Le Journal Tintin ...

Tintin
© Hergé/Fondation Moulinsart 2005

With Le Journal Tintin, born on Rue du Lombard in Brussels in 1946, comic strips became the exclusive preserve of Belgians. In order to slow down the wave rushing in on them, the French even established Draconian censorship of reading materials for young people. It didn’t work. It was all happening in Brussels and Charleroi!

Discover the exhibition

In the ’60s, Spirou and Tintin each had print-runs of nearly 500,000 copies a week. And the kids of the French and Dutch speaking world – from Quebec to Durban – went to sleep dreaming about heroes born in Belgium. Over time this incredible publishing success turned first into books then conquered the audiovisual world, from California to Japan.

Should the success of comic strips be seen merely as an economic phenomenon? No, of course not. We Belgians have been affected by images since time immemorial. At the crossroads of Europe, our culture is the result of multiple influences. The procession of terror and censorship and the many military occupations throughout our history have taught us to see images and read their subtext like no one else. We have drawn our identity from them. We’ve known shackles... But we also learned how to break free of them. Symbolism and surrealism are never far away. (© Jean Auquier, Belgian Comic Strip Centre)