Spirou magazine and of Belgian comics in general, partly incited by the 1946 appearance of the successful competitor Tintin magazine. Spirou resumed publication only weeks after Belgium was liberated, but now on a much smaller format. Jijé was the main author, providing pages from multiple series each week. Some American comics reappeared as well. Jijé started out a studio, where he schooled three talented apprentices, Will, André Franquin and Morris; known as the "Bande à quatre", "Gang of four", they began laying the foundation for the Marcinelle school that marked the magazine for decades. In 1946 and 1947, the team was joined by some of the main contributors to Spirou for the next decades, including Victor Hubinon, Jean-Michel Charlier and Eddy Paape. After a few years, these artists started their now classic series like Buck Danny by Hubinon and Charlier and Lucky Luke by Morris, while Franquin took over Spirou from Jijé. Gradually, the American comics and reprints were replaced by new, European productions, and by the 50s, nearly all the content was made especially for the magazine. Charles Dupuis remained editor-in-chief of the magazine until 1955 when he appointed Yvan Delporte to that position, so he could himself focus on his increasing interest in the publication of the magazine's series' albums. The golden ages culminated in the 1950s with the introduction of more authors and series like Peyo (Johan and Peewit in 1952, The Smurfs in 1958), René Follet, Marcel Remacle, Jean Roba (with Boule et Bill), Maurice Tillieux (with Gil Jourdan) and Mitacq. In 1954, Jijé created the realistic western comic Jerry Spring, and in 1957 Franquin introduced the anti-hero Gaston Lagaffe. The authors of the magazine, many of them pupils of Jijé, were grouped stylistically in the Marcinelle school, the counterpart of ligne claire exhibited by the artists grouped around Hergé in Tintin magazine (the main competitor for Spirou). By 1960, the magazine had achieved a fixed structure and had grown to 52 pages, mainly filled with new, European (mainly Belgian) comics, coupled with some text pages (interaction with the readers) and adverts. Most of the comics were long-running series which were regularly published as albums of 44 or 64 pages, generating a constant source of revenue for the artists and the publisher. In the next decades, the sales of albums would become the main focus, reducing the importance of the magazine which became more of a