Pilote

Never Forget: Cabu, le grand Duduche

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« A shaggy mane, odd, steel-rimmed little glasses, a get-up owing rather more to personal fancy than to the edicts of fashion, a candid gaze, the smile of a malicious dunce, that’s Le Grand Duduche… and it’s also Cabu. » — René Goscinny

On this significant day, I will spotlight Jean Cabut (b. 1938, d. 2015) alias Cabu, and his wondrous Le Grand Duduche series, begun in 1963 and concluded in 1982, published in Pilote, Hara-Kiri, Charlie Hebdo and Pilote Mensuel. An absurdly massive collection of the entire series (672 glossy pages!) was published by Vents d’Ouest in 2008. Even as a hardcover volume, the thing’s so big and heavy it can barely bear its bulk, and is therefore virtually unreadable. It should really have been three books in a slipcase. But hey, the reproduction is first-rate… for what it’s worth.

Duduche is a gangly lycéen (high school student, sort of) wending his way through classes and student life, doing as little work as possible but expanding a maximum of ingenuity. It’s most certainly not about the plot.

The strip displays a fantastic level of graphic bravura and formal experimentation, while retaining 20/20 narrative clarity. I felt it was a fool’s errand to try singling out a “typical” example, since every page is unique — so here’s a sampler. Amazing, and yes, highly recommended, even if you can’t read the (marvellous and abundant) text.

Ah, remember cursive?
Little Duduche has to give away his cat’s latest litter, with deplorable results. « A female cat can have up to 20,000 descendants in just a span of five years. If you don’t want to take care of tons of cats or feel responsible for many homeless ones, it’s a good idea to spay or neuter your cat. » It’s just common sense, folks.
Expressive, varied lettering is another crucial asset in the toolkit of the complete artist. « Mister Duduche! You will no longer find it quite so droll when I quiz you on aerial warfare of 1917-18! »
Okay, this was hell to scan and reassemble (do open it in a separate tab to see the glorious details). But I felt it essential to showcase Cabu’s mastery of scale, perspective, architecture and general cohesion. Once in a while, Cabu would pull out one of these ambitious strips with over a hundred distinctive and identifiable figures, in service of a couple of dozen individual or entwined jokes. It is a rare breed of genius that can conceive such an array of moving parts and keep them all under control.
1- “Sir! Sir! Sir!” ” “Belphegor is getting deafer by the day...” 2- “May I go out, sir?” “Yes.” “Watch this…” 3- “Sir! Sir! Sir!” 4- “Sir, may I go out… to tell the principal’s daughter that I love her?” “No. There’s already another.” 5- “Well, I never!” 6- “Sir! May I go out to smash the other freak’s face in… it’s urgent!” “Okay, okay. But make it quick!“
“If you notice that the elderly maid, who’s known you all your life, is suddenly afraid of you…“
Duduche catalogues the telltale signs of his entrance into ‘the awkward age’. “If you notice that the house cat is now wary of you…“
Interesting: I had no idea until just now that the country fair game of ‘Chamboule-tout’ was known as ‘Coconut Shy‘ in English. Live and learn!
Duduche’s utter inability to keep a poker face can be a bit of a liability. I love the well-observed detail of the study monitor keeping his feet warm with a hot water bottle. In French, the lovely, evocative term for that item is ‘bouillote‘.
Here’s one from Pilote no. 590 (Feb. 1971, Dargaud). Though Cabu could be much, much acerbic than his American colleague, he and Jules Feiffer had a lot in common. “What’s on tonight at the film society?” “It’s a flick with, ah, what’s his name again… ?” “It’s on the tip of my tongue, his name…” “… I’ve got his name on the tip of my stump, your weirdo… isn’t it Fred Astaire?“

Coming back around to what makes this a ‘significant day’… Eight years ago to the day, Cabu was among those viciously murdered during the terrorist assault on the Charlie Hebdo offices. Honestly, I can’t bear to talk about it, but it’s crucial that this horrible event not be forgotten, and not merely because one of my artistic heroes was slaughtered that day.

« When she visits the gravesite of her late husband in Châlons-en-Champagne, Véronique Cabut-Brachet can witness just how much the French have not forgotten him: locals and fans come regularly to reflect (“It’s Cabu’s grave that people are looking for, and some people come just for it: nearly one a day, yes!” and for the past five years, according to the caretaker of the Cimetière de l’Ouest, interviewed by France Bleu). The artist’s gravestone is copiously covered in flowers but, especially, pencils in jars, a touching homage and the most beautiful of symbols. » [ source ]

Cabu’s headstone in Châlons-en-Champagne. Photo © Radio France – Sophie Constanzer.

