The Belgian Comic Strip Center – Museum Brussels – Rue des Sables 20

A comic strip museum in Brussels makes perfect sense. Three countries with a French-speaking population, Belgium, France and Switzerland have built an incredible artistic community combining literary art with graphic art which makes it the 9th art: comics.

If this museum amuses you, you are not the only one, but perhaps for other reasons. In fact, the reasons for wanting to discover this universe can vary so much that satisfying everyone is a major challenge and your appreciation of this place varies just as much. In wishing to please everyone, we touch on several subjects and leave many with an appetite.

The subject is sometimes incomplete, so if you are looking for a hope to relive the feelings of wonder in children, you may be disappointed. Do not think that this space will increase the desire of young people to read. It is rather a presentation of several elements here and there about the history, realizations and known and unknown results. Do we want to know how a comic is made? Certainly, but also to see all our favorite characters and know more about the authors.

The statues at the entrance are sometimes enough to satisfy an acknowledgment that some of our favorite characters are from this region of the globe.

I have a deep attachment to Asterix, the Smurfs, Lucky Luke, Gaston Lagaffe, Boule and Bill, but there is much more. Most of these have even been shown on screen. I make it an annual ritual.

Although the comic strip that I knew in my youth was rather humorous in nature, the medium has evolved. It has developed by captivating new clienteles with more serious, more adult stories, sometimes shocking, sometimes romantic, provocative and horrifying. They are based on real or fictitious facts. A section of the museum is reserved for adults, which confirms that we are far from the crazy youth characters.

No doubt comics are now part of our daily lives. Newspapers have adopted them to make us smile. Bookstores provide tons of options. Schools have adopted them to encourage reading in all its forms.

The marriage of the image with the words reinforces our understanding of the subject by bringing it to life and confirms that an image is worth a thousand words. This sequence of often framed images forms a story and the speech bubbles integrate the narrative into the images. The development of technology has certainly affected production efficiency.

The museum is within the walls of the former Waucquez fabric store built in 1906. It’s a relatively large space, but there’s so much to say about comics that you could have triple the size and space to present more.

It is obvious that our expectations of this type of museum are very high because we want it to match our memories, be attractive and colorful to amaze us like a book. And you, why do you want to visit it?

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