On the night of September 25th, Belgian comic creator Raymond Macherot died at the age of 84. He was one of the last creators of the heydays of the Franco-Belgian comic, and was responsible for some of the best animal comics created in that era, as well as the quintessential secret agent pastiche, Clifton.
(Raymond Macherot, photo borrowed from Le Vif)
After stints with various magazines as a cartoonist and general illustrator, Macherot started working as an illustrator for Tintin magazine in 1953, providing story illustrations and covers. In 1954 he created his first series, Chlorophylle, about a little dormouse and his friend who fight the oppressing forces of an evil animal dictator. Initially these stories were set in an anonymous countryside, but in 1957, Macherot created the island of Croquefredouille, a parallel world for anthropomorphic animals, with a technological development very similar to the human world at that time. Strangely enough, these stories were not published in albums until 1980.
(Chlorophylle: Conspirateurs by Raymond Macherot, published Lombard)
In 1959, Macherot created the secret agent Clifton, an archetypical stiff upper lip British agent whose phlegmatic attitude towards mayhem resulted in one of the best characters in its kind ever created. Macherot only did three books about Clifton until 1964, when he quit Tintin to work for that other great Belgian comic weekly, Spirou. His series remained the property of Le Lombard, the publisher of Tintin, and were taken over by other artists and writers, who would turn them into long-running series with relative success.
For Spirou, Macherot created a new series, which was a bit of a combination of the best parts of Chlorophile and Clifton. Chaminou was a cat detective who operated in an anthropomorphised animal society called Zoolande. Chaminou’s first adventure, Chaminou et le Khrompire, should be regarded as Macherot’s best work, in my opinion. It combines suspense with lampooning and, even though it was conceptualised as a first book in a series, it really stands on its own. If it were published today, it would probably appeal very much to the fans of Bone, Chickenhare or Spiral Bound. The series was discontinued after one story however (to be revived in the late 80′s with a different team and a different publisher), and Macherot started working on Sibylline, again a story about a mouse and her companion. Macherot would continue to work on this book until his retirement in 1990, either alone or in collaboration with Paul Deliège.
On his other work for Spirou, Macherot collaborated with all the greats of his time, such as René Goscinny (for Panoutffle), Raoul Cauvin (Mirliton), Yvan Delporte and André Franquin (Isabelle), either as an artist or a writer.
Le Vif summed up Macherot’s importance for the Franco-Belgian comic as follows: “In drawing a caricature of the world of man through the little world of fields and woods, Macherot always injected his work with a very personal type of poetry. He lived in the hills of Verviers and preferred the seasonal rhythms of nature to the timeless brouhaha of the cities. A great and classic creator and praised by all, he created some of the best pages in the history of the Belgian comic.” You can read more about Macherot’s life and career on Wikipedia and the always-trusty Lambiek.
Fri, Sep 26, 2008
Comics and cartoons, From our Continental Correspondent