-RG

Fred: Bold Lines and Moustache Twirling

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« Crosses and gallows – that deadly historic juxtaposition. » — Howard Zinn

Bonsoir, mesdames et messieurs…

All right, time for me to tackle (though a bit sideways, I’ll explain) another of my daunting heroes. This time out, it’s Frédéric Othon Théodore Aristidès (1931-2013), better — and more simply — known as ‘Fred’.

A compulsive and constant scribbler, he attended no institute of artistic learning but his own (and didn’t bother to complete his secondary education), and made inroads into the field by the dawn of the 1950s, landing in Ici Paris, France-Dimanche, Le Rire, Paris-Presse, France-Soir, Punch, and even as a gagman (uncredited!) for The New Yorker (others, among them Otto Soglow, would illustrate the gags for publication).

In 1960, he was, with Georges Bernier — aka Le professeur Choron — and François Cavanna, of the founding trio behind corrosive (and at times banned by the French government) satirical magazine Hara-Kiri, drawing its first sixty covers… and a lot of (self) righteous ire. Any press is good press, or so they say…

Mid-decade, he began his long and fruitful association with Pilote, launching, with the magazine’s 300th issue (July 22, 1965, Dargaud) his undeniable masterpiece, Philémon. And this is where my ‘sideways’ loophole comes in: I’m truly not ready to tackle the overflowing poetic cornucopia that is Philémon. By way of introduction, I’ll stick to the margins and showcase instead some of Fred’s ‘brutish and nasty’ (a rough translation of Hara-Kiri’s motto) panel cartoons and short pieces. There’s a lot to this guy.

Which reminds me of a time, a couple of decades ago, when Montreal’s FIFA (Festival international des films sur l’art/International Festival of Films on Art) presented a series of TV shows showcasing individual cartoonists, among them Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman… and Fred. I recall that Messrs Ware and Spiegelman were just as miserable and neurotic as expected, there was also this Manga master that felt trapped as a cog in an assembly line. Meanwhile, in sharp contrast to the existential angst, Fred was brimming with evident delight and joie de vivre at his good fortune to be a working cartoonist*, grinning and scribbling in his sun-dappled studio, leisurely strolling through his village, charming the ladies, enjoying a glass of wine and a wedge of fine aged cheese… I concluded that here was an eloquent encapsulation of the respective cartooning cultures of a few nations. Regrettably, I haven’t been able to track down this documentary series, not even in the FIFA archives. Nevertheless, here’s a short visit with the dear man, by then living in Paris.

As life tends to imitate art, so has this more or less come to pass.
Obviously, you can’t nag anyone into quitting. This ingenious collage strip appeared in Pilote no. 670 (Sept. 1972, Dargaud).
An example — quite literally — of gallows humour.
Too much of a good thing can kill you — or ‘You may come to rue your mockery’.
If one looks for common ground between the more… mordant of French cartoonists, you’ll find their shared, blistering contempt for their nation’s Military brass.
The title is a French idiom which roughly translates to “There’s a nip in the air”. This collection of short pieces Fred wrote and drew for Pilote was published in early 1973 by Dargaud.
At one end, “Live Human Shooting”; at the other, “Free Admission”.
You want it darker? Oh, and also seasonal? Well, your wish is my command.

-RG

*this is serious, though: when Fred stopped drawing comics in the late 1980s, he fell into a deep depression and wound up in a psychiatric hospital. The cure? A return to creating comics. Surely there’s a lesson in this.

