If you are at all serious about the comics medium and you have not visited and/or thought about visiting Brussels, you should really start to reconsider your thinking. It’s one thing to read that Belgians regard Bande dessinée (BD) as an important artform and it’s another thing entirely to actually experience a mature, mainstream comics culture firsthand in a European setting that’s more alike than alien to an American visitor.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t speak French and it’s probable that you don’t speak Flemish, either. But because the country is bilingual, most signage is printed in English (and often in German as well) on the theory that it’s just as easy to print things in three or four languages as it is to print in two. English is prevalent because of the sheer variety of international visitors – Brussels is the capital of the EU, the headquarters of NATO and is a major international banking, business and convention center. Still, learning another language because you want to has the net effect of making you look less jingoistic and xenophobic than your peers and it opens up an entire world of comics you probably know less about than you think.
Brussels bills itself as the capital of the ninth art, but it was also the epicenter of the Art Nouveau movement. Several prominent Art Nouveau architects designed buildings in and around the city center that still stand. One of the more famous architects was Victor Horta, who designed a wholesale fabric store that now houses the Belgian Comic Strip Center. Lovingly restored in the 80s and beautifully maintained, the building is a work of art in and of itself.
The museum features a permanent exhibition about Herge and Tintin, along with exhibits on other prominent Belgian creators, most notably Peyo and EP Jacobs. The top floor is dedicated space for rotating exhibitions – it’s currently dedicated to a retrospective of Willy Vandersteen and a celebration of the 75th anniversary of Spirou. The reading room contains over 3,000 albums and is open to anyone who has purchased admission to the museum. The museum bookstore is fantastic and has token English, German and Spanish sections. If you only have time to visit one thing in Brussels, this should be it.
Scattered throughout the city center are a variety of BD-related murals that have been commissioned by the local government, private businesses and associations. These murals are indicated on maps that are handed out by the Brussels tourism board and they are considered to be a major tourist attraction. The city center looks huge on the map, but the blocks are not very big and are very walkable; wandering around looking for murals is a great way to see a large part of it.
Many of the major characters created by Belgian artists are featured in these murals, but Tintin shows up more often than most. Herge is the favorite son of Brussels and is easily one of the city’s biggest claims to fame. There is an entire Herge museum found just outside Brussels, not far from Herge’s house. If you are a Tintin fan, it is very easy to gorge yourself on the character – the Tintin Boutique is just around the corner from the Grand Place de Bruxelles and features every Tintin related piece of merchandise you could ever want, including (but not limited to) towels, dress shirts, figurines, framed prints, stuffed animals, keychains and playsets.
My favorite part of the BD culture in Brussels is the sheer number and variety of stores. From the random boutique book store in the St Hubert Gallery that had Jordan Crane, Alec Longstreth and a translation of Duncan the Wonder Dog to the big stores on the main drag, BD seems to be everywhere. The local FNAC store (sort of like Best Buy, with much less emphasis on household appliances) had more space dedicated to BD than it did to either DVDs or CDs.
The real destination stores, however, are Brüsel and Multi BD. They are obviously aimed at different demographics and approach the sale of BD in completely different ways. Brüsel has a gallery in the basement and top floor and seems to have a much more curatorial approach to what they sell – they don’t try to have everything in stock, just those things that they think are worthwhile to carry. They also have comics in English, Spanish and German as well as the obligatory Flemish.
Multi BD is a lot more comprehensive and is your go-to destination if you are looking for book three of that fantasy series from Dargaud that you cannot seem to find anywhere else. Interestingly, Multi BD seems to have a better selection of alternative/small press comics in both English and French than Brüsel does – and places this material right in the front of the shop as the first thing that a customer encounters when they walk in the door.
Neither of these is in the kind of space where you’d find the local Games Workshop franchise – both occupy two fairly large storefront spaces on a major thoroughfare and are within easy walking distance of each other. And neither seems to be hurting for business. More importantly, their primary demographic is not children, but adults of all genders with money. The market is centered around 48 page hardbound albums (although there is a greater flexibility in formats than there used to be) which tend to run about 12 Euros apiece and go up in price relative to the page count.
Another shopping destination is the Comics Village on the Grand Sablon, which features a store downstairs and a pretty good restaurant upstairs. If you go here, make sure you buy your books after you eat, to take advantage of the discount. The book selection here overlaps what you can find at Brüsel or Multi BD, but is much less robust and aimed at a much more general audience, as you would expect from a venue that markets itself as a theme restaurant and sidewalk café that happens to have a store. They also have copies of Tintin lying around in the restaurant so that kids have something to read while they are eating lunch.
