Didier Comès
Didier Comès (born December 11, 1942 in Sourbrodt ; † March 7, 2013 there ) was a Belgian comic artist .
life and work
Comès, whose comics are often published only with his surname, was born as Dieter Hermann Comes in the German-occupied Belgian town of Sourbrodt near the German border. His father was German, his mother French. His first name was changed in 1949 by the school management of the community school in the district Sourbrodt-Bahnhof in Didier.
After attending drawing courses in Malmedy , Comès worked from 1959 to 1969 as an industrial designer in a textile factory in Verviers . He published his first professional comic drawings in the weekly youth supplement of the newspaper Le Soir . Work for Spirou , Pilote and A Suivre followed . Comès was a companion of famous comic artists such as Jacques Tardis , Francois Bourgeon , Enki Bilal and Francois Schuiten ; along with them, he was one of the regular authors of the renowned comic magazine A Suivre . Comès made his international breakthrough with the comic novel Silence , for which he received the Yellow Kid in 1980 , the Grand Prix Saint-Michel and in 1981 the Prix Alfred for the best album.
In the beginning his style oscillated between funny and science fiction , at the end of the 1970s he came up with his distinctive linework, which was very similar to his role model Hugo Pratt . Typical of his art was the affinity to outsiders who were stigmatized and rejected by society. The intrusion of the surreal into the realistic-looking milieus also became his trademark in Silence, der Mute , Die Wildkatze and Eva . Nightmarish images and expressive, black and white graphics as well as the narrative depth of his comics pull the reader in.
In 2012, an extensive retrospective of his work was exhibited in the Museum of Fine Arts in Liège . Comès died of pneumonia at the age of 71. In his birthplace Sourbrodt, Comès, who liked to describe himself as a bastard of two cultures, was erected a memorial stone on the edge of the High Fens .
Works (selection)
- Silence, the dumb one . Carlsen Verlag , Reinbek 1982, ISBN 3-551-02701-3 (Original title: Silence .).
- The wild cat . Edition Moderne , Zurich 1990, ISBN 3-907010-51-5 (original title: La belette .).
- Eve . Edition Moderne, Zurich 1992, ISBN 3-907010-64-7 .
literature
- Andreas C. Knigge : Comic lexicon . Ullstein Verlag , Frankfurt am Main; Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-548-36554-X , pp. 140, 141 .
- Franco Fossati: The great illustrated Ehapa comic dictionary . Ehapa-Verlag, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-7704-0865-9 , p. 59 .
- Albert Moxhet: The Dark Forests and "Silence" . Krautgarten - Forum for Young Literature, Sankt Vith 2002, p. 60, 63 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Didier Comès in the catalog of the German National Library
- Biography on lambiek.net (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Obituary in Grenz-Echo from March 8, 2013.
- ↑ A pioneer of the graphic novel. Retrieved March 19, 2020 .
- ^ A stone for the Bastard Comès (Grenz-Echo of November 13, 2013)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Comes, Didier |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Comès; Comes, Dieter; Comes, Hermann Dieter (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Belgian comic artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 11, 1942 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sourbrodt |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 7, 2013 |
| Place of death | Sourbrodt |