Patrice Leconte: All Was Normal and Calm…

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« An editorial team that gathers within a magazine such as Pilote constitutes a true family, as it’s a small group and everybody knows everybody. There’s friendship, admiration, competition, hijinks and the pleasure of being together, even if we didn’t take the bus to Quiberon together in the summer. » — Patrice Leconte

It would be terribly reasonable to presume that Patrice Leconte‘s elegant passage through the world of Franco-Belgian was, on the part of the future cinematic auteur (the Les Bronzés series, Monsieur Hire, Le mari de la coiffeuse, Ridicule, L’homme du train — my favourite, and even an animated film, Le magasin des suicides… quite a range!) some sort of dilettantish detour, but it wasn’t… is it ever? — quite so simple. As he recalls it:

« As a child, I dreamed of nothing but cinema. Well, I also dreamed of drawing. As they say, I went up to Paris and went to film school. But I kept on drawing. And I was a Pilote reader. I wrote to [ Marcel ] Gotlib, who responded, looked at my drawings, showed them to René Goscinny, who liked them, invited me to the office and found me likeable, published my drawings and encouraged me to carry on, which I did. For five years. 1970 to 1975. I was happy. Then I shot my first film [the frankly unpromising Les vécés étaient fermés de l’intérieur, co-scripted with Gotlib] and everything began to unravel, because I haven’t made anything but films since, and I gave up comics. »

La vie telle qu’elle est — a title that a cinephile of Leconte’s ilk could simply *not* have failed to nick from pioneering cinéaste Louis Feuillade (1873-1925, whose immortal Fantomas, Judex and Les vampires serials still thrill) and his 1911-1913 series of films bearing that name… seventeen in all!
The tale appeared in Pilote no. 603 (May, 1971, Dargaud), and here’s the cover. René Goscinny, publication director; Jean-Michel Charlier and Gérard Pradal, editors in chief; Albert Uderzo, art director.

Humble to a fault, Leconte is well aware of his limitations as a “classical” draughtsman (largely beside the point in his case, imho, as he’s a superb designer and stylist):

« I think that my personal touch was tied to my drawing handicap, that self-taught aspect which meant than I absolutely had to find a workaround. I’ve always held to the rule that constraints constitute a first-rate engine of creation, coupled with the magical notion of “let us make qualities of our flaws“. Well, it works! »

By all means, read the full conversation with Leconte about his bédé days, conducted by Jean-Luc Brunet and Vivian Lecuivre en 2007. It is, however, in French, but we currently have the technological means to let you grasp the gist of it.

By the way, Leconte’s got a new feature out, an adaptation of Georges Simenon‘s 45th Jules Maigret novel, Maigret et la jeune morte (“Maigret and the Dead Girl“, first published in 1954), starring deplorable human being but splendid actor Gérard Depardieu. Among Simenon’s eighty Maigret books, this must surely be the most adaptable, as this marks the fifth time this novel is brought to the screen! The trailer looks great.

-RG

Tentacle Tuesday: « Do me up like one of your French girls! »

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Tentacular greetings to all! Today’s post finds us with our feet firmly planted in France (well, maybe with one toe dipping into Belgium, as usual). As friend Barney might say, come for the Important & Serious Artist discussion, stay for the ‘naked man/nubile woman’ fringe benefits…

Many are fans of Jean Henri Gaston Giraud, far better known under his nom de plume, Mœbius. Co-admin RG and my humble self do not belong to this category, which is possibly why he has never been mentioned in WOT before. RG thinks he’s ‘the Serge Gainsbourg of French comics‘ (not a compliment); I do not specifically dislike his work… nor am I interested enough in it to investigate. We could argue about Mœbius’ profound influence on science-fiction and cyperpunk and his lasting impact on comics until we’re blue in the face, so I suggest we look at some tentacles instead!

The original art from Il y a un Prince-Charmant sur Phenixon (Pilote, 1973), published in English in Heavy Metal Magazine v. 4 no. 10 (January 1981) as ‘There Is a Prince Charming on Phenixon’.

The Long Tomorrow was written by American screenwriter Dan O’Bannon and illustrated by Mœbius in 1975. Published in Métal hurlant (nos. 7 and 8) in 1976, it was then picked by Heavy Metal in 1977 for the anglophone market. This story is credited with having heavily influenced a number of movies – Blade Runner gets mentioned a lot, for example. Read the full story (and a little interview with O’Bannon) here.

Page from the story published in Heavy Metal no. 5 (August 1977).

Speaking of Métal hurlant, this cover offers some quality tentacles from French comics artist/illustrator Jean Solé:

Métal Hurlant no. 3 (July 1975), cover by Jean Solé.

Solé liked the absurd, the grotesque, and the psychedelic, so naturally he has more tentacles on offer than just one cover!

Illustration painted for publication in Pilote in 1985.

The last offering of today’s TT is this very dramatic action scene by Claude Serre. Is the surgeon trying to stuff these tentacles back in, or extract them? We shall never know.

