'Isabelle'.
Willy Maltaite, Will in short, was one of the comic artists responsible for the success of the weekly Spirou magazine after World War II. Together with Jijé, André Franquin, Peyo and Morris, he is considered a prime representative of the so-called "School of Marcinelle", which continues to influence new generations of artists to this day. Between 1949 and 1990, Will drew the classic humor adventure series 'Tif et Tondu', which he took over from its creator Fernand Dineur. During his decades-long tenure, he gave the bold and the bearded adventurers a new creative boost, working with scriptwriters such as Maurice Rosy, Maurice Tillieux and Stephen Desberg, who all put their personal mark on the stories. With Rosy, Will also designed Tif et Tondu's iconic nemesis, the masked Monsieur Choc. In his painted cover illustrations for Spirou, and as background artist for his friends Franquin, Peyo and François Walthéry, Will expressed his qualities as an illustrator. His best-known original co-creation is the little girl 'Isabelle' (1969-1994), whose magical adventures expressed the artist's poetic side. In the final stage of his career, Will made more adult-oriented graphic novels, showing his talent for drawing beautiful women and the use of direct colors.
Early life and education
Willy Maltaite was born in 1927 in the town of Anthée, not far from the Walloon city of Dinant. His father worked as a plumber in the Dinant region, while his mother filled her spare time with painting oils. Both parents supported their son's upcoming talent and submitted him to the Saint-Joseph art school in Maredsous. When he failed the entrance examination, Will tried his luck at the School of Industrial Design in Dinant. They advised him to pay a visit to local comic artist and painter Joseph Gillain, better known as Jijé, who was the main local artist of the recently launched comic magazine Spirou, published by Dupuis.
When Will was only fifteen years old, he moved in with the Gillain family, where he spent the next six years working with Jijé in his house atelier. Between 1942 and 1948, Will developed his skills under his tutor's watch, making paintings, sculptures, wood engravings and illustrations. Jijé's main focus was teaching his apprentice to develop his own style and explore his interests. It wasn't until after World War II, when Will first tried his hand at making comics. By then, Jijé and his family had moved from Dinant to Waterloo, bringing Will along.
On 5 October 1944, Spirou magazine was relaunched after a Nazi publication ban. In the post-war years, the magazine quickly became one of the dominant Belgian comic titles, with Jijé training a new generation of artists. Still a teenager, Will was now part of a team dubbed "The Gang of Four" ("La Bande à Quatre"), which besides Jijé also included the new talents André Franquin and Morris. The team's humorous and energetic artwork eventually laid the foundations for the magazine's house style, unofficially dubbed the "School of Marcinelle". In 1944, Franquin took over Jijé's 'Spirou et Fantasio' comic, while in 1946 Morris launched his own western comic 'Lucky Luke'. Meanwhile, Will made his first cartoons and illustrations for the Dupuis magazines Bonnes Soirées, Le Moustique and also Spirou. For the magazine L'Hebdo, he made the illustrations for the 1947 text comic serial 'L'Histoire Hebdomadaire' by Jacques Loar, which ran for sixty weekly episodes.
'La Mystère du Bambochal'.
La Mystère du Bambochal
By 1948, Jijé and his family, accompanied by Franquin and Morris, left Belgium and headed for the United States and Mexico, in search of inspiration and career opportunities. As Will was still in his early twenties and had just met his future wife Claude, he decided to stay back home. Around this time, he made the full-blown adventure comic 'Le Mystère du Bambochal', which starred the American reporter José Baldovir whose heroic actions saved the fictional South American country San Jacinto from a military coup. Even though the 30-page adventure was conceived in a style clearly influenced by Jijé, it was still refused by Spirou publisher Dupuis. In 1950, with help from a cousin who was in the printing business, Will self-published the story in book format with a print run of 15,000 copies. A Dutch translation of the story, 'Het Mysterie van de Bambochal', wasn't released until 2009 in the collection Fénix of the Brabant Strip association. In the French language, an illegal edition was released by Éditions Grafik in 2016.
