The iconic comic series ‘Suske en Wiske’ gets a new artist for the fifth time. Luc Morjaeu stops and his assistant Wout Schoonis takes over. ‘He will have to stick to the current fairly classic line,’ says former vtm journalist and notorious comic connoisseur Patrick Van Gompel, who once appeared as a gnome in the series.
Barbara Debusschere27 June 2023, 16:19
Who is Wout Schoonis?
‘He has long been Luc Morjaeu’s assistant, who has been in charge of the drawing team at Studio Vandersteen since 2005. Together with screenwriter Peter Van Gucht he has delivered 83 albums. As an assistant to Morjaeu, Schoonis is responsible for the characters of the comic strip and therefore knows very well how things work at Studio Vandersteen. It won’t be a tough transition for him. As the new head draftsman, he will now get a job that many in Flanders are queuing up for.”
Do we know why Morjaeu is quitting?
“I haven’t heard him about that yet, but he is now 63 years old and has been head draftsman for eighteen years. As long as you draw someone else’s series, you won’t be left out in the cold. He may also want to devote more time to his own art, including painting and sculpture. In a press release, he says that he considered it ‘a real honour’ at the time to be asked by Helena Vandersteen, Willy Vandersteen’s eldest daughter, as head draftsman.”
Is the strip, which has been running since 1945, still popular?
“Anyway. In Flanders and the Netherlands, the four albums that appear each year are still selling well. Actually, that’s kind of a miracle. Although those sales figures are no longer astronomical as in the heyday. I remember The Pearl of the Lotus Flower sold 500,000 copies in the 1980s. Now sales are around 50,000, but that is actually still very good if you look at how much competition has been added when it comes to entertainment.”
In 2017, Morjaeu gave Suske a red hoody, skinny jeans and a smoother quiff and Wiske a tail and small breasts in The Planet Eater. He later returned to this attempt to modernize the characters. What are the major challenges for Schoonis now?
“He must try to continue to guarantee the commercial value of the comic, which is of vital importance to the publisher. We sometimes forget that Standaard Uitgeverij has run for decades on the gold that Willy Vandersteen brought in with his Suske en Wiskes. Schoonis will therefore have to maintain the current fairly classic line. The experiments with hoodies, skinny jeans and breasts clearly don’t work with this strip and Morjaeu has therefore slowly phased them out. It’s like readers absolutely don’t want the looks of these characters to change. You can also see that with Jommeke, who has also been wearing for years what no boy is wearing today. The modern age itself does enter in decors and attributes and readers apparently do not mind. For example, a mobile phone has already been spotted at Suske en Wiske. But you better stay away from the characters themselves.”
Patrick Van Gompel, journalist and comic connoisseur.
“But the main challenge for this comic lies with the screenwriters rather than the artists. And unlike predecessors, Schoonis will only draw. The stories have not always been strong in recent years. It seems as if the screenwriters are working with the handbrake on and very careful not to make any missteps or step on their toes. The crazy, absurd and excessive that characterizes Suske en Wiske is therefore sometimes lost. That should come back.”
Is it true that you yourself got a cameo in one of the albums?
(laughs) “Indeed. I appear in the album The sparking fireman that was released in 1995 and that was drawn and written by Marc Verhaegen. The story revolves around the giant Petrus Van Gorp, a legend about a big strong man in the Kempen. In the story I am a gnome who is shaken by Aunt Sidonia.”
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2023-06-27 14:19:59
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