Vandersteen was now at the height of his productivity as a solo artist. Apart from his work for "De Standaard" and "Het Nieuwsblad", he contributed to "Ons Volk" and "Ons Volkske", he made a special "Suske en Wiske" story for het "Parochieblad" (a weekly Christian newspaper), and he started to contribute to "Kuifje" journal ("Tintin" magazine) that published Hergé. The magazine was very popular in Wallonia, but struggled in Flanders, where "The Adventures of Tintin" was not yet as well known. A popular Flemish author would give the sales a boost, while it could mean the breakthrough on the French language market for Vandersteen. However, Hergé, as editor-in-chief, set a very high quality standard for his magazine, and Vandersteen had to improve and stylize his drawings, and had to remove the more Flemish, popular aspects of his comics. Vandersteen obliged, and the stories of "Suske en Wiske" he created for "Kuifje" are now considered the best of his career, with the first one, "Het Spaanse Spook" ("The Spanish Ghost"), which started on 16 September 1948, as his masterpiece. It was because of his work for "Kuifje" that Hergé nicknamed Vandersteen "The Brueghel of the Comic Strip".