The Adventures of Nero

For other uses of Nero, see Nero (disambiguation)

The Adventures of Nero or Nero is a Flemish comic strip drawn by Marc Sleen and the name of its main character. The original title ranged from De Avonturen van Detectief Van Zwam in 1947 to De Avonturen van Nero en zijn Hoed in 1950, and finally De Avonturen van Nero & Co from 1951.[1]

Contents

Origin

Nero is a Dutch language comic strip which appeared in Flemish newspapers between 1947 and 2002. Originally called The adventures of Detective Van Zwam, it quickly changed its name to The adventures of Nero after a character met by Van Zwam in the first adventure who was locked in an asylum and thought he was emperor Nero. He came quickly to his senses, but the name stuck.

Nero is one of the quintessential Flemish newspaper comics, together with Spike and Suzy. With two strips published a day, six days a week, the comic followed the daily news events quite closely and often incorporates puns and real life events. References to news events or cameos of Belgian and internationally famous politicians like Jozef Stalin, Richard Nixon, Idi Amin, Khomeini occurred frequently. The drawing style was initially very amateurish but got polished quickly.

Following a legal dispute with his publishers in 1965, Sleen took his increasingly popular series to publisher De Standaard, who offered the strip evolve to be printed in colours.[1]

Main characters

During its 55 year course, a lot of regular characters have joined the original duo Nero and Van Zwam.

Stories

The early stories had a random length, often around 240 strips, while the latter ones (from 1965 on) had a length of 32 pages of each 4 strips. Every day, two strips appeared in the newspaper.

While the stories have some continuity, with recurring characters and things that happen in one story having a consequence in the next one, they are on the whole separate, finished stories, not a continuing saga.

Almost all stories start and finish in Flanders, but many take the characters in between all around the world and mostly to Africa. Marc Sleen was a passionate wildlife lover and made many documentaries and books about the fauna of Africa, and this love can be found in his comics as well. The end of the comic always has a "wafelenbak", a dinner with Belgian waffles, with all the protagonists joined around the table.

Guinness Book of World Records

Sources

Footnotes