The whole world knows Belgium as the land of ‘The Smurfs’ and ‘Tintin’. When they don’t confuse it with France, that is. Steven Spielberg was determined to make the first ‘Tintin’ blockbuster at any cost. In millions of living rooms during the ’80s, children followed the cartoon adventures of Peyo’s little blue white-capped gnomes. You might almost forget that these TV and Hollywood stars began their careers on the comic strip page.
Not just any comic strip page, of course. Belgian comic artists and writers like Hergé, Willy Vandersteen, and André Franquin etched their indelible signatures into the colorful history book of European comics. Or ‘The Ninth Art‘, as admirers solemnly call the genre. A term coined by Morris, the Flemish brain behind the gunslinger Lucky Luke.
Belgium often seems like a completely absurd country with its Flemish-Walloon contrasts, the often complex Brussels metropolis, and incomprehensible political surrealism. But precisely in Brussels, the cross-pollination of Dutch-speaking and French-speaking comic creators gave birth to sparkling, immortal comic strips. Consequently, the national capital boasts the impressive Belgian Comic Strip Center, dozens of comic shops, and beautiful, meter-high comic walls covered with colorful characters from Belgian graphic stories.
When a customs officer glances through a Belgian passport, they might spontaneously chuckle. Since 2022, that burgundy booklet proudly features no fewer than 14 widely beloved Belgian comic characters. Natacha, Marsupilami, Kari Lente (Yoko Tsuno), and Boule & Bill just missed this list. Curious about which Flemish, Walloon, and Brussels world-famous comic heroes did make it? You’ll discover that in this Top 10 Famous Belgian Comic Characters.
1. Tintin (‘Les Aventures de Tintin’). The most famous Belgian comic character
On January 10, 1929, Hergé introduced his ‘Tintin’ in ‘Le Petit Vingtième’, the youth supplement of the newspaper ‘Le Vingtième Siècle’. Hergé’s drawing style was immediately unmistakable and would influence countless comic artists forever.
The Brussels native, born Georges Remi (1907 – 1983), inked his cartoon figures with a consistent line thickness (‘ligne claire’ or clear line) against a realistic backdrop. Even in the intrepid reporter’s first adventure, ‘Tintin in the Land of the Soviets’, the car the young hero used to escape a police plane looked remarkably credible for its time. Or at least more credible than a wire-haired, white fox terrier named ‘Milou’ (Snowy) loudly urging his master in French to speed up.
Of course, the names Kuifje and Bobby (Dutch names for Tintin and Snowy) didn’t exist in 1929. Their adventures initially appeared exclusively in French. Flemish youth met ‘Tintin’ and his inseparable dog ‘Milou’ in late 1940 on the comic pages of ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’. But it wasn’t until 1943, in ‘The Shooting Star’ (‘De geheimzinnige ster’), that their Brussels comic hero received his Dutch name ‘Kuifje’.
In 1951, the tufted Belgian comic character crossed the Channel. There, publisher Casterman introduced him to the young British public in ‘King Ottokar’s Sceptre’ as ‘a French boy’. Right. And then people wonder why half the world thinks Tintin is French.
Hergé died on March 3, 1983, before he could complete the 24th Tintin adventure. ‘Tintin and Alph-Art’ was published posthumously three years later, as a collection of his final sketches. The grandmaster wished that no one would create new Tintin comics after his death. The 23 completed albums are therefore unparalleled tableaux in the gallery of ‘The Ninth Art’. Although it must be said that the first albums don’t always blow you away with their groundbreaking scenarios. With racist and xenophobic prejudices, on the other hand, they sometimes did. Like many artists, Hergé naturally had to find his voice first.
From the fifth album, ‘The Blue Lotus’ (1936), the Brussels artist had found what he was looking for. From then on, the comic creator immersed himself completely in the exotic locations and intriguing themes his hero inadvertently got caught up in. During his travels, the young man stamped his passport in 22 countries. The reporter even circled far beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Long before the internet age, Belgian schoolchildren knew all about space travel thanks to the beautifully illustrated two-part story ‘Destination Moon’ (1953) and ‘Explorers on the Moon’ (1954). And yes, you read that right. Not Neil Armstrong, but Tintin was the first to set foot on the lunar surface!
