it would take almost a decade before the next successful comics magazine would appear. In the meantime, an increasing number of youth magazines would publish some pages with comics influenced by Tintin. George Van Raemdonck, the first major Flemish comics artist, worked almost exclusively in the Netherlands until after World War II. Still, he influenced some of the earliest pre-war Flemish artists like Jan Waterschoot and Buth, and as a newspaper artist with a daily comic strip, he paved the way for the typical publishing method of the Flemish comics when compared to the prevalent Walloon magazine publications. More situated in the classic arts than in the mainstream comics publishing was Frans Masereel, a Flemish wood engraver whose 1926 "Passionate Journey", a wordless story told in 165 woodcuts, is sometimes considered as the first graphic novel. In the second half of the 1930s, most Walloon youth magazines made room for one or more comics by local artists. Examples are Jijé in Le Croisé in 1936 and in Petits Belges in 1939, François Gianolla in Jeunesse Ouvrière, and Sirius in Le Patriote Illustré. Dupuis, a publisher based in Marcinelle near Charleroi, was already having success with its two family magazines Le Moustique and Bonnes Soirées. Charles Dupuis, son of the CEO, decided to start a youth magazine centred around a new hero, Spirou. It debuted on April 21, 1938. French artist Robert Velter, a former assistant of Martin Branner, was asked to create the title series, and the rest of the magazine was filled with popular American comics such as Superman. 8 months later, in an unusual move, the magazine was published in Dutch under the name Robbedoes. This would have a profound influence on the development of the Flemish comics and assured that Belgian comics would have a large part of their development in common. In 1939, Jijé joined the magazine. He worked there until his death in 1980, and was the driving force of the magazine during and directly after the war. He was responsible for its expansion and success in the next decades, and was as the inspirator for the later generation of comics artists in the 1940s and 1950s which is known as the Marcinelle school. Apart from Hergé, Jijé's main inspiration came from American artists such as Milton Caniff and Noel Sickles. Some Flemish magazines started producing more modern local comics as well, with works by