Tif et Tondu - 'La Cité des rubis' (1949).
Taking over Tif et Tondu
In the late 1940s, publisher Dupuis was in search of a new artist for the adventures of 'Tif et Tondu' ("Beard and Baldy"). The series had made its debut in the very first issue of Spirou magazine in October 1938, at the time written and drawn by Fernand Dineur. Along with the title comic 'Les Aventures de Spirou', the feature was one of the magazine's original comic series. In the post-war period, the magazine reached a higher artistic standard, and Dineur's naïve, folksy drawing style and improvised storytelling felt outdated. When Dineur was let go, he went to Fernand Cheneval's Héroïc-Albums, which ran new Dineur-created 'Tif et Tondu' stories throughout 1949. As Dupuis was not pleased to see one of Spirou's main comic features move to the competition, the publisher bought the rights to the characters from their creator. While Dineur initially remained on board as the comic's writer, Dupuis assigned Will as the new artist of 'Tif et Tondu'. During his early stories, Will was however limited in his artistic freedom. While Will had the desire to mold the characters into his own style, Dineur insisted that the new artist continued to draw Tondu the old-fashioned way, with his hairdo and beard constructed out of five brushy points.
The first 'Tif et Tondu' story by Will, 'La Cité des Rubis' ("The City of Rubies"), debuted in Spirou #588 of 20 July 1949. Dineur remained the writer until 1951's 'La Villa "Sans Souci"' ("Villa Without Worry"). In the following two years, Will worked from scripts by Luc Bermar (a pen name for Jijé's brother Henri Gillain) for 'Le Trésor d'Alaric' ("Alaric's Treasure", 1952), while Ben (Albert Despréchins) wrote 'Oscar et ses Mystères' ("Oscar and his Mysteries", 1953). Between 1954 and 1956, Dupuis released the first 'Tif et Tondu' book collections, and these two post-Dineur episodes were the first stories selected, along with Will and Dineur's 'Tif et Tondu en Amérique Centrale'.
'Tif et Tondu' (Spirou #791, 26 May 1955). Dutch-language version.
Tif et Tondu: Monsieur Choc
By the 1950s, Will had gradually settled into his own, trademark drawing style. When in 1954 Maurice Rosy was assigned as the new scriptwriter, 'Tif et Tondu' was boosted to the classic it is today. This was mainly established through the introduction of a new master criminal, who made his debut in the new team's first story, 'Tif et Tondu Contre la Main Blanche' ("Beard and Baldy against the White Hand", 1955). The mysterious Monsieur Choc captivated readers from the start. Hidden behind an iron mask and sharply dressed in a chic tuxedo, the "master of evil" was the perfect antagonist for the otherwise rather plain Tif and Tondu characters. The authors enjoyed playing with this contrast. Most stories start with Tif and Tondu trying to retire from their many adventures and write their memoirs, when they are pulled into another one of Choc's schemes. Choc allowed Will and Rosy to step beyond the boundaries of straight-forward adventure stories and delve into fantastic and mystical realms for the standout stories 'Le Réveil de Toar' ("Toar's Awakening", 1966) and 'Le Grand Combat' ("The Big Fight", 1967). Even though Will and Rosy's first collaboration was the fourth 'Tif et Tondu' book published, it remained for many years the starting point of the series, since the earlier books weren't reprinted until the 1980s.
Tif et Tondu - 'Choc au Louvre' (1966). Dutch-language version.
Atomic style
In his 'Tif et Tondu' stories, Will had already proven his keen sense for architecture and design, especially in his depiction of towns along the Mediterranean coast. This prompted his friend André Franquin to ask Will's assistance for the 'Spirou et Fantasio' story 'Les Pirates du Silence' (1955). Will's designs for the architecture of the futuristic city Incognito-City are prime examples of the so-called "Atomic style", a drawing style initiated by Jijé, which had a focus on post-war progress. Will also provided the backgrounds to Franquin's short 'Spirou' adventures published in the short-lived Dupuis comic paper Risque-Tout (1955-1956).
