Phillipe Fenech signed my Dogmatix album

On March 7, 2025 comic bookstore Het Besloten Land in Leuven, Belgium, organised a signing sessions with Phillipe Fenech. Phillipe is one of the artists who works on the Dogmatix comic book series and next week the seventh album in the series will be released in Dutch.

To celebrate the release of La Traversée de Lutèce in Dutch Phillipe had been invited to sign the new album. What to do? Leuven is a three hour drive from where I live, but this felt like a good opportunity to meet Phillipe and of course get an album signed by him. Since Leuven in itself is a city that is worthy of a visit, it was an easy decision.

Het Besloten Land

To make my visit to Leuven even more worthwhile I had checked the website of HBL to see if they had anything that was still on my wish list. I emailed them to ask if I could make a reservation for some albums, and I promptly got a reply saying that the books would be waiting for me at the counter. That’s what I call service. HBL is located in the old center of Leuven in a street filled with bistro’s and restaurants. If you still have doubts about visiting, you shouldn’t.

When I arrive around 5 pm in the afternoon I was greeted with a smile, and my order was indeed ready at the counter. I wasn’t the only one who had traveled to Leuven to get a signed copy, when waiting in line I met locals, but also people that had come to Leuven just for this occasion. I wasn’t even the only foreigner, fans from Germany had made the trip to Belgium as well. Around the clock of seven we all at to move inside because it was getting a bit to dark, and around the same time it was my turn to get my album signed.

Signing

My French is terrible, but luckily Phillipe speaks English well so I did get the chance to chat with him a bit while he was working on a drawing of Dogmatix for me. He told me that it was thanks to my instagram page that he actually learned that Dogmatix is the English name of Idéfix.

At sessions like this it is customary to get one drawing. Sometimes you are lucky to just get an autograph and the artists will ask money for a drawing. All I had to do was buy the new album for just seven euros. I did however buy one French album as well and asked Phillipe if he could quickly sign that one as well for me. He drew a very nice Dogmatix outline and I plan on giving this album away on my instagram later this month. So, if you don’t follow me on instagram yet, this might be a good time to do so.