Joost Swarte

i have always been left utterly cold by his work and his "school" (which i guess is some post-herge clean-line mod thing.)

i thought this was about full house star jodie sweeten when i clicked

He's certainly a wacky and left-field post-Herge style, and I've only read a small amount - it seemed pretty poor stuff, but I really like his drawing so am always happy to see his work anywhere.

There are Swarte strips reprinted/translated in most issues of RAW (mag + bk). His drawing style is a gd-looking mash-up of Herge/the whole 'clear line' school of Euro cartooning, plus the elegant Sunday page approach of American strip artists like George McManus ('Bringing up Father'), and even Cliff Sterrett ('Polly and her Pals'). The strips themselves often have an urban setting, and are kind of comedies of manners - social gaffes, domestic farces, class conflict (they read a bit like the sublime 'The Castafiore Emerald' w/ added swearing/obscenity/and hints of violence). I don't think Swarte tries to 'subvert' a style so much as construct something new out of a clash between pre-war formalism and post-Crumb explicitness.

I'm guessing that Herge (and consequently Swarte) means a lot less to American readers than European ones

Depends on the reader.