Scanned from Serre, a best-of collection published by Glénat in 2001. This illustration was an excerpt from Serre’s Humour noir et hommes en blanc (“Black Humour and Men in White”), a collection of sombrely jocular drawings on the topic of medicine.

~ ds

Eleven Panels: a Tribute to Nikita Mandryka

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« In the last analysis, a pickle is a cucumber with experience. » — Irena Chalmers

Earlier this week, the world lost another of its greatest cartoonists in Nikita Mandryka (October 20, 1940 – June 13, 2021), and he’s been among my lifelong favourites, thanks to his accessible, deceptively simple style and its nervous, explorative vitality. I’ve written about Mandryka’s Ailleurs some time ago, so there’s no pressing need to rehash his biography.

He was a giant, I tell you! The artiste circa 1975.

This freed me to opt for another tack this time. Since Nikita’s work is all-but-untranslatable (between the argot and the puns and general free-form lunacy… I’m not Even Going to Try) and his pages too dense for meaningful large-scale extraction, I’ve selected a sort of random number of panels — eleven seemed right (and winnowing things down was predictably exacting); Hope you like them.

Encore merci, Monsieur Mandryka!

An incisive entry from Rébus au pied de la lettre, published in Pilote super pocket no. 5 (Sept. 15, 1969, Dargaud); script by Marcel Gotlib.
Clopinettes: Toute une existence, from Pilote no.634 (Dec. 30, 1971, Dargaud), script by Gotlib. « I have loved… »
Clopinettes: Les bons conseils de tante Glutzenbaum, from Pilote no. 635 (Jan. 6, 1972), script by Gotlib. Background characters singing « Mammy Blue » was one of Mandryka’s most enduring recurring gags, certainly an idée fixe. The song was an inescapable, multi-lingual worldwide earworm hit in 1971 and beyond. It was composed by seasoned French songwriter Hubert Giraud, who had earlier written the standard Sous le ciel de Paris / Under Paris Skies. Chanteuse Nicoletta’s rendition was the bane of Nikita’s existence; the one that pervaded my childhood was Roger Whittaker’s, and here’s a reggae version by The Cimmarrons. Americans would know of it through Stories’ 1973 rendition. Phew!
Clopinettes: Les trois dessinateurs, from Pilote no.644 (March 3, 1972, Dargaud), script by Gotlib. In the usual order, L’Écho des Savanes‘ founding trio: Mandryka, Gotlib, (1934-2016), Claire Bretécher (1940-2020). L’Écho was but a couple of months away!
Opening panel from Initiation, collected in Les aventures potagères du Concombre Masqué (Apr. 1973, Dargaud). At left: le Concombre’s fabled home, the Cactus-Blockhaus. The cryptic cucurbit’s loyal companion, Chou-rave (kohlrabi) is seen on the right. Nice brushwork!
« Somewhere, at the world’s edge… », an excerpt from Rêves de sables 2, collected in Le retour du Concombre masqué (1975, Dargaud).
A favourite excerpt from the superb opening sequence of Comment devenir maître du monde?, another entry in the Concombre Masqué saga (1980, Dargaud). Our protagonist is a journalist making the perilous journey to conduct an exclusive interview with Le Concombre.
A panel from « … quelque part à l’endroit où ailleurs veut dire ici… », collected in La vie quotidienne du Concombre Masqué (1981, Dargaud). For the full effect, listen to Schubert’s La truite.
Another one from the same source. « Scram! Out! Everyone! ».
« Le Concombre is on his way to the South Seas with Zaza »; a panel from Le bain de minuit (2006, Dargaud). Meet Zaza, le Concombre’s latter-day personal secretary and Girl Friday. Incidentally, they’re travelling by bathtub, which is likely le Concombre’s favourite place to be.
A panel from La vérité ultime (2012, Dargaud). All is not what it seems aboard this flight to Timbuktu.

For more Concombre Masqué and all things Mandryka (did you know it was he who reportedly coined Métal Hurlant‘s title? ‘Howling Metal’ would have been such a better name than ‘Heavy Metal’… and ironically more Metal), check out his website (now gone, sadly). Well, try instead leconcombre.com… while it lasts (2023 update: it’s also gone).

