With the death of Jacques Martin last week, another celebrated member of the legendary Hergé studios has gone. Régric, the artist who drew the most recent book in Martin’s Lefranc series, pays hommage to Martin by showing his arrival in the Clear Line studio in heaven, where he is greeted by E.P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor and, of course, Hergé himself.
(via Blake, Jacobs & Mortimer)
Flemish cartoonist Tom Bouden, best known for his series of gay comics, recently published a quite lovely album called “Paniek in Stripland” (Panic in Comic Land). It’s a book that pays hommage to everything that made classic Flemish comics great, and features every Flemish comics character that has been around since the sixties.
The storyline is quite simple : a plot by the united comics villains has resulted in the disappearance of all comic heroes. After an urgent meeting by the united comics creators, two lesser-known hopefuls, Kroepie and Boelie Boem Boem are asked to come to the rescue.
While most of the story will be beyond everybody who wasn’t raised on a steady diet of Jommeke, De Rode Ridder and Suske & Wiske (not to mention Thomas Pips, Dees Dubbel and others), some of the scenes might be quite intriguing for those interested in Eurocomics. Take the scene pictured above, presenting the cartoonists council mentioned before. We see Hergé presiding over the meeting, but the careful observant also will recognize many more comics luminaries.
In the top-right frame the following cartoonists are present : Pom (of Piet Pieter & Bert Bibber fame), Marc Legendre (Biebel), Erik Meijnen, Marc Sleen and Jan Bosschaert. In the frame directly below, we see, a.o. Jef Nys, Dirk Stallaert, Paul Geerts, Maurice De Bevere (Lucky Luke), Bob De Moor, Raoul Cauvin and André Franquin. The older guy with the sideburns in the third strip is Willy Vandersteen, creator of Suske & Wiske and one of the founding fathers of Flemish comics.
In 1979, when Tintin celebrated his 50th birthday, Casterman published a small booklet in which Hergé explained how he and his team went about creating the quiffed one’s adventures. As an example, they used the fabled page 22b from Tintin Et Les Picaros, at that time Tintin’s latest, and eventually also his last adventure. While drafting that book, Hergé and Bob De Moor, his second-in-command, accidentally had provided for 65 pages, instead of the obligatory 64, and so one page had to go. This was later also reprinted in Tintin’s Imaginary Museum.
The booklet was called “Fifty years of real fun work“, but judging by Bob De Moor’s illustration on the cover, I wonder if this title was not totally in irony…
By the way, this post is dedicated to Dean Haspiel, on his birthday. I’m sure he’ll appreciate the sentiment of the picture. Many happy returns, Dino…
When I started listening to rock music in the early eighties, Belgian music ruled the airwaves (in Belgium, at least). All of a sudden, we had bands like Luna Twist, Allez Allez, Toy, The Bet, Red Zebra and TC Matic, playing a whole range of exciting tunes. And even though my tastes have expanded over the years, they still tend to be my benchmark for good music.
But, like I said, it was all very much contained by our country’s borders. And then, all of a sudden, a band from Ghent managed to record a complete LP in Abbey Road ! And on Parlophone ! Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present the Belgian Beatles – or rather, The Machines, as they would come to be known.
“A World Of Machines” was launched on the world 25 years ago today, and it was one of the first LP’s that I continuously played front-to-back. I particularly liked the uptempo songs, like “It’ll Be Allright” and “Pick And Choose”, only later to find that the best ones (“I’m Into Something Good” and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”) were Goffin & King covers. Today I rather enjoy the more funky songs, but it’s the straight rock that still makes me drive faster.
So, what does this all have to do with comics ? The cover of the album was drawn by none other than Bob De Moor, not only Hergé’s right hand and creator of some of the best Tintin books, but also a cartoonist in his own right.
De Moor’s passed away a long time ago, and after two more, rather disappointing albums, the Machines kicked the bucket as well. But both still live on… It will be allright…
Since this blog is something of a continuation of my Yahoo Group, i’ve decided to post some stuff from time to time that has made the rounds there. I’ll try to limit myself to stuff that’s fairly public domain.
To start with, here’s a series of illustrations that Johan De Moor did for a publication that was meant to show us Belgian citizens the way through our labyrinthine government bodies.
What’s interesting about this, is that De Moor has brought back to life Balthazar, a character his father, Bob De Moor, created as a filler in Tintin magazine. Bob De Moor, of course, being the genius that gave the later Tintin books the lustre they deserved.
Enjoy…
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