What I found most interesting about all of these stores is that it’s easier to find manga than it is to find American superhero comics and there is usually a better selection of the former. Manga often gets its own prominent corner while American superheroes generally get an out-of-the way shelf. Other English-language comics are found in translation more prominently – Strangers in Paradise, Prophet, Whiteout and Making Comics – to name only a few titles. It is almost as if these stores considered superheroes to be just another genre instead of the foundation of the market and stocked them accordingly. Also of note: American floppies are almost completely absent, probably because graphic novels fit the local buying patterns better.
The other place to look for BD in Brussels is among the used bookstores along the Rue du Midi – only a few blocks from Multi BD and Brüsel. Most second hand bookstores have a large selection of used BD albums which are worth flipping through, if only to see the sheer volume and variety of material that you have never heard of (often for good reason). Along the same street is Le Dépôt, a used bookstore that is entirely dedicated to BD. Here, more than anywhere else, I got a real sense of the depth of the French BD market and how much of it was completely unknown to me. As with the best stores of this kind, it is entirely possible to spend hours lost in the stacks, constantly surprised by things you had no idea could be considered commercial.
Once you have exhausted all of the obvious options, one of the more off the beaten path attractions is a house that was also designed by Victor Horta called Maison Autrique. This townhouse is now a museum that has hosted a variety of small, comics-related exhibits. The whole endeavor of restoration and curatorship of the townhouse is obviously a labor of love and among those lovers are local creators François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters. Albums from their Obscure Cities BD series is available in the museum’s blink-and-you’’ll-miss-it bookstore and there is a major callout to one of the characters in that series hiding in the attic of the house. Schuiten’s artwork is heavily influenced by Art Nouveau and he has also authored a book with Lonely Planet that suggests possible walking tours of the city’s architecture. It is possible to get a greater appreciation of their work just by wandering around the more beautiful buildings of the city – including this one.
François Schuiten, from the Belgian Comic Strip Center
More than anything else, what Brussels offers a world-class city that features comics as a foundation of their tourism and local identity year-round and not just for a week a year. What other city does that? Besides, they sell fresh waffles in the streets and have good beer. And make sure you try the mussels.
Bravo for this guide! I’ll be sure to follow your tips the next time I’m in Brussels.
It’s a great city in itself. Something of a feel of a mashup of Paris, London and Amsterdam.
Last year, I created a map of comic book stores in Brussels, with short comments in Swedish about the ones I found the most interesting.
In case someone would find it useful, here’s a link: http://www.rebas.se/pics/Brysselkarta-2012.png
I don’t know what’s more damaging to a real comics culture: the usual ignorance and bias or this constant underlining of children’s comics. Anyway, I’ll avoid Brussels, thanks…
I honestly don’t understand your comment, Domingos.
RM Rhodes, don’t even try. Isabelinho has for years been posturing his fake persona of the misunderstood rebel. Pure schtick.
The problem is always the same: I bet that there are people in Brussels for whom Ingmar Bergman or Anselm Kiefer are household names while knowing nothing about Thierry van Hasselt or Vincent Fortemps (who were founding members of Fréon, guess where…) because their city continually stresses the idea that comics are for children.
Sorry, you’ve read my last post on this thread…
Good.
What surprises me about Domingos’s comment is that I specifically point out in the essay that the audience for BD in Brussels is aimed at adults, not children.
There’s ample evidence to support this conclusion: the price of books, the fact that the local tourism board lists BD stores on their website (which is aimed at adults), the fact that local government and businesses financed murals throughout the city, the sheer number of stores in the city center – which could not possibly be supported if the target demographic was children, and the volume and variety of genres available that are not for children. Even the prices of figurines in the Tintin boutique have a price point that is prohibitive for children to buy them.
Domingos is saying that Tintin is for children; the fact that it’s sold to adults is part of the problem with comics culture, as far as he is concerned.
And Alex, there’s just absolutely no need to personally attack him. It’s unnecessary and stupid and really depressing. Please don’t do that.
RM Rhodes: Just to elaborate on what Noah said, price of books, location of stores etc. are just red herrings. Domingos’ problem isn’t the type of person buying the books, it’s the material being presented to them. Most superhero comics in America are targeted at middle-aged males as well, and there are many other examples from Japan.
