While French and Belgian comics publishers are continually trying to cash in on their heritage with a deluge of intégrales (hard cover collections of typically three or four albums each), these beautiful, large books quite often resemble the tombstones of a tradition. One after the other the classic series from the Franco-Belgian tradition are killed off, peter out or simply end because inspiration runs out.
The last in this line is Sammy, a series by Raoul Cauvin and Arthur Berckmans, set in Chicago in the 1920′s. Later this year, the fortieth book in this series, Boy, will be published, after which Cauvin and current artist Jean-Paul Van De Broeck will call it quits (still, forty books, that’s a pretty darned good run – Joe).
(cover to volume 40 of Sammy by Raoul Cauvin and Jean-Paul Van De Broeck, published Editions Dupuis)
Sammy tells of the adventures of Sammy Day and Jack Hattaway, two bodyguards who try to make a living in a city rife with gangsters, crime and filthy rich people. Their adventures were full of blasting tommyguns, exploding cars and hard-hitting fists, but the violence was never real. Nobody ever seemed to die in that pool of violence, and it that sense the harkened back to the tradition of the screwball comedy from the early years of Hollywood, which it combined with the themes and subjects of that other genre mainstay, the Noir drama.
Sammy was never mere entertainment. Like he did in the other series he wrote (Les Tuniques Bleues, Bouloumbouloum Et Guiliguili), Cauvin often took a subject that interested him, and wrote it into a story. Even though the purpose of the story was never to educate or to teach, you always learned something about the Depression, Prohibition or about race relations in 1930′s America. Cauvin’s attention to details was mirrored by Berkmans’ art, which, although full of action and often bordering on slapstick, was always accurate and correct. Cars, clothing, buildings looked as if they were real, and gave the stories a sense of closure in terms of mood and atmosphere.
(some panels from Sammy: Boy by Raoul Cauvin and Jean-Paul Van De Broeck, published Editions Dupuis)
In 1996, Berckmans left the series to Flemish artist Jean-Paul Van Den Broeck. Thirteen years and nine books with dwindling success later, it seems that the story is finally over for the two Gorilla’s from Chicago. But the great books still remain.
Wim Lockefeer lives in Belgium where he is wondering how cool he would look in a Fedora hat and a Tommygun shaped water super blaster. You can read more on his Ephemerist blog.
Tue, Apr 21, 2009
Comics and cartoons, From our Continental Correspondent