| Added by |
 Bart Perdieus
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| General Description : | 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. His wife (often called Madam Nero, or in some stories Bea) stays mainly at home and tries to keep a semblance of a household while her husband is off to some far corner of the earth. If the need arises, she knows how to defend herself. 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. Mister Pheip is the bourgeois friend of Nero. As an old fashioned Flemish new rich, he thinks it is fitting that he speaks some poor kind of French instead of Dutch (a reference to the language battle between Flanders and Wallonia). Madam Pheip is his wife. She is a pipe smoking bully, loyal to her kids, herself, her husband, and her friends (in that order). When necessary, she can make a smoke curtain with her pipe. Petatje is the adopted daughter of the Pheips. Her father and mother died when she was very young. Initially, she was adopted by Nero, but soon got to live with the Pheips. Petoetje is their adoptive son. He is actually the son of a Papoea king, and is extremely bright. Petoetje and Petatje get treated like children (which they are, around 10 years old) by their parents, even though they act more mature most of the time. Clo-Clo is the younger son of the Pheips. His main characteristic is wearing a large moustache as a toddler. He weeps for the smallest reason. Tuizentfloot is "the last pirate still alive", or that's what he thinks, anyway. Weaponed with a dagger or sometimes a cannon, he is very easily irritated and chases everyone around. He can come up in a story at any given time and it can never be predicted what he might do next. Captain Oliepul is the captain of the tugboat named 'His Majesty Pull'. He is a good friend of Nero, and saved him many times. He's Marc Sleen's "deus ex machina": whenever characters seem to be drowning, at the very last moment captain Oliepul coïncidentally passes by and saves them just in time. Jan Spier is an extremely strong guy, who is said to be the last descendant of Jan Breydel. His name means "muscle" in Dutch. He makes a living selling French fries. He has been gone for many years in the middle part of the series, but readers convinced Sleen to let Jan Spier reappear. During the run of the series, he was married to at least two different women, Minoetje and Isabella. No divorce or other explanation was ever shown. Officer Gaston was the last character to become a regular in the comic, and he appeared very late, in 1995, twenty years after the birth of Clo-Clo (at that point the last regular to be added to the cast). Gaston is fat, not too bright, and at times incredibly incompetent. However, somehow he manages to save Nero a few times. Nero's worst enemies are the Maltese (zie De Spekschieter) bandit Ricardo and a devil, called Geraard de Duivel (Gerard the Devil, called after a medieval building in Ghent). |
| Face value | 0,82 Euro |
| Catalog code (Michel) | BE BL86 |
| Catalog code (Scott) | BE 1940 |
| Catalog code | Yvert et Tellier BE BF92 Stanley Gibbons BE MS3736 Belgium BE BL100 Unificato BE BF94 |
| Series | 80th Anniversary of Marc Sleen |
| Stamp colour | multicolor |
| Stamp use | Souvenir Sheet |
| Issue date | 30/12/2002 |
| Designer | Marc Sleen |
| Print technique | photogravure |
| Perforation | comb 11½ |
| Height | 90.00 mm |
| Width | 125.00 mm |
| Catalog prices | No catalog prices set yet |
