186 EUROPEAN COMICS
(about 10,000 titles). Th ese publications did not look like today’s comics because text
and pictures remained separated for mainly cultural reasons. Th ough sometimes longer
stories (e.g., by Töpff er, Doré, or Busch) were published, the majority remained short
humorous stories (no longer than a few panels or one page). Th e majority of the early
humor comics were destined for an adult readership. Before the 1890s, the number of
reappearing characters was rather limited, the most popular example being the British
Ally Sloper with his own line of merchandising. On an international scale the most infl u-
ential comics artist was arguably the German Wilhelm Busch, whose devilish rascals
Max und Moritz (1865) boasted gags about ferocious children (similar to for instance,
America’s longest-running comic strip Th e Katzenjammer Kids, from 1897). Comics
in popular prints and illustrated magazines circulated in various countries and were
imitated or copied with or without permission (only in 1886 did the Berne Convention
establish recognition of copyrights among sovereign nations). In the early 20th century,
comics in Europe were produced more so for children, and a growing number of chil-
dren’s magazines (L’ É p a t a n t, La Semaine de Suzette, Corriere dei Piccoli, De Kindervriend,
TBO, Film Fun, ABC-zinho) invaded the press stands. Th e more artistic vein of visual
stories found an outlet in artists’ books (such as Frans Masereel’s expressionistic word-
less books). Slower than in the United States, European newspapers started including
comic strips, not only in their supplements (e.g., a full page of Zig et Puce in Dimanche-
Illustré in France), but also in the dailies themselves (in the form of one-tier strips). Like
their American colleagues, European syndicates (e.g., the Danish PIB and the French
Opera Mundi) started to foster the distribution of comic strips to various publications
and national markets. Although some American comics with balloons were reprinted
in European publications, many others were adapted to the European model: thus the
balloons were erased and replaced by captions. Th e polarization between the visual
system and the verbal system was well rooted in the European way of thinking, and
publishers wanted to persuade parents that reading comics could be considered as an
educational activity. However, in the 1920s wordless comics also grew popular, and the
Scandinavians in particular specialized in this type of comic (e.g., Anderson’s Adamson,
Mik’s Ferd’nand ). For the Copenhagen PIB syndicate, this was also a way of dealing
with international distribution in the multilingual context of Europe. In the fi rst de-
cades of the 20th century, the majority of European artists continued making comic
strips with captions, but change was coming even before World War II. New popular
comics with balloons were launched (e.g., in France with Alain Saint-Ogan’s Zig et Puce,
in Sweden with Elov Persson’s Kronblom, in Belgium with Hergé’s Tintin), and new
comics magazines (the Italian Topolino and L’Avventuroso, the French Journal de Mickey,
the Belgian Spirou and Bravo, the Serbian Politikin zabavnik, the Hungarian Hári János)
reprinted American comics with balloons, often in full color. Some new magazines
such as Britain’s Th e Dandy and Th e Beano were almost completely fi lled by local art-
ists who worked in the more visual style without captions. Th e old-style popular prints
and children’s magazines were thus replaced by these new publications and their suc-
cess was immediate and growing: only the outbreak of World War II could interrupt
