Yakari volume 15: The First Gallop


By Derib & Job, coloured by Dominique, translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-369-7

Children’s magazine Le Crapaud à lunettes was founded in 1964 by Swiss journalist André Jobin who then wrote for it under the pseudonym Job. Three years later he hired fellow French-Swiss artist Claude de Ribaupierre who chose the working name “Derib”. The illustrator had launched his own career as an assistant at Studio Peyo (home of Les Schtroumpfs), working on Smurfs strips for venerable weekly Spirou. Together they created the splendid Adventures of the Owl Pythagore before striking pure comics gold a few years later with their next collaboration.

Derib – equally at home with enticing, comically dynamic “Marcinelle” cartoon style yarns and devastatingly compelling meta-realistic action illustrated action epics – went on to become one of the Continent’s most prolific and revered creators. It’s a crime that such groundbreaking strips as Celui-qui-est-né-deux-fois, Jo (the first comic ever published dealing with AIDS), Pour toi, Sandra and La Grande Saga Indienne) haven’t been translated into English yet, but we still patiently wait in hope and anticipation…

Many of Derib’s stunning works over the decades feature his cherished Western themes; magnificent geographical backdrops and epic landscapes. Yakari is considered by fans and critics to be the strip which first led him to deserved mega-stardom.

Debuting in 1969, Yakari follows the life of a young Oglala Lakota boy on the Great Plains; set sometime after the introduction of horses by the Conquistadores but before the coming of the modern White Man.

The series – which has generated two separate TV cartoon series and is in pre-production for a movie release – recently celebrated its 39th album Le jour de silence: a testament to the strip’s evergreen vitality and the brilliance of its creators.

Overflowing with gentle whimsy and heady compassion, young Yakari enjoys a largely bucolic existence: at one with nature and generally free from privation or strife. For the sake of our delectation, however, the ever-changing seasons are punctuated with the odd crisis, generally resolved without fuss, fame or fanfare by a little lad who is smart, brave… and can – thanks to the boon of his totem guide the Great Eagle – converse with all animals …

Originally released in 1990, Le premier galop was the 16th European album, but – as always with the best books – the content and set-up are both stunningly simple and effectively timeless, affording new readers total enjoyment with a minimum of familiarity or foreknowledge required…

Today’s tale begins as dutiful Yakari struggles to carry water back to his mother as she prepares dinner. Always thinking, the boy believes he’s come up with a more efficient method to transport the clay pitchers, but his dog Drooping Ear refuses to play along…

Discussing the minor debacle with onlooking sage Tranquil Ear, Yakari gets a history lesson on the time before the People discovered horses and decides to use his young colt Little Thunder as his proposed beast of burden.

So enthused is he with his scheme and cleverness, that when the pony objects and runs away from the corral, Yakari feels both betrayed and baffled…

That night the boy writhes in a guilty dream in which Tranquil Ear takes him on a journey to a desert wilderness. Bored and lonely, the lad crafts incredible but unsatisfactory beasts out of clay before stumbling onto a familiar shape which comes fully alive and returns with him to his home where they become the greatest of friends. When he awakes Yakari is lonely again, despite all his (human) friends trying to comfort him.

Eventually, it takes the intervention of Great Eagle to make the crestfallen lad realise that it is his own selfishness and lack of respect that drove Little Thunder to run away and the boy resolves to hunt him down wherever he is and beg him to return. First though, Yakari needs to apologise to Drooping Ear and earn his much-needed assistance…

Exotically enticing, deviously educational and compellingly instructional, this salutary fable allows Derib & Job full rein to display their astounding and compelling narrative virtuosity: a glorious graphic tour de force which captures the appealing humanity of our diminutive hero, and a visually stunning, seductively smart and happily heart-warming saga to delight young and old alike.

Yakari is one of the most unfailingly absorbing all-ages strips every conceived and should be in every home, right beside Tintin, Uncle Scrooge, Asterix and The Moomins.
Original edition © Derib + Job – Editions du Lombard (Dargaud- Lombard s. a.) 2002. English translation 2017 © Cinebook Ltd.