During all these fantastic experiences, the reporter befriended fascinating supporting characters like the robust opera singer Bianca Castafiore, the deaf Professor Calculus specializing in remarkable inventions, and the bumbling detective duo Thomson & Thompson.
The most entertaining regular sidekick, of course, made his entrance in ‘The Crab with the Golden Claws’ (1941). The whisky-addicted Captain Haddock, dealing in highly original curses and expletives, proved the perfect counterweight to the overall rather well-behaved Brussels reporter. The popular grumpy drunkard certainly played a significant part in the over 250 million comic albums sold. It’s no coincidence that Steven Spielberg based his CGI success ‘The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn’ (2011) on the classic storyline surrounding Captain Haddock’s illustrious ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock.
2. The Smurfs (‘Les Schtroumpfs’)
Let’s set the time machine to the summer of 1957, in an unnamed eatery on the Belgian North Sea coast. You wouldn’t guess it from the wine on the table, but pure comic history is being written here.
During dinner with colleagues, a rather tipsy Peyo (pen name of Brussels native Pierre Culliford (1928 – 1992)) searched in vain for the word for a salt shaker. “Passe-moi le schtroumpf” (“Pass me the smurf”), he ordered his table companion André Franquin. – “Tiens, voilà ton schtroumpf” (“Here, here’s your smurf”), Franquin replied wittily. Soon, the comic artists were ‘smurfing’ their way through the entire dinner.
There you have the origin of ‘Les Schtroumpfs’, as the little blue guys are called in Peyo’s native language. The Brussels artist introduced his gnomes in 1958 in the ‘Johan and Peewit’ story ‘La Flûte à six Schtroumpfs’ (‘The Flute with Six Smurfs’). That adventure first appeared as a serial in the French-language weekly magazine ‘Spirou’. Editor-in-chief Yvan Delporte convinced Peyo to promote the supporting characters to main characters. Delporte promptly invented half a village of new Smurfs, each with their own one-dimensional personality.
In 1959, their first solo adventure ‘Les Schtroumpfs noirs‘ (‘The Black Smurfs’) appeared. But The Smurfs would truly smurf their way to world fame with the animated series by Hanna-Barbera, the American cartoon studio that produced ‘The Flintstones’, ‘Yogi Bear’, and ‘The Jetsons’. The series, which ran from 1981 to 1990, was a roaring success. Although the dreadful, bland ninth and final season is best avoided like the cauldron of the wizard Gargamel.
Three decades after the death of their creator Peyo (1928 – 1992), The Smurfs have lost none of their popularity. They smurfed together a whole new generation of fans with a trio of CGI/live-action films and enough Smurf hits, figurines, puzzles, video games, and other blue-colored paraphernalia. When the main character of the cult film ‘Donnie Darko’ (2001) deadpans speculations about your sexuality, you’ve truly made it as a cultural phenomenon.
3. Lucky Luke
“I’m a poor lonesome cowboy, and a long way from home …”, hums Lucky Luke at the end of each comic album. Then, with his trusty steed Jolly Jumper, ‘the smartest horse in the world’, he rides off into the sunset. Always seeking new adventures in the 19th-century American Wild West.
But this gunslinger isn’t really that lonesome. ‘The man who shoots faster than his shadow’ is world-famous. Oscar winner Jean Dujardin donned a yellow shirt and red scarf in 2009 for the live-action adaptation of the iconic comic cowboy. The result was, mildly put, a tad less memorable than the cheerful Hanna-Barbera animated series from the ’80s. The sharpshooter also has dozens of video games to his name since the advent of handheld games and the Commodore 64.
But first and foremost, Lucky Luke remains a comic hero. One whose western adventures are available in some 30 languages. No wonder his numerous admirers often forget that he flowed from the pencil of a Belgian artist. Morris, a pseudonym for Maurice De Bevere (1923 – 2001) from Kortrijk, brought the wandering loner to life in 1946 in the story ‘Arizona 1880’ for the special end-of-year issue ‘Almanach 1947’ of the comic weekly Spirou (Robbedoes in Dutch).
Not every artist is an equally gifted writer. Fortunately, from 1955, Morris was joined by René Goscinny. You know, the Frenchman who fell into a cauldron of humor potion as a child and, from 1959, conquered the world with Albert Uderzo with ‘Asterix’, the best-selling European comic series.
