By Hergé, translated by David Radzinowicz (Egmont UK)
ISBN: 978-1-4052-4742-9 (PB Album Seatbelts) 978-1-4052-4743-6 (HB/Sail)
These books include Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.
Georges Prosper Remi – known to all as Hergé – created a genuine masterpiece of graphic literature with his tales of a plucky boy reporter and his entourage of iconic associates. Singly, and later with assistants including Edgar P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor and other supreme stylists of the select Hergé Studio, he crafted 23 splendid volumes (originally produced in brief instalments for newspaper periodicals) which have since grown beyond their popular culture roots and attained the status of High Art.
Globally renowned for the magnificent Tintin adventures, Hergé also did much to return comics to the arena of mass entertainment, a position largely lost after once television, video-recording and computer games became household standards. However, the bold boy and his opinionated dog were by not his only landmark. In the years before the junior journalist finally assured him immortality Remi was a prodigious jobbing cartoonist, generating a minor pantheon of topical strips and features such as Tim the Squirrel in the Far West, The Amiable Mr. Mops, Tom and Millie and Popol Out West. Among the best of the rest were the tales of Jo and Zette Legrand and their chimpanzee companion Jocko – in much the same wholesome action vein as Tintin – and episodic, all-ages shenanigans of a pair of mischievous ragamuffins in pre-WWII Belgium.
In 2005 Egmont translated three escapades of Jo, Zette and Jocko into English – although many more are just sitting fallow out there, all foreign and unreadable to potential fans too lazy to learn French or any of a dozen other civilised languages. In 2009 the publisher tried again with two collections of the Master’s second most successful creation: Quick et Flupke, gamins de Bruxelles.
These rambunctiously subversive, trouble-making working-class rapscallions and scallywags were precursors and thematic contemporaries of such beloved British boy acts as The Bash Street Kids, Winker Watson, Roger the Dodger et al, and literally hundreds of continental strips, and for more than a decade (from January 1930 to May 1940) rivalled untouchable Tintin in popularity. They undoubtedly acted as a rehearsal room for the humorous graphic and slapstick elements which became so much a part of future Tintin tales.
Just over a decade ago Egmont had a brief stab at reviving the likely lads and it was only the general public’s deplorable lack of taste and good sense which stopped the kids from taking off again…
On leaving school in 1925, Hergé began working for Catholic newspaper Le XXe Siècle, falling under the influence of its Svengali-like editor Abbot Norbert Wallez. Remi produced his first strip series The Adventures of Totor for Boy Scouts of Belgium monthly magazine the following year, and by 1928 was in charge of producing the paper’s children’s weekly supplement Le Petit Vingtiéme.
He was unhappily illustrating L’Extraordinaire Aventure de Flup, Nénesse, Poussette et Cochonnet (The Extraordinary Adventures of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette and Cochonette) – written by the staff sports reporter – when Abbot Wallez beseeched him to create a new adventure serial. Perhaps a young reporter who would travel the world, doing good whilst displaying solid Catholic values and virtues?
Having recently discovered the word balloon in imported newspaper strips, Remi decided to incorporate that innovation into his own work. He designed a strip both modern and action-packed – and heavily anti-communist. From January 10th 1929, weekly episodes of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets appeared in Le Petit Vingtiéme, running until May 8th 1930. Around this time he also developed weekly 2-page gag strips starring two working-class rascals on the streets of Brussels. They played pranks, got into good-natured trouble and even ventured into the heady realms of slapstick and surrealism: the sort of antics any reader of Dennis the Menace (ours, not the Americans’) would find fascinatingly familiar.
