By Willy Lambil & Raoul Cauvin, with Leonardo; translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-80044-199-6 (Album PB/Digital edition)
This book includes Discriminatory Content employed for dramatic and comedic effect.
Devised by Louis “Salvé” Salvérius & Raoul Cauvin – who scripted the first 64 volumes until retirement in 2020 – Les Tuniques Bleues (or Dutch iteration De Blauwbloezen) began as the 1960s ended: created to soften the blow of losing Lucky Luke when that mild-mannered maverick megastar defected from Le Journal de Spirou to arch-rival periodical Pilote. From the start, the substitute strip was popular: swiftly becoming one of the most-consumed bande dessinée series in Europe. After stints by the Jose-Luis Munuera/BeKa writing partnership, it is now scribed by Kris and up to 70 volumes.
Salvé was a cartoonist in the Gallic big-foot/big-nose humour manner, and after his sudden death in 1972, successor Willy “Lambil” Lambillotte gradually moved towards a more realistic – albeit still overtly comedic – tone and look. Born in 1936, Lambil is Belgian and, after studying Fine Art in college, joined publishing giant Dupuis in 1952 as a letterer. Arriving on Earth two years later, scripter Cauvin was also Belgian and (prior to joining Dupuis’ animation department in 1960) studied Lithography. He soon discovered his true calling was comedy and began a glittering, prolific writing career at LJdS. In addition, he scripted dozens of long-running, award winning series including Cédric, Les Femmes en Blanc and Agent 212: clocking up more than 240 separate albums. Les Tuniques Bleues alone has sold over 15 million copies… and counting. Cauvin died on August 19th 2021, but his vast legacy of barbed laughter remains and – as of ten minutes ago – Lambril, at 90, is still drawing the Boys in Blue…
The Bluecoats are long-suffering protagonists Sergeant Cornelius Chesterfield and Corporal Blutch: worthy, honest fools in the manner of Laurel & Hardy; ill-starred US cavalrymen defending a vision of a unified America during the War Between the States – well, at least one of them is, as the comrades spend all of their time bickering over the war, patriotism, honour, and the stupid callousness of their leaders and cause…
The original format offered single-page gags set around an Indian-plagued Wild West fort, but from second volume Du Nord au Sud, the sad-sack soldiers were situated back East, perpetually fighting in the American Civil War. Subsequent exploits are set within the scant timeframe of the Secession conflict, but often range far beyond the traditional environs of the sundered USA, dipping into and embracing actual events (like today’s tale), tackling genuine, thoroughly researched moments of history…
Blutch is an everyday, whinging little-man-in-the street: work-shy, mouthy, devious and ferociously critical of the army and its inept orchestrators and commanders. Ducking, diving, deserting at every opportunity, he’s you or me – except at his core he’s smart, principled, loyal and even heroic… if no easier option presents itself.
Chesterfield is a big, burly professional fighting man: a proud career soldier of the 22nd Cavalry who devoutly believes in nationalistic patriotism and the esprit-de-corps of The Army. Brave, bold, never shirking his duty and appallingly hungry to be a medal-wearing hero, he’s quite naïve yet also loves his cynical little pal. Naturally, they quarrel like a married couple, fight like brothers and simply cannot agree on the point and purpose of the horrendous war they are trapped in. That situation again stretches their friendship to breaking point in this cunningly conceived instalment, in which both find themselves again at odds…
On offer here is a far more plain-speaking and trenchant outing than usual, one including actual historical characters rather than regulation schtick & settings providing mostly humour. Coloured as ever by Vittorio Leonardo, Les Tuniques Bleues – Miss Walker was serialised continentally in Le Journal de Spirou #3773-3778, before becoming the 54th album in 2010, and now Cinebook’s 20th translated Bluecoats book.