Paris-Flirt
Between 1959 and 1963, Will and Rosy's successful tenure on 'Tif et Tondu' was interrupted, when Will was busy with other projects. Will's first excursion outside of Spirou magazine was a humorous gag strip about the model 'Lili Mannequin' (1957), syndicated by Edifrance in France to the adult-oriented magazine Paris-Flirt, and in Belgium to L'Âne Roux. The gags written by René Goscinny revealed another one of Will's specialities, the depiction of beautiful women. After six months, Will left the comic and handed over the art duties to Christian Godard.
Tintin
In 1958, Will had grown tired of the comic medium altogether. His friend Franquin had recently joined the competing magazine Tintin of publisher Lombard, and informed him that the editors desired a restyling. Will applied and was hired by publisher Raymond Leblanc as Tintin's new art director. During a period of two years, he checked the incoming work of Tintin's authors, while making lay-outs, designs and illustrations on the side. Through Lombard's Publiart studio, headed by Guy Dessicy, he also drew advertising comic strips, most notably for Englebert tires (1959, scripted by Yves Duval) and Assimil language courses. During this same period, Will illustrated the brochure 'Le Tour du Monde 58' for the 1958 World Expo in Brussels, and made drawings for Seeonee, a magazine produced by Publiart for the Federation of Catholic Boy Scouts (FSC). But just like Franquin, Will quickly regretted leaving his homebase at the free-spirited Spirou. He was fed up with the strictly professional atmosphere at Tintin's offices and quickly resigned from his new job.
Typical houses and trees by Will for 'Les Taxis Rouges', the first 'Benoît Brisefer' story by Peyo. Dutch-language version.
Background artist
Will's return to Spirou wasn't without a struggle. Since his departure, Spirou's editors had assigned the artist Marcel Denis to continue the 'Tif et Tondu' series. Luckily, Will's colleague Peyo could use his help. From his own atelier in the Walloon town La Hulpe, Will provided the backgrounds for 'Les Taxis Rouges' (1960) and 'Madame Adolphine' (1963), the first two episodes of Peyo's series about a boy with Herculean strength, 'Benoît Brisefer'. Will graphically crafted the boy's hometown of Vivejoie-La-Grande, with its cozy streets and stylized trees. Will also helped Peyo with the creation of the humorous adventure series 'Jacky et Célestin' (1961-1962) for Le Soir Illustré, a newspaper of the Walloon Rossel publishing group. He illustrated the first three adventures, although he was assisted for the third by another Tintin drop-out, Jo-El Azara. The series was then transferred to La Dernière Heure, where the remaining stories were drawn by, subsequently, Azara, François Walthéry, Francis and Roger Leloup.
Around the same period, Will helped André Franquin with the backgrounds for the 'Marsupilami' short story 'La Cage' (1965), in which the long-tailed animal is chased through the Palombian jungle by the hunter Bring M. Backalive. In 1977 and 1981, Will repeated the gesture for two more stories with the Marsupilami and the hunter. Equally capable of drawing jungles as he was with houses, Will was asked by former Peyo assistant Walthéry to draw the tropical, deserted island setting for the 1983 'Natacha' story 'l'Ile d'Outre Monde'.
'Record & Véronique' (Record #4, 1962).
