Willy Vandersteen

Willebrord Jan Frans Maria Vandersteen — known professionally as Willy Vandersteen — was born on 15 February 1913 in Belgium and died on 28 August 1990. Alongside Marc Sleen, he is widely regarded as a founding father of Flemish comics, and over a career of roughly five decades he built one of the most commercially productive studios in European comics history, publishing more than 1,000 albums across 25-plus series and selling upward of 200 million copies worldwide.

Vandersteen is best remembered for Suske en Wiske, a series that has appeared in English under several titles including Spike and Suzy and Bob and Bobette. The strip's enduring appeal was demonstrated as recently as 2008, when it moved 3.5 million books in a single year. His other major contributions include De Rode Ridder, which grew to more than 200 albums, and the Western-flavored Bessy, which accumulated nearly 1,000 albums in the German market alone.

His industrious studio model — scaling up production and aggressively commercializing his properties — drew comparisons to Walt Disney, and his richly populated visual style earned him the tribute "the Brueghel of the comic strip" from Hergé. Vandersteen's influence remains strongest in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, where his characters continue to reach new generations of readers long after his death.