Arthur Berckmans

Arthur Berckmans (born 3 May 1929), better known as Berck, is a Belgian comics author, best known for Sammy.

Biography

Arthur Berckmans was born in Leuven in 1929. He studied drawing at the Art academy of Leuven and at the Institut Saint Luc in Brussels. His first job as an illustrator was in 1948 for the Flemish Jesuit magazine Pro Apostolis. He also illustrated some youth novels, and started to work at PubliArt, a publicity division of Le Lombard, where he made many drawings and a few publicitary comics, appearing in many Belgian newspapers and magazines.

In 1958, Berck was asked by Tintin magazine to collaborate with René Goscinny on a new comical series, Strapontin. The series became a moderate success, and Berck created a few other series for the magazine, the most notable being Rataplan.

In the meantime, he also started working for Zonneland, the youth magazine of Altiora Averbode, the editor of the abbey of Averbode. In later years, he contributed to Sjors, one of the major Dutch comics magazines, where he created the series Lowietje.