Mo Bakker: Santa Claus's grandson and his boyfriend cruise in Kenya, cuddle in Greece. With bonus Belgian d*cks

Link to the n*de dudes

English-speaking audiences are most familiar with Flemish actor Mo Bakker for the three Claus Family movies: 

Die Familie Claus 1 (2020): Christmas-hating teenager Jules discovers that his grandfather is Santa Claus, about to retire and expecting him to take over the family job

Die Familie Claus 2 (2021): Jules goes on a trial run to grant a little girl's holiday wish.  Plus the kids try to fix up Mom with her best friend, not realizing that he is gay and has a husband.

Die Familie Claus 3 (2022): Jules and his sister Noor work together to fix the mess Grandpa made of the gift-delivery. Plus Mom's new boyfriend Jeff (Kurt Rogiers) drops towel.

Throughout, Jules is heavily queer-coded, with an interest in musclemen and no romantic interest in girls: he keeps partnering with girls, but they are always relatives or just friends.  Although there are no undeniable queer codes, no boyfriends, or "I'm gay" statements, the series, and especially the first, appears every year on lists of "The Best LGBTQ Holiday Movies."

But what about actor Mo Bakker.  Surely he wasn't cast because he was gay.  At age 14, he may not even have known.  So let's check to see if he is out now.

Mo was born in 2006, son of Belgian actor Kuno Bakker, who played a gay guy in Feast (2022).  

Older brother Kes, also an actor, has 12 credits listed on the IMDB, including the teen drama High Tide, available to stream on Netflix.  He plays a gay character, falls in love with a dude, and drops towel.

Mo's acting career begins with August (2014), a short about a boy with a girlfriend.   He has several other projects listed, with plot synopses and trailers only in Flemish, including:

Niet Schieten (Don't Shoot, 2018): A boy is dying, and his grandfather feels guilty.

The tv series Please Love Me (Zie miej graag, 2017-20): A divorced woman is "trying to put her life back together."  Mo and his brother Kes play her sons.

Sisyphus at Work (2021): A film director is dying.

Finn's Heel (Finn's hiel, 2022): Two boys (Mo, Brecht Dael) bond over boxing lessons, and hug.  This one sounds gay.

The teen tv series wtFOCK (2023), about students in a prestigious high school in Antwerp.  There are gay guys in the cast (who make out in the pool), but Mo plays a heterosexual athlete who gets his girlfriend pregnant.

Not a lot of gay content here.  Let's check Mo's Instagram to see if he is gay in real life.

I'm always jealous of Europeans, who can jet to my top 10 favorite countries (outside the U.S.) in a couple of hours.  Here Mo and his boyfriend are cuddling on a raft in Nicosia, Cyprus: five hours from Brussels, 14 hours from Minnesota.

More after the break

"The Claus Family" A Pretty Princess Doll for Tommy, and a Shirtless GI Joe for Jules

 The Claus Family (2020): A boy who hates Christmas discovers that he is the grandson of Santa Claus, and will have to take over when Grandpa dies.  Whoops, there goes his singing career!

Sounds a bit treacly, but it's in Flemish (IMDB says Dutch, but Flemish is a separate language).  It's Belgium, my third favorite country in Europe.   And teenage actor Mo Bakker posts shirtless instagram photos and has TikToks labeled with LGBT, so....

Scene 1: Santa Claus finishes up another run.  He lives in an ordinary apartment, not a North Pole workshop surrounded by elves.  Meanwhile, the depressed Jules and his family (Mom, Grandma, and little sister Norah, all blonde) drive through the snowy streets of the beautiful old Medieval town of Bruges, Belgium.  Jules covers his ears as they pass carolers singing a depressing Christmas song (I do the same thing!).

They arrive at the apartment, and start unloading the car.  Grandma continues to complain about this crazy plan of moving to Belgium.  Mom basically says: "My husband died, and we need a fresh start, so f*k off!"

Scene 2: They start unpacking.  Sister Norah wants to know where the Christmas decorations are.  Mom stares in shock, and Jules yells: "No!  We're not celebrating!  I'm done with Christmas."  Nothng wrong with that.  Not everyone has happy childhood memories of That Holiday.

When the neighbors, Ella and Steph (Wim Wilaert, left) drop by with Christmas cookies, Jules runs to his room and has a tantrum.  I get haitng Christmas, but aren't you overreacting a bit?  