Maybe he didn’t get to the end of your article where you mention Schuiten and Peeters whose comics are targeted at adults even if they are not to Domingos’ taste.
Domingos: I’d be interested in knowing why you find adults reading/engaging in children’s comics to be a problem. Could you elaborate? I’m quite fascinated by this criticism, actually. I admit that I find many works of children’s/YA literature to be very engaging…
I can see his point of view regarding Tintin, but it’s one title by one creator (a prominent book, to be sure). There are many, many other titles available – so much so that I barely felt qualified to delve into the volume and stuck to safer shores. Choosing not to visit a city because of Tintin strikes me as a silly choice, though; more reactionary than reasoned.
I fear Domingos was serious when he said he wasn’t going to return to the thread…but Sarah, the issue with comics is that the most lauded works (Peanuts, Tintin, Tezuka, etc.) often tend to be for children. Domingos is much more interested in high art work for adults, and feels like those kinds of comics are marginalized and ignored because of the focus on kids’ comics.
You can see a bunch of the things Domingos is interested in here.
Thanks for a great article. I very much want to visit Brussels one day and this is an excellent guide to places of interest (in particular Maison Autrique, which sounds awesome!) to a comics fan tourist.
Let me begin with saying that I’ve on occasion been at least somewhat sympathetic to this point of view; indeed, several years back I happened to meet a Belgian tourist in Cambridge MA and I mentioned to him that I was a great admirer of the works of two great Belgian sequential artists: Hergé and Frans Masereel. His eyes immediately lit up at the mention of Hergé and he even told me a couple of interesting things about him that I didn’t know. But the guy had never even heard of Masereel and knew nothing of his works. I honestly have no idea how well-known Frans Masereel is to the general public of Belgium, but I thought that since he’s not exactly an obscure figure in the art world, perhaps he might have at least some stature in his native country. Heck, there’s even a Frans Masereel Centre in Antwerp! Admittedly a sample of one isn’t very informative, but I was slightly disappointed that a seemingly intelligent Belgian tourist knew nothing of his countryman. That said, it would never even occur to me to imagine that Frans Masereel’s reputation was suffering due to the high regard in which Hergé and Tintin are held! Unless I am mistaken, this seems to be the line of reasoning that Domingos is proposing. But the trouble with this is that it seems to me to be built on the premise that discussion and appreciation of comics (or any artform) is some sort of a zero-sum game and that the general public’s love for one type of artist and material is somehow or other at the expense of other artists and material deemed more worthy by serious critics.
Of course Thierry van Hasselt and Vincent Fortemps are fantastic artists fully deserving of praise and analysis, but their comics are in no sense competing with Hergé for mindshare any more than appreciation for the music of a serious, uncompromising visionary such as Harry Partch is competing against that of the Beatles, who for all their considerable talents, are still at some level a “boy band”; many people are even happy to listen to both!
I think it’s not unheard of for classical musicians to feel like they are marginalized and ignored because of everyone’s obsession with pop. And…high art comics are in an even more marginal position, inasmuch as classical music at least has a pretty strong academic foothold. Whereas comics studies is really focused on superheroes…or on underground/alternative stuff that Domingos mostly isn’t super interested in either. The high art avant garde artists he champions really are very little discussed…and I don’t think he’s crazy for thinking that it’s in part a function of how much market share is given over to humor strips and work for children.
I’m speaking as somebody who thinks Peanuts is one of the greatest (perhaps the greatest) artistic achievement of the second half of the twentieth century, pretty much bar genre or medium. So I don’t really exactly agree with Domingos. But I see where he’s coming from.
Despite my deep and lifelong love of PEANUTS and Schulz, I have to say that hyperbole of the “X is the single greatest Y of time period Z” school is as alien to my way of thinking as inappropriate and meaningless apples-to-oranges comparisons are.
I don’t think comparing art to art is apples to oranges, myself. I just don’t really know what art in the 2nd half of the 20th century I think is better than Peanuts. I really tend to think it’s better even than things I love, like Philip K. Dick, or Tarkovsky, or Sly and the Family Stone, or what have you.
Okay, fair enough. It’s all apples-to-apples when constructing one’s personal “idiocanon”. So perhaps the real question then is not why Brussels celebrates Hergé at the expense of Thierry van Hasselt or Vincent Fortemps, but rather, why Brussels celebrates Hergé at the expense of Plastic Bertrand or Adolphe Sax.
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