By Derib & Job, coloured by Dominique and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-144-6 (Album PB/Digital edition)
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A World We All Want … 9/10
In 1964 children’s magazine Le Crapaud à lunettes was founded by Swiss journalist André Jobin, who then wrote for it under the pseudonym Job. Three years later, he hired Franco-Swiss artist Claude de Ribaupierre AKA “Derib”. The illustrator had launched his own career as an assistant at Studio Peyo (home of Les Schtroumpfs): working on The Smurfs strips for venerable weekly Le Journal de Spirou. Thereafter, 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 au fait 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 such groundbreaking strips as Buddy Longway, Celui-qui-est-nà-deux-fois, Jo (first comic to deal with AIDS), Pour toi, Sandra and La Grande Saga Indienne haven’t been translated into English yet, but still we patiently wait in hope and anticipation…
Over decades, much of Derib’s stunning works have featured his beloved Western themes: magnificent geographical backdrops and epic landscapes. Yakari is considered by fans and critics to be the strip which led him to his deserved mega-stardom. Debuting in 1969, self-contained episodes trace the eventful, nomadic life of a young Oglala Lakota boy on the Great Plains, with stories set sometime after the introduction of horses (by colonising Conquistadores) but before the coming of modern Europeans.
The series – which also generated two separate animated TV series and a movie – has notched up 42 albums thus far: a testament to its evergreen vitality and brilliance of its creators, even though originator Job moved on and Frenchman Joris Chamblain took on the writing in 2016.
Abundant with gentle whimsy and heady compassion, Yakari’s life is a largely bucolic and happy existence: at one with nature and generally free from privation or strife. For the sake of dramatic 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 and brave, and who can – thanks to a boon of his totem guide the Great Eagle – converse with animals…
In 1997, Yakari et Les Cornes fourchues became the 23rd European album, but as always, content and set-up are both stunningly simple and sublimely accessible, affording new readers total enjoyment with a minimum of familiarity or foreknowledge required…
It’s spring and everything is vivid and portentous. As Yakari and his pony Little Thunder frolic in the prairie grasses, they see old Quiet Rock fishing. As he’s nowhere near water and using a moccasin as bait, they simply have to know what he’s doing…
And thus begins the boy’s introduction to the wondrous prairie antelope called pronghorns. How different it might have all been if the magnificent curious beast had not spooked when the little human spoke in words a stag could understand?
As the creature bounds away, Yakari stumbles over well-hidden twin fawns – Topii and Tipoo – and meets their extremely protective new mother. By morning his bruises are healed and the deer are convinced Yakari is not a hunter seeking an easy meal, but they can’t afford to relax as wolves and coyotes are always near at this time of year…
With papa keeping vigil, boy and fawns bond, playing lots of reindeer games (sorry, couldn’t stop myself) but things get extremely serious when Yakari sees a plume of smoke. In a flash, everyone is fleeing a terrifying wildfire and the massive stampede racing ahead of it, and that’s when the boy realizes Topii is missing…
When the immediate danger subsides, boy and pony go looking for the kid, but nobody really expects a happy outcome. Thankfully, Topii has made a very useful friend in a sagacious, protective porcupine and Yakari is not the kind of boy to lose hope or stop until a job is done….
Yakari is one of the most unfailingly absorbing and entertaining all-ages strips ever conceived. It should be in every home, right next to Tintin, Uncle Scrooge, Asterix, Calvin and Hobbes and The Moomins. It’s never too late to start reading something wonderful, so why not get back to nature as soon as you can?
Original edition © Derib + Job – Editions du Lombard (Dargaud – Lombard s. a.) – 2000. All rights reserved. English translation 2024 © Cinebook Ltd.