History
Creation
With the success of the weekly magazine Le Journal de Mickey in France, and the popularity of the weekly Adventures of Tintin in Le Petit Vingtième , many new comic magazines or youth magazines with comics appeared in France and Belgium in the second half of the 1930s. [1] [2] In 1936, the experienced publisher Jean Dupuis put his sons Paul and the 19-year-old Charles in charge of a new magazine aimed at the juvenile market. [3] [4]
First appearing 21 April 1938, it was a large format magazine, available only in French and only in Wallonia. It was an eight-page weekly comics magazine composed of a mixture of short stories and gags, serial comics and short articles. It introduced two new comics, the eponymous Spirou drawn by the young Frenchman Rob-Vel, and Les Aventures de Tif (later to become Tif et Tondu ) written and drawn by Fernand Dineur, and printed American comics such as Superman , Red Ryder and Brick Bradford . [3] On 27 October 1938 the Flemish edition named Robbedoes appeared as well. [5]
Second World War
Spirou and Robbedoes soon became very popular and the magazine doubled its pages from 8 to 16. After the invasion of the Germans, the magazine gradually had to stop publishing American comics. They were at first continued by local artists and later replaced with new series. When Rob-Vel no longer had the possibility to send his pages from France to Belgium on a regular basis either, his series was continued by Joseph Gillain, a young artist who had previously worked for Petits Belges and used the pen name Jijé. Together with Dineur and Sirius (pen name of Max Mayeu), they filled the magazine with a number of new series and increased the popularity of it even further.
Near the end of the war, due to paper shortages, publication had to be stopped anyway, with only a few irregular almanacs to keep the bond with the readers intact and to provide work for the personnel to prevent them being deported to Germany.
The golden years
The period 1945–1960 has been described by critics as the golden age of Spirou magazine and of Belgian comics in general, partly incited by the 1946 appearance of the successful competitor Tintin magazine. Spirou resumed publication only weeks after Belgium was liberated, but now on a much smaller format. Jijé was the main author, providing pages from multiple series each week. Some American comics reappeared as well. Jijé started out a studio, where he schooled three talented apprentices, Will, André Franquin and Morris; known as the "Bande à quatre", "Gang of four", they began laying the foundation for the Marcinelle school that marked the magazine for decades.
In 1946 and 1947, the team was joined by some of the main contributors to Spirou for the next decades, including Victor Hubinon, Jean-Michel Charlier and Eddy Paape. After a few years, these artists started their now classic series like Buck Danny by Hubinon and Charlier and Lucky Luke by Morris, while Franquin took over Spirou from Jijé. Gradually, the American comics and reprints were replaced by new, European productions, and by the 50s, nearly all the content was made especially for the magazine. Charles Dupuis remained editor-in-chief of the magazine until 1955 when he appointed Yvan Delporte to that position, so he could himself focus on his increasing interest in the publication of the magazine's series' albums. [1]
The golden ages culminated in the 1950s with the introduction of more authors and series like Peyo ( Johan and Peewit in 1952, The Smurfs in 1958), René Follet, Marcel Remacle, Jean Roba (with Boule et Bill ), Maurice Tillieux (with Gil Jourdan ) and Mitacq. In 1954, Jijé created the realistic western comic Jerry Spring , and in 1957 Franquin introduced the anti-hero Gaston Lagaffe . The authors of the magazine, many of them pupils of Jijé, were grouped stylistically in the Marcinelle school, the counterpart of ligne claire exhibited by the artists grouped around Hergé in Tintin magazine (the main competitor for Spirou).
By 1960, the magazine had achieved a fixed structure and had grown to 52 pages, mainly filled with new, European (mainly Belgian) comics, coupled with some text pages (interaction with the readers) and adverts. Most of the comics were long-running series which were regularly published as albums of 44 or 64 pages, generating a constant source of revenue for the artists and the publisher. In the next decades, the sales of albums would become the main focus, reducing the importance of the magazine which became more of a breeding ground for new talent and series.
