Not the funny pages
Toon Horsten is an intellectual. He is a writer, journalist, German studies graduate and the author of a book about books. And he is the lone editor of Stripgids, a free bimonthly about what the Belgians call the ninth art and, according to Horsten, “the only real comic book magazine in Flanders,” whose 25th edition has recently been published. “It was a nice thing, being asked to make a new magazine,” he says, seated at a garden table on a narrow patch of green behind his picturesque little house within the walls of the begijnhof in Turnhout. “And we, the publisher and myself, decided to make it a good magazine.”
Comic book magazine Stripgids celebrates its 25th edition
© vzw Strip Turnhout/Jan Van Der VekenA new life
That was in early 2006, when the province of Antwerp and the non-profit organisation Strip Turnhout – which also organises an annual comic book festival, the oldest and biggest of its kind in Flanders and an award ceremony for the Flemish Culture Prize for Comic Books – expressed their wish to relaunch the magazine that had existed in the early ’80s, to inform the public about the developments in the flourishing Flemish comic book scene.
Back then, comic books were living in their heyday. It is when artistic comics began to appear, rather than just the strips, on the funny pages that had been a part of people’s daily newspaper ceremony for years. It is when artists like Robert Crumb, Manara, or the Flemish Marvano burst on the scene. Belgian authors like Hergé (of Kuifje, or Tintin, the star of the soon-toopen film directed by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson) and Willy Vandersteen (of Suske & Wiske) had already established themselves internationally. “For many, it was the main form of entertainment,” Horsten says.
The life of the first Stripgids lasted 11 years with 32 issues printed. The editor, Jan Smet, who throughout that period kept his day job and ran the magazine in his spare time, had decided to dedicate its content to Flemish rather than to international artists – or even Belgian artists writing in French, who got their share of attention from the international comic book press. “But there was absolutely nothing about what was happening in Flanders,” he says in an interview, published in the first edition of the new Stripgids, in September 2006.
Better than the rest
Horsten decided not to change the course of the magazine too much, even though he also gives ample attention to artists from outside of Flanders. “We try not to belong to a single camp,” he says, “but to cover the full spectrum of the comic book genre: the graphic novel, the family comic book, manga, adventure or science fiction, Flemish or not. We try to have a journalistic approach. We publish many interviews, sometimes 16 pages long, and not many cartoons. We put the emphasis on information, not on entertainment.”
He says that most comic book magazines have a different approach, especially in Flanders. “Most magazines are run by comic book collectors,” he says. “When they go to meet an author for an interview, they bring a copy of his book to have it signed.” The stories they publish, he says, are often similar and remain superficial. “They never, for example, interview screenwriters,” he says, “who nevertheless play an increasingly crucial role in the creation process.” Stripgids not long ago published an interview with the screenwriter of Blacksad, the immensely popular series about a hard-boiled private investigator in an anthropomorphic animal society set in 1950s America.
A quick look at the latest issue justifies any hint of pretension. There are no less than five interviews, including an interview with two sons of the late Bob de Moor, one of the Big Three of Flemish comic book authors (together with Willy Vandersteen and Marc Sleen, of The Adventures of Nero & Co and an interview with Nicolas de Crécy, one of the big names of the French alternative comic book scene.
And better looking
But most of all, it looks good. It looks like a magazine made for the culturally savvy - almost like a literary magazine. “When we began thinking about design,” Horsten says, “we gathered all the comic book magazines we could find. But despite being graphic media, mot of them didn’t look good. They looked like colouring books. We wanted to bring a sense of restfulness to our magazine. We like to print black-and-white photographs, for example, and our tone of voice is relaxed.”
Relaxed, but not boring. The first issue of the new Stripgids ran an essay of Art Spiegelman, the cartoonist and author of the Pulitzer Prizewinning Maus, a biography of his father’s survival of the Holocaust, on “the art of insulting.” It touched upon the controversy around the Danish Muhammad cartoons, which were supposed to be published alongside the story. “That was a dilemma,” Horsten says. “In the end, we decided to run them, because the essay was about the cartoons, not the story behind it. Nobody even seemed to notice. After all, they’re just a couple of badly drawn cartoons.”
There is a stable of literature writers who contribute to the magazine. Flemish authors Walter Vandenbroeck and Tom Naegels, for example, wrote about Morris, author of Lucky Luke, and the graphic journalist Joe Sacco respectively. Even John Updike wrote for Stripgids about Charles M Schultz, author of Peanuts, who went off to become the richest cartoonist ever. The article was only published, however, after Updike was duly informed by The New Yorker magazine that they wanted to publish it first.
A national sport
Belgium has a long tradition in comic books, or bandes dessinées in French. France has as well. Not surprisingly, most early works from Belgium were written in French. Morris is from Flanders, but Lucky Luke speaks French. So does Blacksad, even though his creators are Spanish.
The French language is still dominant in the comic book scene, but different languages such as English and Dutch are slowly starting to nibble at its hegemony. “There is a new generation of Flemish comic book authors,” says Horsten, “like Brecht Evens [known for his prize-winning Ergens waar je niet wil zijn, published in English under the title The Wrong Place] and Judith van Istendael [of De Maagd en De Neger, or The Virgin and The Negro], who have been able to break into the mainstream.”
Comic books will, however, always remain a niche market, he says. And therefore most of their authors will as well. The hype that spawned successes such as Spiegelman’s Maus seems to have withered. “The comic book’s share of overall book sales is back at its natural proportion,” Horsten says. Most graphic novels sell no more than 500 to 1000 copies. “But then popular comic books continue to do very well. Kiekeboe, for example, sells 800,000 copies per year and is Flanders’ best selling book.”
The Stripgids editorial offices are a computer that seems to hail from the ’80s and a desk covered in books, prints and papers. “It’s a lot of work,” Horsten admits, “but luckily, I can count on a group of good freelance contributors.” His bookcases bulge under the pressure of comic books big and small. But he doesn’t consider himself a collector. “I like to read them,” he says, “not look at them.”
