« The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. » — Oscar Wilde
Marc Caro, born in 1956 in Nantes (birthplace of Jules Verne!), was never a prolific bédéiste, quite possibly because he liked to spread his talent around: musician, animator, film director, designer, art director… et j’en passe!
Today, he’s perhaps best remembered for his collaborative work with long-time accomplice Jean-Pierre Jeunet (they met at an animation festival in 1974!), most famously the films Delicatessen (1991) and La cité des enfants perdus (City of Lost Children, 1995), which they co-directed. While Jeunet went on to Alien: Resurrection (with Caro along as design supervisor), Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (most popular French film of all, and a great one for a change!) and his breathtaking adaptation of Sébastien Japrisot‘s Un long dimanche de fiançailles, Caro concentrated on design and art direction. So while nowadays his toil largely occurs behind the scenes, he remains quite active and in great demand.
Back in the early days, though, while juggling animation projects and musical gigs (ah, youth!), Caro created a clutch of brief and brutal vignettes for such fabled publications as Métal hurlant, Fluide glacial, Charlie Mensuel and, on this side of the pond, Raw. Most of these strips were crafted using the daunting technique of scratchboard; done right, it’s strikingly effective, and in Caro’s nimble hands, it’s done right. Another master of the technique is Switzerland’s Thomas Ott.
Our featured piece was translated into English by Elisabeth Bell and lettered by Lea Hernandez [psst: someone left out a word in the first panel…]. It appeared in The New Comics Anthology, edited by Bob Callahan (1991, Collier Books). In this case, Caro is using a combination of scratchboard and Craftint.
Sadly, this printing doesn’t quit do justice to the finesse of Caro’s rendering. Compare with an excerpt from the French original:
See further samples of Caro’s comics work here, and if you crave yet more, you can’t go wrong with L’Association‘s Caro compendium, Contrapunktique.
-RG
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