Vandersteen, liberated of the work on the daily comic, started on a comic series based on one of the novels he had read as a youth: "Robert en Bertrand", the story of two Flemish tramps at the "fin de siècle". The series debuted in "De Standaard" in 1972. The series was the first in a long time to renew the enthusiasm of Vandersteen, and the graphical quality and the stories were a lot better than most of the Studio production of the time.