Belgium looks to reinvigorate comic industry

The ‘home of the comic book’ is trying to regain its influence in the industry via government-supported innovation, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Over the past few decades, the industry has fallen on hard times, but Belgium is hoping to win back its influence by positioning itself as a centre of innovation and excellence for the rest of the industry. “There is no reason why we won’t have more great authors, because we have very good ‘comics’ schools, and these schools discover a lot of new and interesting talent,” says Thierry Bellefroid, a comic book critic and historian. “On the creative level, the innovations that have been started here aren’t yet finished yet, but they are in the process of changing the comic book market.” The government set up the Comic Book Commission in 2007, a department in the Ministry of Culture, with an annual budget of €132,000. The commission funds 30 to 40 new projects a year with the aim of advancing technical and aesthetic aspects of comic book publishing in Belgium. The goal goes beyond paper and ink. “The symbolic element of all this is that it helps the comic strip emerge from the category of subculture or subgenre,” says commission director Bruno Merckx. “A comic book author is a literary author in his own right.” After five years of this state support, signs of success are beginning to show on the once-stagnant Belgian comic-book landscape. Grandpapier, a small Belgian comic book publishing house that receives grant money from the Comic Book Commission, is trying to move the comic book into the next frontier in comics publishing – the internet. “We are trying to see how we can automatically generate digital formats from comic stories posted to our site,” says Grandpapier founder Sacha Goerg. “That way people can either go on Grandpapier.org to read a comic or download a comic book as an e-comic.”