I guess not: his Dad died last Christmas Eve.  He flashes back to Christmas Past:   Dad explains that the lights on the tree represent the sun, which is hidden during the winter but always comes back to us. Darkness never wins; there is always a new dawn.  The pagan roots of the holiday!  Genius!

Scene 3:  Breakfast.  Grandpa is going to babysit while Mom goes to work (at a cookie factory).  Jules resists -- that old geezer?  But he doesn't get a vote, so it's off to Grandpa's toy store (the boy doesn't want to spend the day in a toy store? Maybe he thinks he's too old?).  

A couple of customers come in.  The teddy bear is broken.  The puzzle has missing pieces.  What is this, the Island of Misfit Toys?  And the snow globe -- "Hands off!  Not for sale!  Get away!"  So why do you have it out with the merchandise?

When Grandpa isn't looking, Jules examines the forbidden snow globe.  Zap -- he's in Brussels!  Zap -- China, where he's almost hit by a car! Zap -- the ocean!  He loses the globe in the deep water and has to dive for it.  This is more exciting than I anticipated.  Zap -- to Santa Claus's apartment.  Wait -- those are pictures of him and his family.  Grandpa is Santa Claus!  And back to the toy store.

Jules confronts Grandpa, who denies it at first, but finally comes clean.  Then he goes to the other room and collapses (off camera).

Scene 4:  Mom (Suzanne) at work.  The supervisor snits the rules: no jewelry, no personal phone calls, no bathroom breaks without permission, no talking, no happy thoughts, no developing new cookies.  Your job is to pack boring, flavorless cookies into boxes so people can buy them to give as last-minute gifts when they can't think of anything better.  She goes on to yell at Farid (Issam Dakka) for being out of uniform.  

Suddenly Suzanne gets a phone call: Grandpa Claus is in the hospital!  Farid offers to drive her.

Scene 5:  At the hospital.  Jules stares at Farid suspiciously: "Mom is replacing Dad already!  Can this Christmas get any worse?" 

Grandpa hurt his shoulder.  He's going to be fine, but the doctor says he has to slow down and avoid stress.  But when Jules visits, he starts complaining: He's Santa Claus!  He has a billion toys to deliver!  It's unclear whether Suzanne knows his secret identity or not.

Scene 6:  Mom has to go back to work, so she gets the neighbor, Ella, to babysit.  Ella is only 15.  Isn't that the same age as Jules? Is he going to get a heterosexual crush?   Nope, she just brings him a sandwich.

Scene 7:  Jules returns to the hospital, and catches Grandpa trying to sneak out. A hospital is not a prison.  You're free to leave at any time, even if the doctors advise against it. Jules offers to help deliver the toys (just this once), so Grandpa can rest.  He hates Christmas, but family comes first.  

Scene 8: Discharged, Grandpa returns to the toy store.  Jules offers to stay with him; he doesn't want to stay home, because it's just girls (girls, yuck!).  The training begins: Santa's workshop is inside the snow globe, staffed by miniature people who are famous in Belgium (this may be the actor playing Holgar).

Grandpa and the staff argue about whether to tell Jules the truth.  "He hates Christmas!  He'll never accept it!"  "He'll come around.  It's his destiny!"  It's tough being the Chosen One.

The toys appear in rows of glass cases, like an old-fashioned automat.  They search for each child's request and pop it into a bag.  Wow, Tommy wants a princess doll wearing a pretty dress.  How gender-neutral!  It seems like a time-consuming process, but they have several days, not just one night (that should be enough to do Europe).  They also deliver candy; feel free to sample all you want, not like that soulless cookie factory.  

Scene 9: Suzanne at work at the soulless cookie factory.  She calls the toy store; no answer.  Where could Grandpa and Jules be?  Farid drops by with bad news: cookie sales are way down, so the company might fold, and they'll all lose their jobs.  Gee, I wonder where this is going.

I'll stop the scene-by-scene there.

Beefcake: None.

Other Sights: Mostly the same street.

Heterosexual Romance: Suzanne and Farid, probably, but it's very understated; a couple of hugs, one holding-hands scene.  He could just as easily be a friend.  Jules bonds with Ella, but treats her as a friend, not a "girl of his dreams" crush.

Gay Characters:  When one of the little people comes to Jules' room to talk to him, she's surrounded by his GI Joe dolls (or a European version).  Two have their shirts off, one very prominent, the other in the background. The implication, obviously intentional, is that Jules removed the shirts of his GI Joe dolls to see their muscular physiques.  

