'De Leeuw van Vlaanderen' (Robbedoes #503, 17 November 1949).
Wik was a mid-20th century Belgian artist, only known for drawing a comic adaptation of Hendrik Conscience's book 'De Leeuw van Vlaanderen', which ran in Robbedoes magazine from 1949 until 1951.
De Leeuw van Vlaanderen
Nothing is known about the artist known simply as "Wik". During a period of almost two years, from 22 September 1949 through 16 August 1951, Robbedoes magazine ran a comic serialization of Hendrik Conscience's 1838 historical novel 'De Leeuw van Vlaanderen' ('The Lion of Flanders'). The book was a romanticized account of the Battle of the Golden Spurs (1302), when Flemish troops won a victory over the French armies. At the time of its original release, Conscience's novel helped revive interest and pride in this almost forgotten medieval event. His book became a bestseller and the battle date itself (11 July) a national holiday for the Flemish community. In 1934, it was first turned into a comic story by Eugeen Hermans, also known as Pink.
The artwork of the comic version of 'De Leeuw van Vlaanderen' in Robbedoes was credited to "Wik", while P. Durbin was mentioned as the writer. The latter was probably Paul Durbin, a writer/journalist for Humoradio, another magazine of the Dupuis publishing house. Remarkably enough, the story ran exclusively in Robbedoes, and not in the French-language parent magazine Spirou. The serialization was most likely an attempt by publisher Dupuis to boost the sales in the Dutch-speaking regions of Belgium, by running a comic with a strong appeal to Flemish readers. Almost in exactly the same period, Spirou's main competitor Tintin ran Bob De Moor's adaptation of the same book in its Dutch-language edition Kuifje. But while De Moor's version has become a classic of Belgian comics, the Wik-Durbin adaptation has faded into obscurity.
'De Leeuw van Vlaanderen' (Robbedoes #576, 12 April 1951).