By Claude Jean-Philippe & Patrick Lesueur, translated by Wendy Payton (Eclipse Books)
ISBN: 978-0-913035-78-8 (Album TPB)
This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.
As well as a far greater appreciation of, and more accommodating definitions for performing and popular arts, the French just seem to instinctively cherish the magnificent ephemera of entertainment; examining and revisiting icons and landmarks of TV, film, modern music and yes, comics in ways English-speakers just don’t seem capable of.
At the beginning of the 1980s artist Patrick Lesueur collaborated with prestigious and prolific actor/director/producer/film critic/historian and occasional author Claude Jean Philippe on Portraits souvenirs des éditions Dargaud, a series of graphic biographies of US movie stars who changed the world. For their purposes that was Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Errol Flynn and the subject of this slim, beautiful chronicle translated for America by pioneering West Coast independent publisher Eclipse.
At best a part-time comics writer, Claude Lucien Nahon (April 20th 1933 – September 11th 2016) AKA Claude-Jean Philippe, was an essayist, diarist, director, documentarian and radio regular who waxed wise and lyrical about all aspects of cinema. This made him an ideal option as writer, whereas comics pro Lesueur began life as a window dresser before moving into bande dessinée in 1972, joining the creative staff of Pilote to illustrate its current affairs pages before moving into fiction with short eco-fables compiled as the album En Attendant le Printemps and limning Laurence Harlé’s, cop thriller Reste-t-il du Miel pour le thé. Latterly, he produced Detroit, Douglas Dunkerk, and many more, before succumbing to his true passion as a petrolhead and classic car collector; devoting his time to comics, histories and other publications about all aspects of motoring, such as classic car feature Enzo Ferrari, l’Homme aux Voitures Rouges.
Bogie (Bogey in the original French) is told in a haunting, conversationally first-person narrative as the moodily realistic yet whimsically refined life of one of the greatest screen gods of all time comes to elegiac life in a peculiarly downbeat and lowkey piece. The voyage is all the more fascinating because our tale unfolds in an engagingly static manner, but actually sounds and looks just like you’d expect – and want – Humphrey Bogart to talk to you if you met him in a bar. The restrained yet powerfully effective images shout “private photo album” in a candid, winningly intimate way that, just like the celluloid origins, leaves you wanting more.
Bogart apparently led an unremarkable life off-screen… or perhaps the creators just didn’t want this apparently hard-drinking, much-married legend to outshine his own cinematic legacy, but in terms of graphic novel entertainment this poetic picture-story is a stunning achievement worthy of your attention. Perhaps someday soon another publisher will re-release it and even translate those other silver screen sagas too…
Contents © 1984 Dargaud Editeur Paris by Claude Jean Philippe and Patrick Lesueur. 1989 This edition © 1989 Eclipse Books.