Hating Christmas.  I understand that a Christmas-themed movie must result in everyone loving Christmas, but still, I thought that there should be some accommodation for those of us who don't like the holiday, or who don't celebrate it, like Farid.  

My Grade: A

Update: In The Claus Family 2 (2022),  Jules still doesn't display any heterosexual interest.  He speaks to Ella only once; her main job is to conspire with Grandma to try to push Mom and Farid together -- until we discover that Farid is gay, and has a partner (they even kiss). 

Update again: In The Claus Family 3 (2022), Jules still doesn't display any heterosexual interest.  A girl about his age is working at the ski lodge where the family is spending the holidays, but he doesn't give her a second glance.  

See also: Mo Bakker: Santa Claus's grandson and his boyfriend cruise in Kenya, cuddle in Greece. With bonus Belgian cocks

Spirou and Fantasio: The Bellhop and his Boyfriend

The young hunk and his blond, balding but still youthful boyfriend recline cozily on the couch, watching tv, their legs pressed together.  The young hunk places his foot atop his boyfriend's in a gesture of intimacy.

Suddenly the telephone rings.  "It's a woman," the young hunk announces.  "One who has the chutzpah to call us at this hour and say It's me."

His shirt is open, revealing a smooth, buffed chest.  His boyfriend is wearing a lavender t-shirt and a sky-blue jacket, a style that an older gay man might wear.

As his boyfriend takes the call, the young hunk cuddles their pet squirrel, adopting a nurturing, feminine pose. He's wearing extremely  tight pants.  The boyfriend glances over at him, apparently thinking "I'm lucky to have landed such a hot guy."

It's their coworker, Seccotine, asking for a ride to the airport.  "Sorry, tomorrow I'm going to a conference in Bali," the boyfriend says.  Ignoring the young hunk's frantic gestures, he continues: "...But don't worry, my partner will be glad to give you a ride."

A gay comic?  A parody?  A slash fantasy?  No, this is an actual excerpt from Spirou et Fantasio, a Belgian comic strip for children (and college students learning French).


The young hunk Spirou began his career in 1938 as a bellhop engaged in humorous antics.  In 1944, he met intrepid journalist Fantasio, and soon the two were pairing up for investigations, traveling through time and space, confronting gangsters, spies, dictators, mad scientists, and alien invaders, rescuing each other again and again.


 Like Tintin and Captain Haddock, Corentin and Kim,  and Alix and Enak, Spirou and Fantasio became domestic partners, and rather obviously lovers,  Occasionally Fantasio liked a woman (unlike Captain Haddock), but in the end he always returned to his true love.

During the 1990s, the couple was redrawn, becoming more naturalistic, with pleasantly muscular physiques -- and the gay subtext was revved up (it's hard to read them as anything but a modern-day gay couple).

Over fifty albums have been released to date.  Three have been translated into English.

Tintin and Captain Haddock

When I studied Spanish, I got songs about liking blonde girls ("Las rubias me gustan mas") and a story about Juan y Maria in love.  

When I studied French, I got comics: the muscular Roman Alix and his Egyptian boyfriend Enak; Asterix the Gaul;  the cowboy Lucky Luke; the race car driver Michel Vaillant; bellhop turned adventurer Spirou and his reporter boyfriend Fantasio; and of course, Tintin.











A teenage reporter, Tintin first appeared in the Belgian children's magazine Le Petit Vingtième.  23 comic albums, or bandes-dessinees, appeared between 1930 and 1976, sending Tintin to the Congo, Egypt, Tibet,  America, and eventually the Moon (a 24th, Tintin and Aleph-Art, was left unfinished at cartoonist Herge's death).  The albums have been translated into over 100 languages, and in an interesting twist, dozens of dialects. Would you like to know how the Antwerp and Oostend dialect differs from ordinary Dutch?  How about Picard and Gallois from standard French?

There was not a lot of beefcake in the comic stories or the animated films and tv series, but two live-action films starring Jean-Pierre Talbot took care of that.

Early on, Tintin made new friends in each adventure.  His most intimate relationship came in The Blue Lotus, when he rescued Chang, a Chinese boy victimized by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

But in The Crab with the Golden Claws, Tintin meets the blustering, irascible Captain Haddock and helps him reclaim his ancestral home, Marlinspike Manor.  Tintin moves in.  After that, there is no question: they are a couple..

