Bande dessinée and Manneken Pis

Manneken Pis, the tiny little statue fourth photograph down, is the one thing that every guide I read was telling me to go see in Brussels. My opinion on that subject: meh. It was okay, this little statue, but it wasn't anything fabulous. That being said, I didn't really know the history behind it when I saw it, so my opinion was more "Where are these chips I've been hearing about?" than "Fantastic statue!". What I actually enjoyed more was seeing all the comic book art depicting the statue around the city. Every character depicted in a sign seemed to be peeing. 


There were lots of other characters though that weren't peeing. Brussels is comic book central for anyone aspiring to write something a la Tin Tin or Asterix (a.k.a. the only two comic books I know of). There were large murals up the sides of buildings celebrating the famous characters created in Brussels, many of which I had never seen before. There was also lots of random art installations across the city, some were advertisements whilst others just seemed to be there for no reason at all other than to make people smile. Brussels seemed a little like this, like it just wanted to make you smile.