The Belgian Comic Strip Center - Museum Brussels

Although this is in itself already a golden opportunity, the ten lucky ones get an additional promotion. Convinced of their potential, the Belgian Comic Strip Center decided to give these young comic strip writers an extra leg-up and exhibit their work in the Gallery all summer long. Inside the Comic Strip Center they are in the good company of masters of the Ninth Art of yesterday and of tomorrow. It is the Center’s sincere wish that the laureates of the Focus Strip Award will follow in their footsteps and that the exhibition will be the beginning of a flourishing career.

Willem De Graeve, Belgian Comic Strip Center

Young comic strip talent often have to fight for some attention: an author may be able to express himself in fanzines or on a weblog, but standing on a stage is really rock-’n-roll. This is why the Focus Strip Award is so important. In this biannual competition, young Belgian comic strip gods get the chance to show their work to a large audience, through magazines Knack Focus / Le Vif Focus. While many magazines play it safe with yet another reprint of a popular comic strip, Focus dares to stick its neck out with contrary work of unknown artists.

The task for the Focus Strip Award is simple: make four pages. Comic strip author NIX, who coordinates the competition, selected ten candidates from over 100 entrants. Over the past few months, their work appeared in Knack Focus and Le Vif Focus for four weeks each time. The readers’ favourite gets the public award, the jury chooses an author who will get a page in the magazines every week for a year.

The illustrators of volume 2011/2012 show a broad spectrum: from graphic novels to absurd humour or stylised poetic musings. The public will immediately understand that comics can be experimented with, for the illustrators it is the opportunity to show their work. Here in the Gallery the work of the finalists can be seen from up close. These are pages that have been sweated over, in backrooms or attics that deserve to be shown to a wide audience. Perhaps, you never know, a number of them may one day get a fixed spot in the Belgian Comic Strip Center...

Focus and Nix

(LOGOS: CBBD, Focus et Knack)