During their adventures, Haddock and Tintin work as a team, rescuing each other over and over, hugging, pressing against each other.  At home, they are blatantly domestic, often shown sitting at breakfast, lounging around the parlor, going to movies, taking vacations.

Neither expresses any interest in women, but in Tintin in Tibet, when Tintin's old friend Chang writes to ask for help, Haddock blisters with jealousy and refuses to accompany him on the adventure (he relents later).  And when Haddock spends time with a new friend, Tintin mopes and pouts.

Many commentators, including Jamie Bell, who played Tintin in the 2011 movie, have noticed that Tintin and Haddock behave precisely as a gay couple.

Even Herge himself found it necessary to address the "accusations": he said that Tintin and Haddock could not actively pursue women because mostly boys read the comics, and they were interested in adventure, not romance.  But if that is the case, why did Herge put them into a relationship that looked and felt precisely like a romance?

Anyway, he was wrong: gay boys wanted both adventure and romance.  And they found both in Tintin.

See also: Fifty million Frenchmen can't be straight. 

The homo*rotic hijinks of Skyler Gisondo's crew

Pinocchio in Outer Space: Gay Subtext Classic Cartoon

Most of the various renditions of Pinocchio, the Italian puppet who becomes a real live boy, emphasize heteroromance, giving Pinoke or his creator Gepetto a girlfriend.  But the odd film Pinocchio in Outer Space (1965), goes the other way, giving Pinoke a very obvious boyfriend.

It's unusual in other ways, too.  After an intro set in a quaint Medieval century village, it rather jarringly pushes us into the twentieth century when Pinocchio studies space flight, and the Blue Fairy and an older woman, perhaps a goddess, discuss how crowded outer space is getting.

After some medieval adventures, Pinocchio encounters an alien space ship, piloted by an evolved turtle named Nertle (Arnold Stang).

They zoom into space (as the Earth recedes, we see that Pinocchio lives in Massachusetts).  They explore an ancient Martian city, drawn in realistic science fiction style. 

With Gepetto all but absent, Pinocchio and Nertle buddy-bond.  Nertle points out that the two moons of Mars are "perfect for romance."  Then he bats his eyes at Pinocchio.

Later Nertle asks "Have you ever seen anyone so lovable?", and Pinocchio bats his eyes at him.

Apparently the Martians were all killed by Astro, the giant space whale, who is now on his way to devour Earth. Pinocchio sacrifices himself to save the world, and Nertle appears weeping at his deathbed.  Not to worry, he is resurrected by the Blue Fairy, and father, son, and boyfriend rejoice. 

Some internet reviewers have even found some homophobic jokes.  Nertle is a Twertle, pronounced with a lisp like gay stereotypes (in French, his name is Twortu, from tortue, "Turtle"), and he comes from the planet DV-8 ("deviate," get it?). 

Where did this crazy movie come from?

It was produced in Belgium by animator Ray Goosens, who directed a lot of Belgian cartoons, including TinTin and Asterix, and translated into English by Frank Ladd.  It was very popular in Europe, even used to advertise candy.

Pete Lazer, who voiced Pinocchio, was a former child star who was making the rounds of adult tv series, including Mr. Novak and The Defenders.  His last screen credit was a 1967 episode of Felony Squad.

Baby Boomers remember Arnold Stang as the voice of Top Cat.  He had a 60-year old career, specializing in big-talking little guys.

There's no documentary evidence that any of them were gay.

Bob Morane: James Bond without the Girls

When I was in high school in the 1970s, French class offered a practically infinite amount of beefcake-and-bonding riches.  If you tired of the Green Library, you could always move on to the Marabout Junior series, which featured adventurer Bob Morane.

Bob Morane was a former RAF pilot who worked as a reporter and freelance adventurer, often accepting secret-agent or detective assignments.  In later volumes he worked for the Time Patrol, going back to dinosaur times or fighting androids in outer space.

 There weren't a lot of illustrations, but those the books had displayed Bob with a massive chest, usually when one of the bad guys (such as Ming "The Yellow Shadow") had him strung up for weird torture.

Bob's best buddy, a Scotch bodybuilder  usually traveled with him to provide the gay subtexts, and get strung up for a series of "my hero!" rescues.

Ok, there were some girls. But I don't remember Bob actually having sex, and the girl-chasing was minimal, far less than in James Bond.

