« Qui a eu cette idée folle? » — France Gall

This is *nearly* a tale of two Rolands, both named Sabatier, both born in France and in the year 1942. One deservedly became a darling of the avant-garde as a standard bearer of the ‘Lettrisme’ art movement. He was evidently a genius, he passed away in 2022, and well, that’s not the one I’ll be writing about, at least this time.

So we’re left with the other Roland Sabatier (1942 –), who’s a bit of a cypher: the Lambiek comiclopedia somehow failed to include him, despite his considerable achievements. Roland also — bafflingly — fails to even rate a passing mention in Richard Medioni‘s otherwise exhaustive Mon camarade, Vaillant, Pif Gadget, L’Histoire complète 1901-1994. To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t heard of him until this year, when I ordered a batch of cheap issues of Vaillant from a friendly French dealer. While I already knew the vast majority of the fabled bédé weekly’s stars, one unknown entity stood out, by virtue of both obscurity and evident talent.

Pépin le long is a high concept strip about a poor schmuck who keeps getting fired, generally through some innocent mistake. His moniker is a play on Pépin le bref (714-768), one of the early kings of France, and a sterling example of the absolute necessity of keeping church and state separate. *That* Pépin is perhaps most famous for being papa to Charlemagne (748–814), King of the Franks and first Holy Roman Emperor.

There were only ten Pépé le long strips, and I’ve managed to gather seven. Not bad, given their rarity.

Before Pépin, in 1965-66, Sabatier had illustrated several — some forty — instalments of Vaillant’s established « Au rendez-vous de l’aventure » (1956-66), wherein readers sent in their personal stories of everyday adventure. Here’s a pair of examples.

-RG