But his cowboy stories sold quite well too. The ‘Lucky Luke’ albums that Morris and Goscinny created together stand alone. Goscinny’s masterstroke proved to be album 12, ‘The Dalton Cousins‘. In it, Joe, Jack, William, and Averell Dalton seek revenge for the demise of the original Dalton gang. The notorious quartet would cross Lucky Luke’s path many times thereafter, much to the delight of fans who flooded the publisher with letters asking to bring back the dispatched real Daltons.
Healthy fact: In his 54th adventure ‘Fingers’ from 1983, after years of criticism from concerned parents and cancer prevention organizations, the chain-smoking cowboy traded his eternal cigarette for a blade of grass. This earned creator Morris a medal from the World Health Organization five years later.
4. Suske en Wiske (Spike & Suzy / Bob & Bobette / Willy & Wanda)
The longest-running comic series in the Benelux? That title belongs to ‘Suske & Wiske’. On March 30, 1945, Willy Vandersteen (1913 – 1990) published the first comic strip of the adventurous duo in ‘De Nieuwe Standaard’. Today, the Flemish newspapers ‘De Standaard’ and ‘Het Nieuwsblad’ still publish half a page of the upcoming new album every day. After more than 365 adventures, Wiske still winks enthusiastically at the readers in the familiar final panel that ends every story.
The successful series was initially called ‘The adventures of Rikki and Wiske‘. However, Wiske’s older brother Rikki disappeared completely from the strip after just one story. At the beginning of ‘The Isle of Amoras’, Aunt Sidonia sent the lad off with a shoe coupon, and that was the last we heard of the good boy. Until the character was rehabilitated in 2003 in ‘The Prisoner of Prisonov’.
Suske, however, proved to be a more than worthy replacement. Initially, he was an aggressive little fellow, but he quickly developed into the best friend a girl with a rag doll could wish for. The second comic also introduced the brilliant Professor Barabas (inventor of genius creations like the Gyronef, Teletimemachine, and Klankentapper!).
The follow-up ‘De Sprietatoom’ (1948) introduced Lambik (Lambic/Orville), providing the parentless children with a hot-tempered surrogate uncle with a heart of gold. Gradually, the ‘Suske & Wiske’ universe took shape. In 1953, the kind-hearted powerhouse Jerom (Jerome/Willy) debuted in ‘The Merry Musketeers’, initially as a brutish, uncouth primitive force.
In 1948, Hergé approached Vandersteen to boost the sales figures of the Dutch-language edition of the comic weekly ‘Tintin’ (‘Kuifje’). And Vandersteen certainly delivered. The so-called ‘Blue Series’, which includes magnificent stories like ‘The Spanish Ghost’ and ‘The Bronze Key’, ranks among the best that Flemish comic history has ever produced. It’s no wonder Tintin’s creator hailed the Antwerp artist as ‘The Bruegel of the Comic Strip’.
In 1974, collaborator Paul Geerts took over the torch. Although Vandersteen gave Geerts and his later successors clear rules (for example, Aunt Sidonia and Lambik can never marry), ‘Suske & Wiske’ clearly proved more resilient to changing times, trends, and fleeting hypes than their more conventional colleague Jommeke. The gritty plotlines with which Charel Cambré and Marc Legendre tormented the duo in the mature spin-offs ‘Amoras’ and the ‘Chronicles of Amoras’ are certainly no walk in the park.
5. Spirou & Fantasio
In early 1938, Walloon publisher Jean Dupuis decided that Belgian youth could use a fun comic magazine. That became ‘Spirou’ (‘Robbedoes’ in Dutch), the oldest comic magazine in Belgium. The Dutch-language editorial team unfortunately folded in 2005. But in the French-speaking part of the country, ‘Spirou’ still surprises subscribers weekly with ’52 pages de bande dessinée’ (52 pages of comics).
Dupuis was early. The first issue of the weekly magazine Tintin appeared only on September 26, 1946. While Hergé and his companions embodied the static ‘clear line’ of the ‘Brussels School’ in their comic panels, Dupuis’s hires preferred a lively, dynamic comic style full of cheerful movement. Comic connoisseurs also speak of the ‘Marcinelle School’ – after the Hainaut town of Marcinelle, where Spirou’s publishing house was located.
