By Peyo & Gos with backgrounds by François Walthéry: translated by Joe Johnson (Papercutz/NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-59707-717-0 (HB Album/Digital edition)
Let’s just clear up something here. Although they are both magnificent producers of comics past and present – and either singly or in collaboration – Belgium and France are not “the same”. Shared cultural mores and language, interlinked history and adjacent geographies have may have generated superficial similarities but the inventors of international icons Tintin and Asterix have always been as much defined by their unique views as mutual visions. All of which is my blathering brain-fodder to introduce a Belgian “superhero” today and a very different French one tomorrow…
In 1928, Pierre Culliford was born in Belgium to a family of British origin dwelling in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels. An admirer of the works of Hergé and the American comics licensed to Le Journal de Mickey, Robinson and Hurrah!, the lad honed his own artistic skills but the war and family bereavement forced him to forgo further education and get a job…
After working as a cinema projectionist, in 1945 Culliford joined C.B.A. animation studios, where he met future comics megastars André Franquin, Maurice De Bevere – who would become Morris – and Eddy Paape. When the studio closed, Pierre briefly studied at the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts before moving full-time into graphic advertising. In his spare time, he began submitting strips to the burgeoning post-war comics publishers.
His first sale was in April 1946. Pied-Tendre was a tale of American Indians that landed in Riquet, the comics supplement to the daily L’Occident newspaper. Further sales to other venues followed and in 1952 his knight Johan found a permanent spot in Le Journal de Spirou. Retitled Johan et Pirlout, the strip prospered and in 1958 introduced a strange bunch of blue woodland gnomes into the ongoing tale. They were called Les Schtroumpfs.
Culliford – by now using the nom de plume Peyo – would gradually turn those adorable little mites (known to most of the world as The Smurfs) into an all-encompassing global empire, but before being sucked onto that relentless treadmill, he found time to create a few other noteworthy strips such as the titanic tyke on view here today.
In December 1960, Benoît Brisefer – AKA Benedict Ironbreaker and/or (in Dutch) Steven Sterk – debuted in Le Journal de Spirou #1183. With some sly tips of the hat to Siegel & Shuster’s Superman – and Superboy – these wryly bucolic adventures celebrated a small boy with superhuman strength, speed, durability and vitality living in a generally quiet and unassuming little Belgian town.
Quiet, well-mannered, gentle and a bit lonely, Benny just happens to be the mightiest boy on Earth: able to crush steel or stone in his tiny hands, leap huge distances and run faster than a racing car. He is also generally immune to all physical harm, but his fatal and peculiarly ubiquitous weakness is that his astounding strength deserts him whenever he catches the slightest hint of a cold…
Most kids avoid him. It’s hard to make friends or play games when the merest kick pops a football like a balloon or a shrug can topple trees…
Benny seldom seeks to conceal his abilities – in fact he informs anyone who will listen – but other than startled crooks and bad guys, somehow no adults ever believe or catch on. They usually think he’s telling fibs or boasting and whenever he attempts to prove his claims, the unlucky lad gets another dose of galloping sniffles…
Well-past-it Brits of my vintage might remember him from weekly comics in the 1960’s. As Tammy Tuff – The Strongest Boy on Earth – and latterly as Benny Breakiron or Steven Strong, our beret-wearing champion appeared in Giggle and other periodicals from 1967 onwards.
With Peyo’s little blue cash-cows taking up ever larger amounts of his concentration and time, other members of his studio assumed greater responsibilities for Benoît/Benny. Years passed and Will (Willy Maltaite), Gos (Roland Goossens), Yvan Delporte, François Walthéry and Albert Blesteau all pitched in, with Jean Roba crafting many eye-catching Spirou covers, but by 1978 the demands of the Smurfs were all-consuming and all the studio’s other strips were retired.
You can’t keep a good super-junior down, though, and after Peyo’s death in 1992, his son Thierry Culliford and cartoonist Pascal Garray revived the strip, adding six more volumes to the eight generated by Peyo and his team between 1960 and 1978.
