Brussels, October 1960. This large European city is the capital of a kingdom of 10 million inhabitants, Belgium, enclosed between France, Germany and Holland. That's the place where Jean-Claude Van Varenberg is born and grows. He is timid and not very sure of him.

At school, the child is especially motivated by drawing and sport, the studies do not interest him much. He prefers to observe and read: the muscular heroes of comic strips fascinate him, but they seem to him so inaccessible!

Jean-Claude is twelve years old when his father takes him to Claude Goetz, graduate trainer of karate. The courses of Goetz are effective but hard and reserved to adults. The young teenager is not gifted, he is stiff and apprehensive. But he wants to progress at all costs and his savage determination does not escape to his trainer.