-RG

Tire la chevillette: Jean Ache’s Little Red Riding Hood Variations

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« … Out behind a tree
there jumped a great big hungry wolf
‘Pardon me’, he said, real cool
‘Why make the scene alone?
A crazy chick like you should have
a handsome chaperone’ » — Ridin’ Hood (The Coasters, 1962)

It could be quite convincingly claimed that Jean Ache (1923-1985, né Jean-Baptiste Huet in Le Havre, France) was the most versatile, chameleonic artist of his generation. Not only was he able to accurately adopt any style he chose, “high” or “low”, but he also wielded a panoply of styles of his own devising. To support my claim, take a peek at noted historian Henri Filippini‘s comprehensive survey of Ache’s career (in French), which includes a generous gallery of his multifaceted art. [ Part One ] and [ Part Two ]

From 1971 to 1973, near the end of René Goscinny‘s enlightened regime (his Astérix compère Albert Uderzo ably serving as art director), French bédé periodical Pilote featured a high-calibre series of “high art” pastiches. It was entitled Le Musée Pilote.

The pages of 1973’s Pilote Annuel revealed an Ache tour de force, wherein he retold the classic tale of Little Red Riding Hood in comics format *and* in the style of a number (seven, to be exact… but not *the* Group of Seven) of famous painters. The set bore the following cheeky introduction: « Within the scope of the Musée Pilote, we came to realise that numerous artists had never tried their hand at comics. Thanks to our friend Jean Ache, it is now a done deal, and we are pleased to present the tryout pages crafted by these illustrious beginners. It is for you to decide whether these attempts are conclusive, and if these young people’s efforts should be encouraged. »

Here we go!

AcheRousseauA
After Henri Rousseau (French, 1944-1910). Incidentally, « Tire la chevillette, la bobinette cherra » means « Pull the bobbin, and the latch will go up. »

AcheLégerA
After Fernand Léger (French, 1881-1955).

AcheBuffetA
After Bernard Buffet (French, 1928-1999).

AchePicassoA
After Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973).

AcheDeChiricoA
After Giorgio de Chirico (Italian, 1888-1978).

AcheMiróA
After Joan Miró (Spanish, 1893-1983). My first encounter with Miró came through this item; if I’d been hipper, it might have been this instead… but I was only six years old at the time.

AcheMondrianA
After Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872-1944).

PiloteAnnuelA
And here’s the cover. This is Pilote Annuel 74 (no. 731 bis, Nov. 1973). It comprised, in roughly equal measure, a selection of the past year’s best work and new material.

My initial brush with Ache came in the early 1970s and his short-lived Pastec (1968-70, 9 issues, plus one album). I only ever got my hands the album (« L’Agent secret chante à minuit », 1971), but I never forgot. Like many a childhood fascination, it came out of nowhere, then vanished.

AchePastecA
A sample from Pastec no. 4 (January 1969, Société française de presse illustrée). The birdie is Psitti, Pastec’s loyal Ara; the Llama is Camélo; and Pastec himself is the displeased fellow with the green hat in the middle tier.

I honestly hadn’t planned to write two consecutive posts about nearly-forgotten French artists named Jean, but something else fell through… and here we are. Sorry!

-RG

Jean-Claude Forest, ‘Father of Adult Comics’

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« J’fais dans la bande dessinée, qu’est bien plus pop que le ciné!* » — J.C. Forest (Une chanson, 1973)

On the eighty-ninth anniversary of his birth, let’s salute in passing one of the great pioneers of French comics, namely Jean-Claude Forest (Sept. 11, 1930 – Dec. 29, 1998), Barbarella’s creator, the man who, in the early 1960s, ushered strictly-for-kids bandes dessinées into decidedly more risqué and adult realms of eroticism, fantasy and fun.

Born on September 11, 1930 in the Parisian suburb of Le Perreux-sur-Marne, he passed away in 1998 at the age of 68, but not before leaving behind a body of work of breathtaking depth and variety. Barbarella aside (sorry, miss): Le Copyright (the springboard for Nikita Mandryka‘s Le Concombre masqué), Hypocrite, Mystérieuse matin midi et soir (his wild riff on Jules Verne’s L’île mystérieuse), Bébé Cyanure, Les Naufragés du temps (illustrated by Paul Gillon), Enfants c’est l’Hydragon qui passe… « et j’en passe », as they say.

Here are a few highlights to give you a sense of the man’s imagination, versatility and tremendous draftsmanship, in chronological order.