Belgian author Henri Vernes published 12 volumes of Bob Morane's adventures (1958-67).  Most have been translated into English. There have also been over 100 bandes-dessinee (which I haven't read), a 1964-5 tv series (with Claude Titre as Bob Morane and Billy Kearns as Bob Ballantine), a 1998 animated series, and some tie-in video games and toys.

Dierich Bouts: Medieval Beefcake Painter

A scary monster is carrying away a naked guy.  I guess we're supposed to feel terror, but when I was a kid and saw this painting in my friend Greg's house, the only thing I could think of was "I can see his wiener!"

It was just a small painting in his father's study, so I didn't see it often, but it was memorable, probably because my reaction was so different from the one expected of me.

I just tracked it down: A segment of  La chute des damnes (The Fall of the Damned), paired with L'Ascension des élus (The Ascent of the Elect), painted between 1468 and 1470 by Dieric the Elder, now in the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, France.

But don't get excited. There are a few butts, but no more wieners.

We don't know when Dieric Bouts was born (probably between 1410 and 1420), or where he studied (his work suggests the influence of Flemish painter Rogier van den Weyden).

We know only that he became the "official painter of Leuven" (now in Belgium) in 1458 or 1459, that he was commissioned to do a lot of portraits and religious art, that he married twice and had four children, and that he died on May 6th, 1475.

And that he was interested in muscular male bodies.








Check out The Martyrdom of St. Hippolyte, the center panel of a tryptich that Dierich painted for the altar of the Sint Salvator Kathedral in Brugge about 1470 (now in the Groningen Museum).

Looks like the same guy as the one being carried away by a demon.

His beefcake model got a monk's haircut in The Martyrdom of St. Erasmus, the central panel of a tryptich in the Sint-Pieterskerk in Leuven.

Dieric definitely had a type.

His two sons, Dieric the Younger and Aelbrecht, both became painters.

Corentin and Kim

Like Alix and Enak, Jonny Quest and Hadji, and a dozen others, Corentin and Kim were a teenage European-Indian homoromantic pair. Belgian cartoonist Paul Cuvelier began painting the androgynous, muscular teenager in 1943.

Herge, creator of Tintin, saw them and suggested a comic strip, which appeared in  Tintin magazine beginning in 1946.














The comic story begins with Corentin at age 14, a Breton boy in the 18th century who runs away from his abusive uncle, stows away aboard a ship, and is shipwrecked on a desert island.  Soon he teams up with an Indian boy named Kim.  They also add a gorilla named Belzebuth and a tiger named Moloch to their entourage.

Corentin was aimed at somewhat younger children than Alix, so his adventures were less complex, but the backgrounds were just as spectacular, and there was nearly as much nudity (especially as the two boys aged into muscular late adolescence).









  








Seven comic albums appeared between 1950 and 1974, rather a paltry number compared to Alix, sending Corentin and Kim to India, China, Italy, Egypt, and back to Brittany (Corentin's grandson also appeared in the 1800's Wild West).  There were also novels, an animated cartoon series (1987),  and an original comic strip, translated into German, Spanish, and Dutch.

Nevertheless, Corentin was never as successful as Alix, and Paul Cuvelier less concerned with homoromance; eventually Corentin gets a girlfriend, and many of Cuvelier's other works featured female nudity.

Top 10 Beefcake Horror Movies: The 1970s

Horror movies in the 1970s upped the blood, guts, and overall grossness content to compete with tv, but unfortunately backed away from the nonstop nudity of the swinging 1960s.  Still, there were plenty of muscular guys around, taking showers, climbing into bed, or being strapped to tables for weird experiments.  You just had to know where to look.  Here are the Top 10 Beefcake Horror Movies:

1. Daughters of Darkness (1971): John Karlen, the gay-vague Willie Loomis of Dark Shadows, plays a hip artist who stumbles upon a couple of female vampires.  You get a lot of butt shots, and a glimpse of Willie's willy in a shower-sex scene.

2. Malpertuis, aka The Legend of Doom House (1971): A Belgian movie about an androgynous sailor (Matthieu Carrier), who is abducted and brought to a creepy house populated by Greek gods, all of whom have sexual designs on him.

3. Frogs (1972). About homicidal frogs.  Sam Elliot (left) doesn't seem to own a shirt, and beefcake model Nicholas Cortland gets frogged to death in the shower.

