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Here's an interesting, related European history tidbit; Most of the popular old school European Comics are from Belgium; Tintin, The Smurfs, Asterix, Lucky-Luk
by fvdessen 1y ago
Here's an interesting, related European history tidbit;
Most of the popular old school European Comics are from Belgium; Tintin, The Smurfs, Asterix, Lucky-Luke, etc. That doesn't mean they were all made by Belgians, there were French and Italian authors.
The reason they were based in Belgium, is because American Comic books where banned in Belgium. This is an artefact from the second world war, the American comic books were banned by the nazis. But the after-war catholic government kept the policy going for a while. In other countries, the market was flooded with American comics such as Picsou Magazine, so there were little room for other kind of comics. The Belgian market, while small, was enough to give an audience and thus work for Non-American comic authors. The ban didn't last long, but was enough to kickstart an entire industry that would eventually get good enough to compete on its own.
This fact is little documented, I learned it while studying comic book drawing in Belgium. The teacher was then complaining about the flood of Japanese Manga, which in his opinion would kill the European comic industry, as they were subsidised by a captive Japanese audience. Much of the cultural industry in France now only survives because of laws mandating that at least half the products sold must be French. And so is it with other European countries. But unfortunately those very same laws are preventing the growth of a pan European industry.
- longfingers 1y agoI apreciate getting an explanation for the Belgian Comics. Lua and Brazil seems like a fascinating one to me too. Financially independent clouds seems very straight forward but I'm not sure what the regulatory environment would look like to have whole different programming language ecosystems emerging.
- Gys 1y agoYour comment made me do some research and I found this on wikipedia, which very much proves your point: the 'dumping' of US comics was hurting the local Belgium comics. Interestingly, the quote below is only in https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgische_strip https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgische_strip - only in the Dutch version of the wikipedia article, not in the English version. > In 1936 verscheen het stripblad Bravo, dat voornamelijk vertaalde Amerikaanse strips bracht. Ook het in 1938 gecreëerde Robbedoes publiceerde aanvankelijk veel Amerikaanse strips. De lage kostprijs van de Amerikaanse strips verhinderde voor een groot deel dat Belgische auteurs kansen krijgen. In de loop van de jaren 1930 verschenen er ook steeds meer strips in het katholieke blad Zonneland / Petits Belges. > Door de Tweede Wereldoorlog viel de aanvoer van Amerikaanse strips stil en Belgische auteurs als Jacques Laudy, Sirius en E.P. Jacobs kregen meer kansen. Translated: > In 1936, the comic magazine Bravo was launched, which mainly published translated American comics. Robbedoes, created in 1938, also initially published many American comics. The low cost of American comics largely prevented Belgian authors from getting a chance. During the 1930s, more and more comics appeared in the Catholic magazine Zonneland / Petits Belges. > Due to the Second World War, the supply of American comics came to a halt and Belgian authors such as Jacques Laudy, Sirius, and E.P. Jacobs were given more opportunities.
- fvdessen 1y agoAh cool! thanks for the research, I couldn't find references and was sometimes doubting I remembered the story correctly