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Nero

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.

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.

During its 55 year course, a lot of regular characters have joined the original duo Nero and Van Zwam. Nero is the central figure. Essentially good hearted, he can also be a selfish, lazy man, who does not know how to keep his money and always gets himself into trouble. Nero is one of the very few anti-hero's to lead a comic strip. Van Zwam is a private detective. Driving a Porsche 911 (which seems to crash at least once every comic), he is always extremely fast at the place of the crime, and can make the most brilliant deductions out of the smallest clues (often a cigarette stub). Adhemar is the genius son of Nero. He is only a few years old, but has received numerous Nobel prizes and Ph.D.'s. His major hobby is the building of Rockets, called Adhemar I, II, ... These as well tend to crash somewhere in every story, but are a major means to get to the exotic countries where the stories often happen.

Belgium, 2002, Nero and Adhemar

Belgium, 2002, Sleen with cartoon characters

Belgium, 2009, Comic Characters

Belgium, 2012, Persons from Comics