Bonux-Boy & Record
During his 'Tif et Tondu' interlude, Will also created an obscure comic strip about the other-worldly and absent-minded 'Monsieur Farfelu' (1960) for Bonux-Boy, a mini-comic book by Benoît Gillain to promote Bonux washing powder. Between 1962 and 1965, Will was a prominent artist for Record, a French monthly comic magazine published by Bayard Presse, and the successor of Bayard magazine. From the first issue on, he illustrated editorial pages and the game section 'Jeux de Record et Véronique' (1962-1963) by Jean-Michel Charlier. After creating the short story 'Quatrépingle et Ficelet' with scriptwriter Chappuis, he reunited with René Goscinny for the title comic 'Record et Véronique' (1962-1963). The latter starred Record's blond mascot, teamed up with an equally unruly girl called Véronique. Will resumed his collaboration with Maurice Rosy for the adventures of 'Marco et Aldebert' (1962-1965).
Eric et Artimon - 'Le Tyran en Acier Chromé' (1962). Dutch-language version.
Éric et Artimon
Starting in 1960, Will gradually reappeared in the pages of Spirou. Not only as the background artist of Peyo's 'Benoît Brisefer', but also with the stories 'Pépin et l'Île Juillet' (1960, script by Maurice Rosy) and 'Le Virus Mugissant' (1963, script by Vicq) for the fold-in mini-books section in the magazine's center. Before resuming 'Tif et Tondu', he created another short-lived, but still well remembered series, 'Eric et Artimon' (1962-1963, 1967). Written by Vicq under his real name "A. Raymond", the series stars the resourceful boy Eric, a big fan of lollipops, and his uncle Artimon, the captain of a boat. Their two long adventures saw them witness a revolution in the South American country of San Matamor ('Le Tyran en Acier Chromé', 1962) and help the inventor Mr. Groisoison protect the secrets of his magic gum ('Toute la Gomme', 1963). An additional short story in 1967 ended this short-lived series. In 1976, the second serial was collected in book format by Albin Michel, the first one followed in 1983 at Magic Strip.
Tif et Tondu - 'Le Roc Maudit' (1972).
Tif et Tondu - the Tillieux era
By 1964, Will was finally able to return to 'Tif et Tondu', initially again in collaboration with Maurice Rosy. The two heroes continued their jobs as amateur detectives, and were regularly paired with Inspector Allumette of the French Sûreté. After creating some of the best stories with Choc as villain in which Will could experiment in graphically depicting his scriptwriter's strange fantasies, Rosy felt he had told all he had to tell and left the series. He however kept the rights to the character of Choc to himself. For new stories, Will was now paired with Maurice Tillieux, a master of the detective genre. The new scriptwriter immediately filled the series with his sense for suspense, mystery and danger, turning the stories into true thrillers. During their joint tenure, Will and Tillieux sent their two heroes to rainy coastal towns, grim harbor settings, muddy swamps and mysterious German castles, but also to real-life cities like London and New York. To match the stories' atmosphere, Will's drawing style became semi-realistic, and made much use of chiaroscuro. Far from the fantasy-filled adventures by Rosy, the transformation also required more use of documentation. Supernatural elements like monsters and giant spiders were however not avoided. The characters of Tif and Tondu were also further defined. Tif, always the goofer of the two, became more reckless and carefree, often leading to squabbles with the more strict Tondu. "Eye candy" was provided by the addition of countess Amélie d'Yeu (Kiki) to the regular cast, while Inspector Fixchusset of Scotland Yard became the team's official liaison.
Tif et Tondu - 'Les Ressucités' (1972). Dutch-language version.
Isabelle
The late 1960s also marked the launch of another important series in Will's oeuvre, the magical 'Isabelle' (1969-1994). The seeds for the series were planted in a concept by Will for a comic strip starring the kids Catherine and Bernard. The two were featured in one short story in Spirou, 'Gudule et le Battant Perdu' (1969), a poetic tale about a defective Easter bell. Catherine was renamed to Isabelle when she returned in another short story in the following year, 'Isabelle et les Gens d'Ailleurs' (1969). During this period, Spirou magazine and its publisher Dupuis were in desperate need of innovation. Several important authors had either quit their series or left the company altogether. Also, the time was right for a series with a female protagonist. 'Isabelle' was preceded by Raymond Macherot's 'Sibylline' and Jidéhem's 'Sophie', who both debuted in 1965. In her wake came François Walthéry's 'Natacha' and Roger Leloup's 'Yoko Tsuno', both in 1970. 'Isabelle' proved to be the most magical of them all; a perfect blend of the series' two scriptwriters: the craziness of Yvan Delporte and the poetic streak of Raymond Macherot.