But Monsieur Dupuis’s new weekly magazine was missing something. A mascot, who would share its name with the comic magazine. For this, French artist Rob-Vel (nom de plume of Robert Velter) was recruited. The Frenchman, who had worked as a ‘liftboy’ at the London Ritz Carlton as a sixteen-year-old, didn’t have to search long for inspiration. He put a mischievous little fellow in a red bellhop uniform on paper. The character was named ‘Spirou’, which means ‘squirrel’ or ‘mischievous’ in Walloon dialect and received the Dutch translation ‘Robbedoes’.
All well and good. But what is a French comic character doing on this list? Well, Rob-Vel relinquished his copyrights after just a few years. Thus, Spirou became one of the few Belgian comic heroes whose ownership rests not with the creator (or their, usually watchful, heirs) but with a publishing house. Fortunately, Dupuis was a publisher with a creative heart in the right place. Over the years, more than twenty comic creators demonstrated their interpretation of the former Moustic Hotel liftboy.
Thus, Spirou grew into one of the bravest and most honest comic heroes you will ever find in a Belgian comic album. In 1944, Jijé (1914 – 1980) gave the comic hero, now promoted from bellboy to reporter, a faithful companion. Ahem, besides the stubborn squirrel Spip who had been around since 1939, of course. This was the significantly clumsier, but certainly equally sincere, Fantasio. Not much later, Jijé passed the comic series on to his assistant and protégé André Franquin (1924 – 1997).
The adventures that flowed from Franquin’s wondrous mind and skillful drawing hand between 1947 and 1969 are among the best the series has to offer. But the grandmaster had to pass the torch. After all, he now had his hands full with Gaston Lagaffe (Guust Flater) and the Marsupilami!
6. Blake & Mortimer
While American comics had already gained a mature face in the ’30s with the visages of Prince Valiant, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, and other weathered guys with granite-jawed heads, the facade of Belgian comics remained remarkably green behind the ears. One man would change that in the early ’40s. His name was Edgar P. Jacobs (1904 – 1987).
This former opera singer, without fully realizing it, produced the precursor to the modern ‘graphic novel’ during WWII. Namely with ‘Le Rayon U’ (‘The U Ray’) in the Belgian comic magazine ‘Bravo!’ A strange career switch. But the German occupiers turned off the opera subsidy tap, while the demand for domestic comic strips was soaring. American import comics were, after all, now banned. Yes, the horrors of occupation truly knew no bounds.
Edgar P. Jacobs’s first serial story seemed plucked straight from the Flash Gordon universe. ‘The U Ray’ quickly gathered a loyal following. One of those admirers was Hergé, the creator of Tintin, and from 1946, also the driving force behind the eponymous comic weekly. Thus, Jacobs became Hergé’s first lieutenant for the Tintin adventures until 1950. After that, he resolutely reserved his tight ‘clear line’ style for his own comic heroes ‘Blake & Mortimer’. A style with which the Brussels artist created the first truly realistic Belgian graphic narrative.
Readers of Tintin magazine were, of course, already well acquainted with the adventures of the Scottish professor Philip Mortimer and his Welsh buddy Francis Blake, who was on the payroll of the British intelligence service MI5. The first page of the serial story ‘The Secret of the Swordfish’ appeared in the popular weekly as early as September 26, 1946.
The grandly drawn story, where the eminent British duo immediately saves the world from the incorrigible short-mustached villain, Colonel Olrik, comprised a staggering 143 pages. A unique feat for a comic at the time, especially given the meticulous detail with which P. Jacobs filled his comic panels and the nerve-wrackingly tense script full of unusually mature subjects.
The serial story that kept Tintin readers captivated weekly until September 8, 1949, was later published as the first three comic albums in the series. A milestone in Belgian, arguably European, comic history. Yet the major masterpiece was still to come. Anyone who has ever wandered through the Marolles district in Brussels knows, of course, which iconic ‘Blake & Mortimer’ album is being referred to. ‘La Marque Jaune’, or as the English translation reads: ‘The Yellow “M”‘.
7. Largo Winch
For the slightly older Belgian comic enthusiast, Jean Van Hamme (°1939) is considered a veritable demigod of the Ninth Art. Or rather: Knight Van Hamme. Because in 2015, the Belgian King Philippe knighted the Brussels comic scriptwriter. An honor that also befell Nero’s creator Marc Sleen in 1999.