Officially the strip launched on January 23rd, but it only featured one half of the duo and was not truly complete until the partnership was formed with the introduction of Flupke three weeks later. Thus it’s joyeux anniversaire today lads, or Gelukkige verjaardag if you’re feeling a little Flemish…
Originally a black-&-white fixture in Le Petit Vingtiéme, the lads larked about for more than a decade until the war and mounting pressures of producing Tintin meant Hergé had to let them go. They were only rediscovered in 1985, when their collected adventures ran to a dozen best-selling albums – so there’s still plenty left out there to be translated into English…
Fasten Your Seat Belts contains a sublimely riotous celebration of childish high spirits, beginning with hosepipe pranks in ‘The Big Clean’, before a rare good deed leads to strife with ‘A Poor Defenceless Woman’ and a day ‘At the Seaside’ results in another round of fisticuffs. After that, their archfoe the policeman succumbs to the irresistible temptations of a handy catapult in ‘Everyone Gets a Turn’…
Quick – the tall one in the beret – learns to his cost ‘How Music Calms the Nerves’ and discovers the drawback of ‘Pacifism’, whilst portly Flupke tries tennis and finds himself far from ‘Unbeatable’…
‘Advertising’ proves to be a dangerous game and an annoying insect meets its end in ‘Instructions for Use’, whilst ‘Quick the Clock Repairer’ fall far short of his billing, and ‘Football’ becomes just another reason for friends to fall out. Although unwelcome ‘At the Car Showroom’, some Eskimos (you’re going to have to suspend some modern sensitivities every now and again, remember) seem happy to share in ‘A Weird Story’ whist Hergé himself turns up in ‘A Serious Turn of Events’, even as the kids are disastrously ‘At Odds’ over a funny smell in their proximity. Soon after, ‘Quick the Music Lover’ deftly deals with an annoying neighbour, Flupke goes Christmas skiing in ‘That’s How It Is’ and another good turn goes bad in ‘All Innocence’, before a sibling spat is sorted through ‘Children’s Rights’ before Quick cocks up cuisine despite possessing ‘The Recipe’…
A handy ‘Yo-yo’ causes traffic chaos and a milk run goes spectacularly awry in a buttery ‘Metamorphosis’ prior to this breezy blast from the past concluding with a cleverly appealing ‘Tale Without a Tail’.
Regrettably hard to find now (and long past time for a digital edition if not paper reissue), this book and the simple, perfect gags it contains show another side to the supreme artistry of Hergé – and no connoisseur of comics can consider life complete without a well-thumbed copy of their own…
Exactly the same holds true for sequel volume Quick & Flupke: Under Full Sail. Once upon a time in Belgium and many other places, the escapades of two mischievous scallywags rivalled the irresistibly indomitable adventurer Tintin in popularity. It wasn’t that big a deal for Hergé and his publishers as Quick & Flupke was being produced by a studio team in concurrently with the dashing boy reporter. The gag strip became a test lab for humorous graphic elements, so much a part of the future world classic that the little terrors often cameoed in the major magazine vehicle…
Running from January 10th 1929 to May 8th 1930, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets appeared in weekly instalments in Le Petit Vingtiéme, generating a huge spike in sales. Editor Wallez allowed Hergé to hire Eugène Van Nyverseel and Paul “Jam” Jamin as art assistants and naturally wanted to see a return in terms of more product. According to Remi’s later recollections he returned from a brief, well-earned vacation to find his staff had played an office prank by announcing that he was about to launch a second weekly strip…
Briefly flummoxed, Remi rapidly concocted a strip starring a little rascal over the next few days, based largely on his own childhood and French film Les Deux Gosses (The Two Kids). The impertinent pair (or at least one of them) premiered in the January 23rd 1930 issue of Le Petit Vingtiéme. The feature became Quick & Flupke three weeks later when a pint-sized partner in peril appeared, initially answering to “Suske” before evolving into Flupke (which is Flemish for “little Phillip”)…
Unleashed weekly in 2-page monochrome exploits, two working class Brussels louts played pranks, made mischief and ventured into heady realms of slapstick and surrealism in yarns any reader of Bart Simpson would find fascinatingly familiar. Readers everywhere loved them and the strip became immensely successful, but Hergé paid it little heed, frequently only beginning each week’s episode a day or even hours before press time. The fare was rapid-fire, pun-packed, stand-alone and often fourth-wall breaking which – as eny fule kno – never gets old.
Despite being increasingly sidelined after Hergé devised The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko for Cœurs-Vaillants at the end of 1935 – so Happy 90th to them, too! – our likely lads larked about for ten years, increasingly becoming an artefact of the assistants (and latterly artist Johan de Moor) until the global war and the pressure of producing Tintin meant they had to go.
Unimpeachable urchins Quick & Flupke were rediscovered in 1985, and – after a brief TV incarnation – returned to print where their remastered, collected escapades ran to12 full-colour albums in Europe and India until 1991. As English translations, we only ever saw a couple of volumes like this oversized (221 x 295 mm) hardcover compendium: delighting us with nearly two dozen sparkling romps for laughter-starved lovers of classic comics comedy.
Hopefully, now we’ve got a burgeoning digital reading base, they will all be available for folk too lazy to learn French (or Dutch or German or…) as digital editions. These lost classics are long-overdue for rediscovery and are perfect light reading for kids of all ages.
© Hergé – Exclusivity Editions Casterman 1986, 1991. All Rights Reserved. English translation © 2009 Egmont UK Limited. All rights reserved.