Isabelle - 'Les Maléfices de l'Oncle Hermès' (1975). Dutch-language version.
'Isabelle' is a young red-haired girl from a small French coastal town, who is constantly confronted with the magic surrounding her. Her aunt Ursule is completely oblivious to all the supernatural happenings, and predominantly occupied with baking cakes and making sure her niece is dressed warmly enough. The first stories are poetic tales about a man living in a painting ('Isabelle et le Tableau Enchanté', 1970), a sea captain with a wishing pipe ('Isabelle et le Capitaine', 1971) and a fairy babysitter ('Isabelle et la Petite Fée au pair', 1974). The comic's true plunge into fantasy came with the addition of André Franquin to the writers' team. 'Les Maléfices de l'Oncle Hermès' (1975) marked the introduction of Isabelle's "great-great-uncle of the seventh generation" Hermès, a magician with goat legs. He became a regular cast member after Isabelle frees him from a magical lamp, where he was cursed into by the evil witch Kalendula. He then marries the beautiful Calendula, a descendant of the evil witch, and the pair become the instigators of many future adventures (although aunt Ursule never noticed that). Will could fully enjoy himself drawing monsters, mythical creatures, underwater worlds, floating islands, elves, magical forests and Hades itself in the most poetic way. Co-scriptwriter Macherot left the team after the 1976 episode 'L'Astragale de Cassiopée', and Franquin after 1985's 'L'Envoûtement', leaving Will and Delporte to make the remaining albums as a duo until the series was canceled in 1994 because of disappointing sales.
Isabelle - 'La Traboule de la Géhenne' (1991). Dutch-language version.
Tif et Tondu - the Desberg years
During the 1970s, the workload of Will's scriptwriter Maurice Tillieux continued to increase. In heavy demand as a scriptwriter, he resorted to reusing earlier scripts from his 1950s series 'Félix' for his current projects, including 'Tif et Tondu'. Help came in 1977, when Tillieux received assistance from the young scriptwriter Stephen Desberg. Tillieux and his apprentice worked together on two stories, when in 1978 the master scriptwriter died in a tragic car crash. Together with his new partner Desberg, Will heralded 'Tif et Tondu' into the modern age. Taking elements from both Tillieux's detective plots and Rosy's fantasy stories, the two heroes became crime fighters on a global scale, with Tif transforming into a James Bond-like womanizer. The new Hollywood-style adventures saw the heroes facing new technology, nuclear threats and also their old enemy Choc, whom Desberg reintroduced with Rosy's permission. The authors stepped on political grounds with stories criticizing the rise of far-right movements. Initially, they did this in a grotesque fashion, for instance with the story 'Swastika' (1983), about a slumbering Nazi regime in Argentina awaiting new opportunities, accompanied by a 96-years old Adolf Hitler.
Later stories had a more serious tone. In Will and Desberg's final installment, the diptych 'Les Phalanges de Jeanne d'Arc' (1987) and 'La Tentation du Bien' (1989), an underground far-right organization plans to overthrow the French government through drug trafficking, bribes and terrorist attacks. The two heroes, always presented as living off their interest, are financially ruined and hit rock bottom. The cynical story was a testament of its time, but also marked the authors' farewell to the series. Will made one more short story to fill up the final album, which consisted of short stories. The writer of this story was Denis Lapière, who between 1990 and 1997 became responsible for the series final incarnation in collaboration with the artist Alain Sikorski.