But the creations that crawled from Van Hamme’s pen remain miles away from Belgian fry shacks and waffle stands. The Brussels native provides the scenarios for Grzegorz Rosiński’s epic Viking saga ‘Thorgal’, William Vance’s amnesiac action thriller series ‘XIII’, and of course the multi-million success ‘Largo Winch’, for which Philippe Francq (°1961) wields the drawing pencil.
‘Largo Winch’ is an outlier on this list. To begin with, he has the jawline and virile features of a young Patrick Swayze and Kurt Russell. Add to that the noble intentions of a cookie-selling boy scout, the mating drive of a thoroughbred stallion in rut, and the rebelliousness of a grubby British punk band circa 1976 – and you immediately understand that the fortunes of Largo Winczlav, as he was named at birth, are definitely not children’s comics.
This orphan boy, plucked from the former Yugoslavia, inherits the mighty business empire of his adoptive father Nerio Winch, who died under highly suspicious circumstances, at the age of 26. With a market value of 10 billion dollars, dubious friends and even more dubious enemies with devilish plots are never far away. Just like female beauty that would make even Leonardo DiCaprio gulp.
The adventures of this skirt-chasing ‘billionaire in blue jeans’ with his heart in the right place are almost as successful as the comic character himself. The originally French-written comic books sell nearly half a million copies annually in Romance language areas. But you can easily find the comics in Dutch, English, German, Danish, Portuguese, Spanish, Serbian, Croatian, and Swedish translations throughout Europe. Just like the two feature films derived from them, starring Tomer Sisley as the rebellious protagonist.
8. De Kiekeboes
In 1977, Flanders first met the Kiekeboe family. Creator Merho (which certainly sounds better than ‘Robert Carolus Wilhelmina Merhottein‘, the real name of the Antwerp comic artist born on October 24, 1948) based his bald title hero with the impressive walrus mustache on the eponymous character from his older brother’s puppet theater. The first album ‘De Wollebollen‘ (‘The Woolly Balls’) was still a typically innocent story in the tradition of ‘Suske en Wiske’. Not surprising, either. Merho, after all, earned his stripes as a collaborator at Studio Vandersteen. Fortunately, the Antwerp native would soon develop his own, and especially much bolder, narrative voice.
While Marcel Kiekeboe and his family experienced adventure after adventure, Merho introduced hot societal topics and shady practices that would make the folks in Zonnedorp (the fictional setting of Jommeke) shudder. Racism, hormone trafficking, tax evasion, fraud, human trafficking, prostitution, and of course gratuitous sexism and adultery – the latter sublimely personified by Marcel’s incorrigible boss Firmin Van de Kasseien.
Merho truly shies away from no theme. And as often happens with great artists, the circle of elite cultural critics would only later truly appreciate his special contribution to Belgian comics. The notorious ‘Laurel & Hardy’ fan did score one prestigious award though. In 2014, visitors to the Book Fair and Radio 1 listeners voted the wonderfully self-reflexive ‘Album 26’ from 1984 as the best Belgian comic of all time.
Until 2010, the series was called ‘Kiekeboe’. The switch to ‘De Kiekeboes’ (The Kiekeboes) was only logical. Father Marcel would have long been six feet under without the help of his wife Charlotte, his clever son Konstantinopel, and of course the spirited teenage daughter Fanny. Few Flemish artists manage to draw such believable female characters as Merho. In 2003, the ravishing comic heroine graced the cover of the men’s magazine P-Magazine. You wouldn’t see Aunt Sidonia or Madam Pheip doing that anytime soon. The character’s popularity is clearly leveraged in foreign editions like ‘Fanny en co’, ‘Fanny et Cie’, and ‘Jo and co’.
The major international breakthrough unfortunately never materialized. However, the domestic track record lost none of its luster. Almost five decades after ‘De Wollebollen’, ‘De Kiekeboes’ still easily sell 90,000 copies per year. Their creator consistently delivers strong scenarios. You just have to take Merho’s notorious puns and other unbridled linguistic quirks along for the ride.
9. Jommeke
There’s a greater chance that people will wake up tomorrow with rampant fruit trees growing from their heads (‘De vruchtenmakers’ – The Fruit Makers), animal tails popping out of their behinds (‘Het staartendorp’ – The Tail Village), and an elephant trunk for a nose (‘De lustige slurvers’ – The Merry Trunkers) … than finding a single child in Flanders who has never heard of Jommeke.