As already hinted, it differs from the majority of tales treading a fine line between comedy and righteous anger, so if you share these books with younger kids, best read this one pre-emptively first. Here, swingeing wit and sardonic comedy are doctor’s orders with slapstick reigned in and “bigfoot clown” antics toned down and with even the illustration carefully reined in. Thus the more authentic illustration provides a magnificently barbed, double pronged assault on masculine attitudes and military protocols and procedures, as a wild card arrives to propagate rebellion on two fronts (sexism and military ruthlessness)…
Mary Edwards Walker (26th November 1832-21st February 1919) qualified as a doctor in 1855, earning her degree from the renowned and prestigious Syracuse Medical College, New York. In her most eventful life she was an abolitionist; battlefield surgeon (the US army’s first female one); prisoner of war; Prohibitionist, writer; lecturer and suffragette, as well as the only woman in US history to be awarded the Medal of Honor. When war broke out, she was immediately rejected on applying to serve as a Union forces medic, but, after working in a Washington DC field hospital, she was sought out and hired by the military to work on the front lines. You should go read up on her. She was a forceful, successful and amazing pioneer and advocate of all the right causes…
Deeply wedded to her beliefs and causes, Dr. Walker’s comics analogue makes quite a splash when she arrives. Clad in her outlandish trademark “bloomers”, she looks very much like a man…
As usual the Confederate and Union armies have fought themselves to a bloody standstill and barely have enough men mobile enough to mount an attack. Particularly vexatious are the daily-rising desertion rates, but now these are compounded by the fact that the Union medical team has been eradicated and survivors, sick and wounded are just piling up in an old community building in a nearby village. Thankfully, General Alexander’s request for a replacement reaches Ulysees Grant at just the right moment. The military Commander-in-Chief has a growing problem involving one doctor he would be happy to lend his suffering troops…
As always a command decision divides the old comrades and unleashes calamity and catastrophe. It begins with the ferocious, short-tempered doctor requesting a permanent assistant and which wily Blutch immediately volunteers for in his constant search to stay out of the Greycoats’ – and his own superiors’ – sights.
Despite Chesterfield’s constant chiding, lazy, idle Blutch is soon avidly sweeping floors, making beds, changing bandages, scrubbing bodies and delousing patients and the scratch-hospital itself. Soon he’s unwillingly progressed to dressing wounds and helping to lop off limbs…
Meanwhile, his formidable new boss goes about making more enemies. From the start Walker laid down her law: the hospital was her domain and she could not be overruled regarding its function. Moreover, she obsessively despised smoking, boozing and gambling and refused to let her patients – or any man in her sight – indulge in such dangerous vices. Sadly, for the nonplussed Alexander’s general staff, Walker is possibly the best surgeon and doctor they will ever meet. Her rate of success is astounding and many who should be dead are diligently restored to active service.
Tragically, that’s where her biggest fault comes into play and it’s one Blutch wholeheartedly supports. Wherever Mary Walker cures the wounded, her lectures somehow provoke mass-desertions…
Her unrestrained truthfulness infects the unceasing arguments between Blutch & Chesterfield and soon the whole camp from callow replacements to scarred veterans are (over)hearing facts they would rather not face, and before long those desertion figures are skyrocketing…
With morale in tatters, the staff try reason and bluster, but Walker refuses to mend her ways or hold her tongue, and Alexander, alerted to the imminent threat of another Confederate attack, embarks on a ruthless scheme. It involves having Walker and Blutch take a medical wagon to troops lying wounded beyond the camp, and Chesterfield soon has reason to regret inveigling himself aboard to look after his wrong-headed (but instantly-aware-of-subterfuge) pal…
The entire notion is to have Walker captured by the enemy. An apolitical healer at heart, she immediately begins treating Rebel wounded… until the cycle begins again and Confederate troops start to abscond in droves. With battle postponed due to lack of manpower, the Greys find their own way of removing the doctor, which circuitously lands Blutch & Chesterfield back where they started. However, with Walker safely removed from doing more harm, General Alexander has time to punish the pestilential pair in a most unique and far-seeing manner…
Highlighting not only the disparities between officers and enlisted men but also foundational America’s class structure and entrenched gender divisions, Bloomers and Bone Saws is a disturbingly edgy epic that makes fun from the very worst of human endeavours. Shocking, powerful and hard-hitting as well as painfully funny, beautifully realised and eminently readable, this is one of the most sardonic Bluecoats yarns in the canon and finest kind of war-story/Western. It appeals to the best, not worst, of the human spirit; and hopefully that means you.
© Dupuis, 2010 by Lambil & Cauvin. All rights reserved. English translation © 2026 Cinebook Ltd.