Tif et Tondu - 'Dans les Griffes de la Main Blanche' (1986).
Paintings, sculptures and illustrations
Throughout his career, Willy Maltaite had been active in several artistic disciplines. He made watercolor paintings, pen-and-ink drawings, gouaches and sculptures, influenced by Fauvism and expressionism. As early as the 1960s, his painted drawings appeared on the cover of Spirou magazine. He also made illustrations for calendars, wine labels and postcards. Between 1966 and 1968, Will additionally worked on several booklets in the Dupuis children's book series Collection du Carrousel. He wrote the installments 'Joyeuses Pâques pour mon Petit Noël' (1966) and 'Les Étranges Amis de Noël' (1966) for André Franquin, and then illustrated 'Antonin et le Petit Cirque' (1967) and 'Antoine et l'Anneau Magique' (1968), which were both written by Charles Degotte.
Illustration by Will for the children's book 'Antonin et le Petit Cirque', written by Charles Degotte for Dupuis' Collection du Carrousel in 1967.
Graphic contributions
In 1979, Will made a special congratulation drawing to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Turk and Bob De Groot's hit series 'Robin Dubois', printed in the 4 September 1979 issue of Tintin. In 1980, Will was one of many Belgian comic artists to make a graphic contribution to the book 'Il Était Une Fois... Les Belges'/'Er Waren Eens Belgen' (1980), a collection of columns and one-page comics, published at the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Belgium. The same year, he was one of the artists making a graphic contribution for 'Pepperland' (1980), a collective comic book celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Pepperland comic book store. In 1987-1988, the publishing company Brain Factory International released a four-volume comic book series in which Franco-Belgian comic authors visualized several songs by singer Jacques Brel in comic strip form. The second volume, 'Les Prénoms' (1987) featured a contribution by Will. Another collective project with a contribution by Will was Frank Pé's 'Entre Chats' (Delcourt, 1989).
One-shot comics
In addition to his regular series, Will made several one-shot short stories for Spirou, often for thematic issues. Most of them contained fantasy and sci-fi elements, like the sporadically appearing cock and bull stories of the Frenchman 'Oncle Jules' (script by Stephen Desberg, 1981-1984), who typically told them from behind a table with a bottle of red wine in front of him. Will's son Éric Maltaite sometimes helped out with the drawings. Will's other short stories were written by Vicq, Yvan Delporte, Didgé, Stephen Desberg, Makyo, Toldac, Jean-Louis Janssens, Zidrou and Gilbert Bouchard. His final contribution to Spirou, the three-pager 'Le Petit Serrurier' by Bouchard, appeared in issue #3115 (24 December 1997).
'Le Jardin des Désirs' (1988). Dutch-language version.
Graphic novels
For many years, Will had the desire to work on projects with more creative and artistic freedom. The rights to 'Tif et Tondu' were owned by the publisher, while 'Isabelle' had to remain suitable for children. Also an avid painter, Will had begun making full-color cover illustrations for his two series during the 1980s. But by now, new printing technologies made it possible to create an entire album in direct colors. Again working with Stephen Desberg, Will created the erotic album 'Le Jardin des Desirs' ("The Garden of Desires", 1988), one of the first albums released by Dupuis in the more luxury graphic novel format. Will and Desberg's follow-up 'La 27e Lettre' ("The 27th Letter", 1990) was a coming-of-age story of a boy growing up among prostitutes in war-torn Europe. The title referred to the swastika as the symbolic 27th letter of the alphabet during the Nazi regime. The more humorous but equally erotic 'L'Appel de l'Enfer' ("The Devil's Apple", 1993) was published by P&T Production, Will's first official comic book not published by Dupuis.