Rejuvenation in the 1960s and 1970s
In the early 1960s, the main changes were the strong editorial work of Delporte, who kept the magazine vibrant despite the more or less fixed series, with numerous supplements, games, and experimental layouts. The magazine demonstrated the pleasure that had gone in creating it, and maintained a strong reader base despite the growing competition from more adolescent and adult French magazines like Pilote . Some of the main authors (Jijé, Franquin, Will, and Hubinon) temporarily started working for other magazines, with Morris the only major name who definitely left the magazine. Their replacements, like Berck, had trouble filling the void.
Around 1959–1960, the first mini-récits (lit. mini-stories) appeared. This was an experiment in which the middle pages of the magazines could be removed, which the reader (armed with a pair of scissors, a stapler and some patience) could fold into a small comics magazine of its own. Several artists were allowed to hone their skills inside these mini-récits before moving on to larger pages, and until the 1970s, more than 500 mini-récits were produced, series that debuted in this format include The Smurfs by Peyo, Bobo by Rosy and Deliège, Flagada by Degotte among many others.
Only in the early 1970s, did a number of new success series and authors emerge. The main contributor for the next decades was Raoul Cauvin, a lithographer who worked as a cameraman for the Dupuis animation studios and wrote stories for series like Musti . He became the main story writer for Dupuis, with major series like Sammy with Berck, Les Tuniques Bleues with Lambil, and later Cédric with Laudec and Agent 212 with Daniel Kox, among many others. Other important new authors were François Walthery with Natacha and Roger Leloup with Yoko Tsuno , together with Isabelle by Will evidence of the new wave of adventurous female-oriented comics of the decade.
A commercial failure but artistic success came along in 1977, when Delporte created the more adult supplement Le Trombone Illustré , which appeared inside Spirou for thirty weeks, and showcased new artists like Didier Comès, Enki Bilal, Claire Bretécher, F'murr, Grzegorz Rosinski, and Frédéric Jannin, next to more established authors like René Hausman, Peyo, Roba, Gotlib, and Franquin, who started his third major series, Idées Noires .
Since 1980
The early 1980s had Spirou and Robbedoes searching for a new, appealing identity, with new formulas, more adult comics like XIII by William Vance and Jean Van Hamme or Jeremiah by Hermann. Most artists of the first generation were no longer active, and the productivity of many artists of the second generation slowed down as well. New talents were Tome and Janry, the new team for the Spirou et Fantasio comic, Bruno Gazzotti ( Soda ), François Gilson ( Mélusine ), Bercovici, Zidrou, André Geerts, Bernard Hislaire, Midam ( Kid Paddle ), Frank Pé, Marc Hardy and Luc Cromheecke.
Robbedoes had a severe reduction in the number of readers, and was first reduced to 32 pages (with Spirou growing to 68), before it finally disappeared in 2005.
The target audience is between 9 and 16 years, although the magazine appeals to many adults as well. Over the years, Spirou has undergone a few format changes and gradually became thicker, eventually averaging 68 pages. It was distributed in most French and Dutch speaking countries, and for some years, editions in other languages appeared as well (notably in Spain and Portugal).
A few pages, apart from the comics and the advertising, are always put aside for text contents and interaction with the readers (games, letters, jokes, etc.). Often a general theme is used to give the magazine some unity instead of being just a collection of unrelated comics, and this also gets reflected in the layout.
Along with Tintin magazine (founded in 1946), it was considered the home of the Franco-Belgian comics school until the seventies, when its importance declined. Still in publication, Spirou sells some 100,000 copies every week (as of 2009). [7] Robbedoes was eventually shelved in September 2005, after more than 3500 weekly publications.
Bandes dessinées, abbreviated BDs and also referred to as Franco-Belgian comics, are comics that are usually originally in French and created for readership in France and Belgium. These countries have a long tradition in comics, separate from that of English-language comics. Belgium is a mostly bilingual country, and comics originally in Dutch are culturally a part of the world of bandes dessinées, even if the translation from French to Dutch far outweighs the other direction.
Gaston is a Belgian gag-a-day comic strip created in 1957 by the Belgian cartoonist André Franquin in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou. The series focuses on the everyday life of Gaston Lagaffe, a lazy and accident-prone office junior who works at Spirou's office in Brussels. Gaston is very popular in large parts of Europe and has been translated into over a dozen languages, but except for a few pages by Fantagraphics in the early 1990s, there was no English translation until Cinebook began publishing English language editions of Gaston books in July, 2017.