An estimated 65 million Jommeke albums are circulating in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. More than 300 adventures later, another 50,000 copies are still added annually. Who would have ever thought that, when the little boy with the straw hat stepped onto the comic page of the parish magazine ‘Kerkelijk Leven’ (‘Church Life’) on October 30, 1955?
Jef Nys (1927 – 2009), as a twenty-year-old high-flyer, dreamed of a career at Disney. A plane ticket to the US never materialized. But Uncle Walt did praise the drawing skills of the Berchem cartoonist. Nys’s clumsy first short Jommeke gags evolved in 1958 into full-fledged serial stories in ‘Het Volk’. From the first album ‘De jacht op een voetbal’ (‘The Hunt for a Football’), things took off quickly for the 10-year-and-4-month-old blond hero from Hemelstraat in Zonnedorp.
Jommeke quickly became a household name for the Catholic daily newspaper. From a quintessential Flemish village where parents apparently see no problem with underage, school-attending children being away from home for months, Jommeke and his friends Filiberke and the Miekes saw practically every possible corner of the globe. The clever quartet invariably received help from their equally shrewd menagerie (the talking, know-it-all parrot Flip, the less talkative black poodle Pekkie, and a small chimpanzee dressed in a sailor suit with a penchant for chocolate spread). Of course, Professor Gobelijn, the absent-minded brain behind brilliant inventions like ‘The Flying Sphere’, ‘Grassmobile’, ‘Plastic Whale’, and quite a bit of unintentional local disaster in Jommeke’s home village Zonnedorp, cannot be missed.
Jommeke has targeted the very youngest comic readers from the beginning. Nys’s successors also remain contractually obligated to stay far away from anything remotely resembling gratuitous violence, delicate politics, or mischievous sexuality. The characters of the bumbling villains who constantly cross Jommeke’s path (with regulars like the fortune-hunting butler Anatool and the blatant vagrants Kwak and Boemel) reflect this.
Although anyone who, as a six-year-old, first read the classic ‘De koningin van Onderland’ (‘The Queen of Onderland’) under the covers with a meager flashlight, might think differently. Nys never came closer to pure horror than in the gruesome torture cellars of Achterberg Castle.
10. Nero
You have to dare to quit while you’re ahead. So, in December 2002, the then eighty-year-old Marc Sleen (with help from his loyal drawing assistant Dirk Stallaert) gave Nero a final salute with ‘Zilveren tranen’ (‘Silver Tears’). The farewell certainly did not disappoint. In the final 217th album of ‘The Adventures of Nero & Co’, the self-proclaimed newspaper phenomenon clashes one last time with all his familiar arch-enemies. Geeraard the Devil, Hela the Witch, Matsuoka, Ratsjenko, and of course the Maltese mafiosi Ricardo: no villain didn’t want to wave Nero off with one last zany trick.
Nero and his creator Marc Sleen (1922 – 2016) were already decorated veterans in the Belgian comic world by then. The work ethic of the Flemish comic artist, born in Gentbrugge but soon transplanted to Sint-Niklaas, was inexhaustible. As early as 1989, the ‘Guinness Book of Records‘ crowned Sleen the world record holder for the longest comic series drawn by the same artist.
Nero and his zany clique full of wonderful characters like the heavily ‘fleur de matras’ (a type of strong tobacco) puffing Madam Pheip, the completely bonkers short-fused buccaneer Tuizentfloot (Captainämään/Abraham Tuizentfloot), the burly fry-cook Jan Spier (Pols), Petoetje & Petatje, and of course Nero’s brilliant son Adhemar (who lent his clever name to the biennial Flemish comic award, ‘the Bronzen Adhemar’), saw the post-war world change like no other. With one certainty: the waffle feast with which Madam Nero dutifully concluded every album.
Those who read their daily Nero strip in ‘Het Volk’, and after a newspaper feud causing quite a stir in 1965, ‘De Standaard’, savored the hilarious nods to current events with their breakfast. Because besides the typical Sleen-esque absurd nonsense, the ‘tender terrorist’ also packed his Nero comics chock-full of national and global socio-political references. The aesthetic flaws that the lightning-fast pencil-wielding Sleen carelessly accumulated along the way were, of course, overlooked with affection by his thousands of readers.