Final project and death
In the late 1990s, Will began work on 'L'Arbre des Deux Printemps' ("The Tree of the Two Springs"), another story with painted colors. The script was written by Rudy Miel, with whom Will had previously made a 1996 brochure for the European Union. However, Willy Maltaite passed away on 18 February 2000 in his hometown La Hulpe, before he could finish the story. Befriended comic artists jumped in to complete his final comics project as a tribute. Among the contributors were Régis Loisel, Hermann, Jean-Claude Fournier, Derib, Batem, Frank Pé, François Walthéry, Éric Maltaite, Marc Wasterlain, Franz, Jean Roba, René Hausman, Michel Plessix, Dany, André Geerts, Jean-Claude Mézières, Marc Hardy, and Stéphane Colman. Later that year, the album was published posthumously by Le Lombard.
'La 27e Lettre'. Dutch-language version.
Legacy
With the death of Will, another giant of Franco-Belgian comics disappeared. In the previous decade, the comic world had lost other Spirou pillars from the golden days, like Peyo (1992) and André Franquin (1997), with Morris following in 2001. The influence of the founding fathers of the "School of Marcinelle" has remained noticeable in the 21st century. Perhaps Will's most direct artistic heir is his own son, Éric Maltaite (1958), who has made his mark with series like '421', 'Mono Jim', 'Carmen Lamour' and 'Zambada'. Dutch comic artist Mark Smeets and Belgian comic artists Jeroen De Coninck and Turk have also cited Will as an influence.
Will's series did not go by unnoticed in the wave of luxury reprints which commenced in the mid-2000s. In 2007, 'Isabelle' was collected in three volumes by Le Lombard. That same year, his three adult-oriented graphic novels with writer Stephen Desberg appeared in one volume as 'La Trilogie avec Dames' in Dupuis' Aire Libre collection. Between 2007 and 2013, 'Tif et Tondu' was first collected by Dupuis in thirteen thematic volumes, with introductions by Alain De Kuyssche, Patrick Pinchart and Didier Pasamonik. These books however only stretched from the Rosy-Will stories through the Sikorski-Lapière era. After this first series, Dupuis decided to start all over, with a chronological approach and a layout more in line with their current "complete edition" series. The new series debuted in 2018 and started off with the Dineur stories, followed with Will and Rosy's first collaborations in the second volume. The new dossiers are compiled by the Dupuis house historians Bertrand and Christelle Pissavy-Yvernault. Between 2014 and 2019, Éric Maltaite and Stéphane Colman worked on a critically praised spin-off trilogy 'Choc', which explored the backstory of the remarkable villain created by Will and Rosy in 1955. In 2020, the 'Tif et Tondu' characters were rebooted in the one-shot story 'Mais où est Kiki?' by Blutch and Robber.
Both Will's version of 'Tif et Tondu' and his 'Isabelle' series were spoofed in sex parodies by Roger Brunel, respectively in 'Pastiches 1' (1980) and 'Pastiches 3' (1984).
Cover illustrations for Spirou, a Christmas issue of 1957 and issue #1159 (30 June 1960).
Dupuis compiled Will's short stories from the period 1963-1997 in the special luxury book 'Will dans Spirou 1963-1997' (2012). Throughout the years, several monographs with and about Will's work have appeared. The Chambre Belge des Experts en Bandes Dessinées (CBEBD) released 'Hommage à Will' (2003), which came with an extended bibliography. Will's illustration work was explored in 'Le Jardin des Couleurs' (2012) by Dupuis/Champaka, and Daniel Maghen published the art book 'Mirages' (2017).
On 14 November 1997, 'Isabelle' received her own comic book mural in the Rue de la Verdure/Loofstraat 13 in Brussels, as part of the Brussels' Comic Book Route. On 1 June 2019, Monsieur Choc received his own statue in Will's hometown La Hulpe, Belgium, sculpted by Joachim Jannin, nephew of Frédéric Jannin. Interestingly enough, neither Tif or Tondu have a statue yet at this point.
Will drew a nude pin-up on a French Air Force Mirage jet drop tank. Photo © Jean-Luc Beghin.