André Franquin was an influential Belgian comics artist, whose best-known creations are Gaston and Marsupilami. He also produced the Spirou et Fantasio comic strip from 1946 to 1968, a period seen by many as the series' golden age.
Pierre Culliford was a Belgian comics writer and artist who worked under the pseudonym Peyo. His best-known works are the comic book series The Smurfs and Johan and Peewit, the latter in which the Smurfs first appeared.
Marsupilami is a comic book character and fictional animal species created by André Franquin. Its first appearance was in the 31 January 1952 issue of the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou. Since then it appeared regularly in the popular Belgian comics series Spirou & Fantasio, as a pet of the main characters, until Franquin stopped working on the series; the character's final appearance in the series during Franquin's lifetime was in 1970.
Joseph Gillain, better known by his pen name Jijé, was a Belgian comics artist, best known for being a seminal artist on the Spirou et Fantasio strip and the creator of one of the first major European western strips, Jerry Spring.
Spirou & Fantasio, commonly shortened to Spirou, is one of the most popular classic Franco-Belgian comics. The series, which has been running since 1938, shares many characteristics with other European humorous adventure comics like The Adventures of Tintin, Lucky Luke, and Asterix. It has been written and drawn by a succession of artists.
Éditions Dupuis S.A. is a Belgian publisher of comic albums and magazines.
Belgian comics are a distinct subgroup in the comics history, and played a major role in the development of European comics, alongside France with whom they share a long common history. While the comics in the two major language groups and regions of Belgium each have clearly distinct characteristics, they are constantly influencing one another, and meeting each other in Brussels and in the bilingual publication tradition of the major editors. As one of the few arts where Belgium has had an international and enduring impact in the 20th century, comics are known to be "an integral part of Belgian culture".
The terms "Marcinelle school" and "Charleroi school" refer to a group of Belgian cartoonists formed by Joseph Gillain following World War II. The first generation, known as the "Bande à quatre", consisted of Jijé and his assistants Franquin, Morris and Will. Marcinelle school cartoonists were all associated with the weekly magazine, Spirou, whose offices in the 1940s were located in the town of Marcinelle, near Charleroi in Belgium.
Michel Régnier, best known by his pseudonym Greg, was a Belgian cartoonist best known for Achille Talon, and later became editor of Tintin magazine.
Edouard Paape, commonly known as Eddy Paape, was a Belgian comics artist best known for illustrating the series Luc Orient.
Raoul Cauvin was a Belgian comics author and one of the most popular in the humorist field.
Jean-Claude Fournier, known simply as Fournier, is a French cartoonist best known as the comic book artist who handled Spirou et Fantasio in the years 1969-1979.
Maurice Rosy, was a Belgian comics writer who also worked as artistic director of Spirou magazine during its golden period.
Henri Gillain was a Belgian teacher and comics enthusiast who on several occasions wrote scripts for Franco-Belgian comics publications in the segment known as Bande Dessinée. He was also the brother of Joseph Gillain, famous by the pseudonym Jijé.
Willy Maltaite, better known by the pseudonym Will, was a Belgian comics creator and comics artist in the Franco-Belgian tradition. In the genre known in Francophone countries as bande dessinée, Will is one of the young cartoonists trained by Jijé, who made them live and work with him in his studio in Waterloo. He is considered one of la Bande des Quatre, and a founding member of the Marcinelle school.
Spirou et Fantasio, written and drawn by Franquin, is an album that precedes the main Spirou et Fantasio album series. It contains Franquin's first four stories completed between 1946 and 1948, three of which were serialised in Spirou magazine.
Marcel Denis was a French-speaking Belgian comics creator. He was the creator of the series Hultrasson and Les Frères Clips in Spirou magazine. He also made two episodes of Tif et Tondu. He was a part of the so-called Marcinelle School, influenced by Jijé and André Franquin.
The Belgian Comic Strip Center is a museum in central Brussels, Belgium, dedicated to Belgian comics. It is located at 20, rue des Sables/Zandstraat, in an Art Nouveau building designed by Victor Horta, and can be accessed from Brussels-Congress railway station and Brussels-Central railway station.
