MOOF Museum - Bruxelles

Gaston Lagaffe is definitely my favorite character in all of the franco-belge bande dessinées. He is similar to Wile E. Coyote in the Warner’s cartoon (which is my favorite character in these licenses) : a true genius, but awfully unlucky or clumsy. They have different goals of course, Gaston’s is to do the less possible work because he’s terribly lazy. However, his laziness is a formidable creative factory of improbable machines or processes.

I’ve taunted my project managers colleagues with this picture… This organizer receives the “Urgent” and “Trop Tard” (“Too Late”) files. So, I’ve told them to have the same because at work, everything is urgent and have to be done for yesterday.

The Marsupilami is also one of my favorite characters. This impossible animal was also made by Franquin, Gaston’s creator, and its adventures are really fun too.

The next part of the visit is Les Schtroumpfs (the Smurfs in English) universe.

I must admit I’m not a big fan of their English name.

Les Schtroumpfs were created in Johan et Pirlouit as secondary characters. Progressively, they took their autonomy and began their own story.

The sorcerer Gargamelle is the main antagonist of the Schtroumpfs.

The next step is the Asterix series.

Asterix is also one of my favorite bande dessinée, I’ve grew up with it and I love to read them again or to see the animation movies that were made during Goscinny’s time. Asterix is mainly a parody of the French society transposed into the Antique Gaule after the Roman conquest.

In 50BC, all of the Gaule has been conquered by the Romans.

All of it ? No !

A small village of irreducible Gaulois still resists against the invader !

– The introduction of each album

It’s full of anachronisms and jokes that are still up to date today.

The two horse racing cart was a reference to the Citroën’s 2cv (2 horse power) car competing against 4cv (4 horse power) cars.

“A 2 horses in a 4 horses race ? How foolish !”

Fun fact : for the live action movies of Asterix, the crew was able to find (with a lot of difficulties) white dogs with black hairs at the top of their ears to portray Idefix. They didn’t want to have to teint the animal’s fur.

Now, we arrive at the far west theme with, of course, Lucky Luke and other cowboys and indians themed bande dessinées.

Next is a big hall dedicated to Tintin, also a very famous character.

Inside the Tintin exhibit, we have a section related to the animation movie production made of various bande dessinées.

This a an original montage table used for the animation movies by Bellevue studios.

The famous Tintin’s rocket, when the characters walked on the moon almost twenty years before Niel Armstrong.

Tintin’s rocket is, regarding our technology level, impossible to create. However, just like Jules Verne did when he depicted the submarine in 20 000 lieux sous les mers far before the first one, the rocket is incredibly modern according to our standards. It’s a fully reusable vehicle using a thermonuclear propulsion engine able to land and lift-off autonomously. The design of the rocket was inspired by the V2 launchers made by the Nazis during World War II.

Bécassine, a very old French character created in 1905 representing a housemaid wearing traditional cloths from the Picardie region. The rewriting of the character a couple of years later made her of Bretagne origins.

Around all of these franco-belge characters, I was surprised to see the DC Comics Justice League and the Marvel Avengers here !

Le Petit Spirou is a childish version of the Spirou character, but far less politically correct and moral.

The character explores some taboos regarding his age like sentimental and sexual education with the eyes of a turbulent kid.

This Troll measures almost 2 meters and we can hear it roaring during the visit. Very impressive !

The end of the visit is a reproduction of the Grande Place de Bruxelles !

A model of Tintin’s Rocket for sale… Sorry, the price is a little too much expensive. And I’ve 3D-printed (a far smaller one) mine a couple of years ago.