Spike and Suzy
Aha, this is where our Dutch speaking roots start to show. Known to all of us at the Funny Little Men compound by the name "Suske en Wiske", it is a true classic that is responsible of many hours of no physical activity and by extension the most probably cause of our lack of co-ordination. Next time you see us poking our eye out with a toothbrush, you know why.
Written and drawn by the now deceased Antwerp-born Willy Vandersteen, Spike and Suzy is steeped in an old fashioned boy-scout sense of adventure laced with a folksy sense of humour. Spike and Suzy live in a world where everybody speaks the same language, money never runs out and every town has only one train station. Jump in a cab, ask to be driven to the train station and the cab driver will get you there without asking "which station?".
There's an innocence and charm about this series that's impossible to re-create in this day and age. Willly Vandersteen wasn't the best craftsman with the pencil, but he was a true storyteller. You could almost imagine him sitting in his rocking chair in front of a woodfire, telling sumptuous stories about pirates and treasures, ghosts, cursed paintings and time-travelling in a smoky voice with lots of arm movements, unwittingly creating a shadow puppet version of his stories on the surrounding walls.
The best Spike and Suzy stories are the "blue series" ones, eight stories made specially for Herge's Tintin magazine. The drawing style of these eight stories is much more precise, the stories more serious and longer.
After W. Vandersteen's death, other people have continued his work. But the results have not always been very convincing. We guess it must be hard to keep a series relevant when it has been going since 1945, reaching almost three hundred titles.