Category: European Classics

By Jean-Michel Charlier & Francis Bergése (Amusement International Limited)
No ISBN

In advance of the imminent release of a fully translated series from Cinebooks I’m highlighting this brave oddity from the late 1980s; one of many attempts to bring the fabulous wealth and variety of European comics to the infamously resistant New World.

The strip was actually created by Georges Troisfontaines and drawn by drawn by Victor Hubinon (who worked on it until his death in 1978) before being handed to Jean-Michel Charlier, then working as a junior artist. Troisfontaines was director of the Belgian publisher World Press Agency. Charlier’s fascination with human-scale drama and rugged realism had been seen in such strips as L’Agonie du Bismark (‘The Agony of the Bismark’), a “true-war” tale published in Spirou in 1946.

As well as going on together to create Tarawa Atoll Sanglant (‘Tarawa, Bloody Atoll’ 1948-1949), Charlier devised such landmark features as ‘Tanguy and Laverdure’ (with Uderzo and later Jijé), ‘Barbe-Rouge’ (with Hubinon) and ‘Jacques le Gall’ (with MiTacq).

With fellow master-storytellers Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny, he formed the Édifrance Agency, which promoted and specialised in communication arts and comics strips. Charlier and Goscinny were edited Pistolin magazine (1955 to 1958) and created Pilote magazine in 1959.

His greatest triumph is the iconic Western series Blueberry (created in 1963 with Jean Giraud/Moebius). Four years before his death in 1989 Charlier expanded the feature by developing with artist Colin Wilson ‘La Jeunesse de Blueberry’ which explored the boyhood of Europe’s most memorable cowboy. He wrote Buck Danny until his death whereupon his artistic collaborator Francis Bergése (who had replaced Hubinon in 1978) took sole charge of the adventures of the American Air Ace.

Buck Danny premiered in the legendary magazine Spirou in January 1947 and continues to this day. The strip describes the improbably long and historically pivotal career of the eponymous US Navy pilot and his two comrades Sonny Tuckson and Jerry Tumbler. It is one of the world’s last aviation strips and a series which has always closely wedded itself to current affairs such as The Korean War, Bosnia and even Afghanistan.

Operation ‘Apocalypse’ (the first of two parts – although I’m unsure if the second was ever published in English) is a fast-paced yarn of terrorism and intrigue with a fiendish plan initiated to use hijacked atom bombs and a flight of stolen Grumman F-14 Tomcats to destroy Western Civilisation. Like all the Danny tales it is awesomely authentic: a breezy and compelling action thriller and although this particular edition suffers from a rushed and ill-favoured translation and poor hand lettering the vivacity and power of the artwork is quite stunning.

Hopefully the new edition from Cinebooks will correct all these minor glitches, bur since Operation ‘Apocalypse’ is the 40^th of the 51 albums published to date it may be awhile before we see it in restored glory even if the company starts from the present and works its way back to WWII…
© 1988 Novedi, Brussels. All Rights Reserved.

By Marti Riera (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 0-87416-042-1

Dick Tracy is one of the most well-known strips in the world and his contributions to the art form are many and indisputable. They occurred over many decades and the medium of graphic narrative grew up with it. Imagine the effect instant exposure – almost over exposure – to such an uncompromising, bombastic, iconic property on the artists of a nation where free-expression and creative autonomy was suppressed for generations.

That’s what happened when the death of General Franco (who held Spain in a fascistic time-warp from his victory in October 1936 until his death in November 1975) instantly opened-up and liberalized all aspects of Spanish life. As Art Spiegelman says in his introduction ‘decades of political and social repression gave way to a glorious eruption of creativity that allowed a full-fledged counterculture to come to life at just about the same time that America’s “Love Generation” gave way to what Tom Wolfe labeled the “Me Generation.”’

How odd yet fitting then that an American symbol of “the Establishment” so enchanted and captivated the young cartoonist Marti Riera that he assimilated every line and nuance to create this dark and angry homage concerning the tribulations of a seedy, desperate taxi-driver trapped in a vanished past and prey to a world at once free and dangerous, ungoverned and chaotic.

Driving the seedy part of town our hero picks up a high-rolling gambler who’s just won big, but his night goes horribly wrong when a knife-wielding thief hijacks the cab and robs his passenger. Luckily the Cabbie can handle himself and he quickly, brutally subdues the thug.

He’s a decent, hard-working man who lives with his ailing mother, humouring her talk of a mysterious inheritance, and allowing her to keep the embalmed cadaver of his father in the spare bedroom, but he’s tragically unaware that his citizen’s arrest will have terrible repercussions for them both.

When the son of the thief he captured is released from prison he immediately begins a grim campaign of retribution against the Cabbie that creates a maelstrom of tragedy, degradation and despair.

This is a harsh and uncompromising tale of escalating crime and uncaring punishments: bleakly cynical and populated with a cast of battered, desolate characters of increasingly degenerate desperation. Even the monsters are victims. But for all that the Cabbie is an incredibly compelling drama with strong allegorical overtones and brutally mesmerizing visuals. Any adult follower of the art form should be conversant with this superb work and hopefully a complete translated edition will emerge one day…
© 1987 Marti Riera. Introduction © 1987 Art Spiegleman. English language edition © 1987 Catalan Communications. All Rights Reserved.