We were recently in Belgium (for a trip unrelated to business) and were able to take a few photos of stores and other pop culture sights.  We present them here in chronological order as we toured Brussels.  Click through for larger versions.    

 

This Games Workshop store was the only hobby game store we saw in our quick tour of Brussels.  The sign in French on the window translates as “to play, to paint, to collect.” 

 

 

 

 

Belgium is one of the centers of the Franco-Belgian comic scene, a proud tradition that sees comics as the “ninth art,” a true, legitimate art form that stands equal to all others.  One manifestation of that is a collection of murals on city buildings in Brussels, the capital of Belgium (and where the European Union institutions are housed) organized by a local museum dedicated to comic art (more on that later).  This is of Broussaille / Ragebol by Frank Pe. 

 

This butcher shop had a series of comic-style murals on its wall.  Here’s the one with the text-like graphitti in English on the pig image:  “We were killed so u could b fat.”

 

 

 

 

It was evening when we passed this store, Hello!.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The window at Hello! displayed comic albums (the standard form in Belgium) and figures of comic-based figures. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another comic mural, this one of  “Nero” by Marc Sleen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the Marc Sleen Museum, across the street from the Belgian Comic Strip Center in Brussels.  Sleen is a well-known Belgian comic artist who drew the same comic strip without assistants for 45 years (The Adventures of Nero and Co.) and is considered one of the four founders of the Flemish comics. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your editor on the way into the Belgian Comic Strip Center in Brussels. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Belgian Comic Strip Center is in a beautiful, four-story art nouveau building that was originally a department store.  The central atrium brings natural light into multiple floors of the museum.

 

 

 

This exhibit shows the publications on which the Belgian comics world was based, beginning in the 1930s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One current exhibit reproduces the studio of Joseph Gillain, alias Jijé, Willy Maltaite, who signed himself Will, André Franquin and Maurice De Bevere of Spirou, nicknamed the Gang of Four. 

 

 

 

 

An art exhibit at the Belgian Comic Strip Center. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was the extent of the American comics display in the museum store, which covered at least 1000 square feet.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For "Pop Culture Photos--Netherlands," click here.