BarbarellaA
An excerpt is from Les colères du mange-minutes (1965-66), the second volume of Barbarella’s adventures. Yes, there was a film adaptation, but it’s, well, pretty vapid. Director Roger Vadim was kind of the Gallic John Derek; both were fair-to-middling directors whose chief talent was womanizing. Though one has to admit it *was* quite a talent.

GiffWiffMarieMathA
« No, you mustn’t love me… » Detail from the cover of giff wiff, revue de la bande dessinée no.22 (Dec. 1966), previewing its article on Forest’s 1965 experimental tv cartoon Marie Mathématique, which you can watch here. It features the dulcet tones of Le beau Serge, certainly one of the most overrated artistes of the 20th century. Too much competition to call the race to the bottom, though. 😉

ForestMystérieuseA
Born out of a misunderstanding between the editorial team of Pif Gadget and Forest, Mystérieuse matin midi et soir proved too labyrinthine for the magazine’s young readership, cost the publishers a bundle, and only two of its three parts appeared in Pif. Fear not, it was collected in album form the following year. This is a page from part 1, which saw print in Pif Gadget no. 111 (April, 1971).

ForestHypoCheval01A

ForestHypoCheval02A
A sequence from the rollicking N’importe quoi de cheval…, featuring Hypocrite, another of Forest’s spunky heroïnes. From Pilote Mensuel no. 6 (Dargaud, Nov. 1974).

A pair of pages from the melancholy, elegiac Enfants, c’est l’Hydragon qui passe « Children, there goes the Hydragon » (Casterman, 1984).

ForestHydragon18A

ForestHydragon02A
I’m sure it’s mere coincidence, but the boy, Jules, seems to be modelled after yet another Gainsbourg “muse”, pop nymphette Vanessa Paradis.

– RG

*I make comics, they’re far poppier than movies!

Barracks Life With Le Sergent Laterreur

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« Le sergent Laterreur resembles no-one. It’s impossible for anyone to be so ignoble, so sinister, so cruel. One feels that the two poor bastards that created him are exacting their revenge for all the humiliations suffered at the hands of the strong. One wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that the authors of Sergent Laterreur were Jewish, Black, Irish or Czech. They’re Belgian. » — Georges Wolinski

“Le Sergent Laterreur” is a strip that ran in the fabled bédé weekly Pilote from February 1971 to December 1973.

This vitriolic lampoon of military life (no Beetle Bailey this) was the brainchild of Belgians Touïs (né Vivian Miessen, b. 1940) and Gérald Frydman (b. 1942).

Pilote590A
Pilote no. 590 (February 21, 1971, Dargaud), the Sergent’s third appearance in the magazine and his first (of two) on the cover.

Laterreur4A

Laterreur4B
Episode 4: Flower Power

Laterreur15A

Laterreur15B
Episode 15: « Et tu retourneras les poussières ». The Sergent’s immortal maxim: « Don’t forget that dirt is our worst enemy! »

Laterreur80A

Laterreur80B
Episode 80: Les mots historiques. Laterreur thought the enemy was bluffing.

Miessen produced a few more comics during the 70s, and made a notable comeback contribution to L’Association‘s massive anthology Comix 2000, but he chiefly worked in animation. Frydman mostly pursued projects in photography and film, directing several short subjects.

Laterreur’s full effect is best experienced in massive doses, and L’Association, fully cognizant of that fact, issued a splendid Le Sergent Laterreur omnibus in 2006. An obscure creation, it remains obscure, but at least it’s available if you seek it out.

Laterreur85A

Laterreur85B
Episode 85: Du gâteau. A fitting way for a dotty old general to blow out his birthday candles.

Laterreur108A

Laterreur108B
The finale, Episode 108: Tapage nocturne. Now you know how it goes down, so to speak.

Fun factoid: The strip’s name presumably comes from the French title of a USA “boot camp” Korean War propaganda film from 1953, “Take the High Ground!“, directed by Richard Brooks. and starring Richard Widmark and Karl Malden.

