By Hergé
Publisher: Egmont
ISBN: 978-1-4052-4743-6
From January 1930 through to May 1940 Hergé was working on a very different kind of strip. It was published in the pages of Le Petit Vingtième, a Belgian magazine, originally in black and white but later coloured when collected. Like the strips you'd find within the pages of a DC Thompson publication, the stories were self-contained double page adventures with a punchline and featured the antics of a couple of young boys, Quick and Flupke. There's plenty of slapstick and surreal moments coupled with boy's own scrapes and adventures, making it a rather varied and surprising read. It is certainly nothing at all like Tintin, possessing a character all of its own.
In one tale Flupke is set an impossibly difficult maths problem involving the speed of trains so he takes it to his uncle, a stationmaster. He's equally as foxed so they troop along to the Ministry of Transport's office to see the Minister. He can't fathom it either, so the final panel sees them all barrelling along on the top of steam train as they engage in a practical. In another Flupke goes a little too far out of his depth at the seaside, so in a panic makes for shore only to discover he's reached Dover. They're all pleasantly silly, good-humoured, and prove that once upon a time you didn't need to mention bogeys on every page to have an enjoyable kids' comic.
And if you liked that: There's a second book entitled Fasten Your Seat Belts
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