Brussels’ Comic Strip Festival, a free festival running through Sunday at the Place des Palais, offers activities for comic strip fans of all ages, including exhibitions, book signings, a fair and the chance to spot life-size comic characters in public venues. A highlight is the Balloon’s Day Parade, an airborne extravaganza of helium-filled comic-strip heroes that gets under way Saturday at 3:30 p.m. A new balloon representing a character from a Belgian comic strip is unveiled each year. For more, see http://tinyurl.com/9zxt9ow.