"Boule et Bill" first appeared in the Belgian comics magazine "Spirou" on December 24, 1959. The ambition was to make a sort of European Peanuts. The debut was made in a so-called "mini-récit" (mini-story), a story in 32 very small pages, printed on the inner spread of the magazine. Roba had until then mainly made illustrations for the magazine and had helped some other authors (including André Franquin), and now started with his own series. A few months later, a four-page comic with the same heroes appeared, and shortly thereafter Roba created a weekly one page comic. For the next twenty-five years, "Boule et Bill" was one of the most popular series of the magazine, and appeared mostly on the back cover. Some of the strips were even published in the rival "Le Journal de Mickey", which was based mainly around Walt Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.