– RG

Loro’s Abel Dopeulapeul, privé

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« The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little. »

― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

Dopey private detective parodies are a dime-a-dozen, and they seldom raise more than a lazy, jaded chuckle. With that out of the way, just how does Jean-Marc « Loro » Laureau (1943 – 1998)’s Les enquêtes d’Abel Dopeulapeul pull ahead of the pack? Let’s see: while it’s hardly side-splitting, it nevertheless scores precious points on the hilarity front by maintaining a mostly deadpan tone. But… one quick peek at the strip and the jig is up: it’s a glorious, unabashedly visual feast. Loro was blessed with that rather uncommon gift, the ability to seamlessly mix the cartoonish and the realistic. Even Wally Wood couldn’t pull that off. Frank Cho is a perfect contemporary example of someone who’s utterly incapable of it.

LoroPortraitA
Monsieur Laureau himself, in the late 1970s.

M.A. Guillaume, who penned the back cover copy for the second Abel collection, Sale temps pour mourir (1979, Dargaud), clearly gets the picture. I’ll translate:

« Dopeulapeul, a parodic and cretinized response to [Philip] Marlowe, views himself as that marvellous guy who stalks vice and corruption on fifty dollars a day plus expenses. Within the haze of his dream fed by adulterated bourbon, he doubtless imagines he’ll croak on some moonless night, alone like a dog behind the last trashcan of some filthy dead end. The reader will cackle maliciously, knowing no-one gives a toss about the death of a caricature. But he’ll be wrong. Dopeulapeul conducts himself like some village idiot in the throes of some clandestine passion for Lauren Bacall. His blasé detachment, dragging a language school aftertaste, is as seductive as an unkempt stinkbug. It matters little how offhandedly Loro may treat the tentative meanderings of this poor beggar. Within him slumbers a fascinated vision that survives all clichés: in the debauched night, a man moves along, and his shadow is weary of knowing too well the callousness of the blacktop and of men’s hearts. He is free and solitary and Death is at his heels.

Parody can’t put a dent to that, and Loro knows it full well. He may laugh, parody, demystify, “Sale temps pour mourir” is nonetheless an homage to an untouchable legend. »

Loro is all-but-forgotten nowadays, but his ability to channel vintage Will Eisner (particularly The Spirit) without aping him, while displaying plenty of his own pyrotechnics, by itself deserves a more prominent place in history.

LoroRequiem01ALoroRequiem02ALoroRequiem03ALoroRequiem04ALoroRequiem05ALoroRequiem06ALoroRequiem07ALoroRequiem08ALoroRequiem09ALoroRequiem10A

« Réquiem pour un privé », an early entry in the series, first saw print in Pilote Hors série aventure (No 17 bis, October 1975, Dargaud)

-RG

Philippe Caza’s Surreal Suburbia

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C’est un fou qui repeint son plafond et un autre fou arrive et lui dit: « Accroche-toi au pinceau, j’enlève l’échelle!*»

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Marcel (and the hapless Yvonne) meet the Homo-Detritus. From Pilote no. 47-bis (April, 1978)

Poor Marcel Miquelon: a simple suburban nobody, he merely wants to get a good night’s sleep, but it’s never in the cards. When he and his Yvonne go to bed, each night at 10, some din from above invariably keeps him awake and frustrated. So what can he do but seize his faithful broom by the handle and bang on the ceiling to manifest his discontent? And dreadful things happen, in increasingly byzantine shades of dreadfulness.

These loosely-connected vignettes appeared sporadically from 1975 to 1979, under the portmanteau heading of Scènes de la vie de banlieue in the French monthly Pilote (1974-1989). They were the brainchild of Philippe Cazaumayou, alias Caza (b. November 14, 1941, Paris), also a renowned science-fiction illustrator, which should certainly surprise no-one.

CazaPlafond01ACazaPlafond02ACazaPlafond03ACazaPlafond04AThis episode is titled Toujours du bruit au plafond (« Still some noise on the ceiling »); it originally saw print in Pilote Mensuel no. 34 (March, 1977). It’s the rare (possibly the only) one that ends peacefully for Marcel, perhaps because he didn’t bother with the broom. Better St. Peter than… well, everything else.

*One of the hoariest French jokes, everyone’s heard it, and its appeal has whirled countless times around the bend, deep into irony and meta-subtext. Thankfully, though, it’s actually translatable, at least verbally: A lunatic is painting the ceiling. Another madman comes along and says: « Hold on to the brush, I’m borrowing the ladder! »

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A ‘Scènes de la vie de banlieue’ collection (Dargaud, 1982). I agree: for all he’s gone through, Marcel Miquelon does deserve his own statue.

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The collected works (Les Humanoïdes associés, 2017)

-RG