COMIC STRIPS/PASSION’S TRIP:
Every year, almost 40 million comic strip books, in around twenty languages, are printed in Belgium. Three-quarters of them are sold abroad. Comic albums have become one of the leading export products of Belgian publishing houses.
What accounts for the far ranging appeal of Belgian strips? Certainly part of the answer lies in the quality of their graphics. The exhibition “Comic Strip, Passion’s Trip,” which opened on May 14 at the Old Post Office Pavilion in downtown Washington, D.C., displays some original graphic art done for comic albums. The show provides an opportunity to discover both the strength and the vast range of artistic styles of comic strip artists from Belgium’s French-speaking Community, Wallonia - Brussels.
Also obvious in the show, is the international flavor of a number of strips. The adventures of strip heroes have, from the beginning, taken them beyond the borders of Belgium. Tintin, the intrepid boy reporter, is undoubtedly the most famous roving ambassador of Belgian comic strips. Tintin’s exciting adventures took him all over the world. Comic strip authors who succeeded Hergé, the creator of Tintin , quickly realized that they needed to add a few international touches to their work in order to appeal to as wide a readership as possible.
Exhibition curator Jean-Marie Derscheid speaks of the special pull that the U.S. has had on Belgium’s graphic artists who chose to devote themselves to comics. “America has always aroused the interest and curiosity of our comic strip artists. The wide open spaces, the legends of ‘American way of life’ are just a few of the themes that both inspire and fascinate Europeans. It is no great surprise therefore that a great many comic strip adventures take place in the U.S.”
In 1946, Morris created Lucky Luke, the cowboy who shoots faster than his own shadow. This humorous and yet credible parody of a western was a hit from the outset and has never looked back. Then, in 1956, Jijé created Jerry Spring, a realistic counterpart for Lucky Luke. Contrary to the heroes of the time, Jerry Spring was a humanist who defended Native Americans and never hesitated to speak out for Blacks. Later, in 1968, the Tuniques Bleues of Cauvin and Lombil came on the scene. They dealt with the American Civil War in a humoristic and subtly antimilitaristic manner.
Enjoy these and other examples of Belgium’s internationally seasoned “ninth art” at the Old Post Office Pavilion through June 12.
underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
IP Address: 18.119.107.161 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.