4. Flesh for Frankenstein, aka Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1973): Baron Von Frankenstein tries to build a sex-machine monster out of Srdjan Zelenovic (top photo), while his nude boyfriend, Andy Warhol regular Joe Dallesandro, tries to save him.  But be careful -- there are an awful lot of bare breasts on display.

5. Devil Times Five (1974). Five crazy kids, including future teen idol Leif Garrett, invade a winter resort and cause mayhem.  But guest Taylor Lacher still has time to strip down and make out with his wife.  There's also a seduction of a mentally-challenged handyman.

6. The Devil's Rain (1975).  If you didn't get enough of a shirtless William Shatner in his early teen idol days or on Star Trek, you can see him here as a guy battling small-town Satanists.  Look for the film debut of John Travolta as "Danny."

7. The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975): Michael Sarrazin, who took off his clothes frequently in 1970s dramas, here hangs out in the swimming pool a lot while figuring out that he's the reincarnation of his girlfriend's murdered Dad.

8. Track of the Moon Beast (1976).  If ever a movie was tailor-made for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffs....College student Chase Cordell gets hit by a meteor fragment and goes on a rampage.  He also took off his shirt in the grindhouse Sins of Rachel (1972).

9. Eaten Alive (1977).  A hotelier in the South handles unhappy guests by feeding them to a giant crocodile.  Robert Englund, who would go on to play Freddie Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, displays rather a nice physique as a victim named Buck.

10. Coma (1978).  Half-naked musclemen (and women) are being kept in comas to harvest for organs. Among them is Tom Selleck, a few years before he became Magnum, P.I.

Suske en Wiske: Beefcake and Adventure in Flemish Comics

Suske en Wiske, aka Spike and Suzy, Bob and Bobette, Finn and Fifi, Ze y Maria, Willy and Wanda, and so on, are a pair of adventurers in a long-running comic strip created by Willy Vandersteen in 1945.  There have been 300+ albums to date, plus spin-offs.

For many years they appeared in Tintin Magazine, and comparisons with the Tintin strip are inevitable.

1. Tintin was originally published in French, Suske en Wiske in Flemish.

2. Tintin has a talking dog, Milou (Snowy).  Wiske has a doll, Schanulleke (Muffin), which doesn't talk, unless she is brought to life.

3. Tintin is a young adult, so he travels alone, or with Captain Haddock, a co-adventurer rather than a guardian. Suske and Wiske are in late childhood or early adolescence, so they require adult supervision on their travels:

Wiske's Aunt Sidonia
The befuddled scientist Professor Barabas
The portly comic relief character Ambrose
Muscular superheroic caveman Jethro.

4. Tintin's adventures are mainly naturalistic, with occasionally a bit of science fiction.  Suske and Wiske run the gamut of mystical, paranormal, fantasy, and science fiction.  They travel back in time to ancient Egypt or the Viking era.  They stop a war on the far side of the moon.  They interact with ghosts, dragons, wizards, and fairies.

5. Both Tintin and Suske en Wiske all but eliminate hetero-romance.  Suske and Wiske are platonic friends, and the adults rarely go out on dates or express romantic interest.

6. Tintin has a strong gay subtext, a romance in all but the name between Tintin and Captain Haddock.  I haven't found one in the Suske en Wiske albums that I've read.

But there's lots of beefcake, of a cartoonish sort.

7. Both Tintin and Suske en Wiske have been translated into many languages.  Suske en Wiske is particularly assiduous at translations into Dutch dialects: Brabantian, Dreents, Fries, Groning, Kalmhouts, Limburgish, Tweants.

Admit it: You didn't know there were so many dialects of Dutch.  Actually, there are 18, if you include Afrikaans and Flemish.



8. Both have achieved popularity in media other than comics.  Suske and Wiske have appeared in several movies, with Suske played by David Verbeek, Niels Destadsbader, Joeri Busschots (left), and Guilhermo Appolonio (top photo).  There have been television programs, stage musicals, and video games.

Cosplay is popular.

There are statues of the characters in Antwerp and Middelkerke, and a wall mural in Brussels. They have their own museum in Kalmthout.

9. Tintin has stayed the same age for 60 years, but Suske and Wiske have grown up.

 In 2013, Charel Cambre introduced a spin-off, Amoras, with adult Suske and Wiske going into the future to avert a catastrophe in the present.  Suske pairs up with a girl named Jerusalem.

The adult Suske is a handsome, muscular action hero, but he encounters semi-naked girls and has a hetero-romance.

You get something, you lose something.