Thanks to the efforts of US publisher Papercutz, the first four (promised fifth release Bodoni Circus still languishes in limbo, but we can always hope…) gloriously genteel, outrageously engaging power fantasies are available to English-language readers. This yarn was originally collected in 1968 as 4th album Tonton Placide, with Peyo, co-writer Walthéry & co-artist Gos tapping into the global spy trend with marvellous aplomb.
It begins in sedate Vivejoie-la-Grande, where the sweet kid goes about his well-meaning, somewhat solitary life: doing good deeds in secret (like quietly popping a piano up to the fifth floor of an apartment block whilst weary delivery men are having a refreshing bevvy in a bar), respecting his elders and being as good a boy as he can…
At school, Prize Day closes and we learn that Benny’s true weakness is maths, although he did win a Good Conduct award and came top in Gym. The happily liberated kids trade tales of the holidays ahead of them and the titanic tyke reveals he’s spending his vacation with his uncle who works for P.O.O.T. Benny explains that his temporary guardian is a civil servant at the Department of “Protection Of Officials Travelling”… an actual armed bodyguard…
Disembarking later at a rural train station, the boy is greeted a by boisterous hulking blonde Adonis and quickly settles into a perfect country idyl, but the rest is ruined the next morning – initially by Uncle Placid’s workout and machine gun practise – but soon after by an urgent visit from the operative’s boss. The colonel needs a capable escort for the Finance Minister of the Principality of Fürengrootsbadenschtein when he collects his nation’s currency printing plates.
It’s such a simple, risk-free job that the Colonel even suggests the bodyguard could bring his current “babysitting assignment” along for the ride. Nobody has any inkling that a ruthless gang know of the potentially lucrative transfer and has begun a complex operation to secure the means of printing their own money…
Dutiful Placid reluctantly agrees, bringing the eager lad along to his Central Bank rendezvous with prickly, obnoxious Minister Mr. Chnik and straight into a complex ambush! With the adults all gassed by a disguised cleaning lady, Benny is completely unobserved when he foils the robbery by plucking her and an observation helicopter out of the sky and wrecking her sportscar-driving backup team.
Listening in from his secret lair, the sinister mastermind behind the plot cannot understand what he’s hearing…
By the time Benny brings the plates back to the bank, everybody is blearily regaining consciousness. As usual, nobody believes his story – or his polite claims that he’s really strong for his size – but the job is reassessed as highly risky. A police convoy is despatched, but the immediacy of the crisis means the little boy has to stay with Placid – which is fine with Benny…
As the plates, Mr. Chnik, Placid and Benny set out on a fraught drive to the Principality, they are dogged by cautious observers: career criminals who are having their own problems acclimatising to modern innovations like guns and shoes that double as radio communicators and tracking devices. Their reticence and ineptitude does nothing for the Boss’ manners or patience…
The covert reconnaissance leads to a massive, spectacular multi-vehicle highway ambush, and Placid cannot understand how they all survive the barrage of bullets and car crash. He does not believe it was Benny’s incredible intervention or that the kid subsequently clobbered a small army of thugs and armoured ATVs…
Now on high alert, Placid opts for subterfuge, taking his charges undercover and getting ever closer to Fürengrootsbadenschtein by commercial plane, trains and automobiles. At every stage, progress is stymied by the Boss and his ubiquitous operatives, with the villains winnowed down by the incredible – unseen – actions of the weird kid in the black beret…
Ultimately, however, the mastermind succeeds in capturing his targets, only to meet his match at his moment of triumph when Benny at last loses his temper…
A masterpiece of timing and breakneck pace, and deliciously informed by the 1960s pop culture espionage fad, Uncle Placid delivers daft delights via bombastic bouts of uproarious slapstick comedy action. A superbly stirring spoof with echoes of classic comedies such as Carry on Spying, The Intelligence Men or The Spy with a Cold Nose, it displays the wonder boy’s resolute dynamism, helpful nature and need to be a good citizen: blending deft wit with hilarious stunts. Here is another fabulously winning fantasy of childhood agency and validation, offering a distinctly Old-World spin to the notion of superheroes by providing adventure and chortles for all.
© Peyo™ 2014 – licensed through Lafig Belgium. English translation © 2014 by Papercutz All rights reserved.