as Marvel, I guess they fit somewhere in the middle in terms of being a periodical but with a substantial storyline?

It's one of the most translated series of books in the world! Certainly one of the most well-known BD/comics ever.

I was at the Hergé exhibition at the Gulbenkian Foundation a few months back and there was a wall with Tintin album covers in every language. It was quite a big wall!

Both Tintin and Asterix are appreciated surprisingly much by younger kids. I find them a bit awkward for loud reading, since you have to do so much pointing and so many voices to keep it coherent, but it is a good burden to carry.

Comics is literally the only thing I know Belgium for.

It always confuses me that such a small country is so prolific. If you tell me mthat the us or japan produce a large fraction of the world's comics, that's not surprising as they have large fraction of the first world's population. But Belgium, how do you explain that?