Jean-Michel Charlier

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Jean-Michel Charlier

Jean-Michel Charlier (born October 30, 1924 in Liège , Belgium ; † July 10, 1989 in Paris , France ) was a Belgian comic book scenarioist. He is considered one of the most important European authors of adventure comics and wrote, among other things, the well-known western series Lieutenant Blueberry .

Life

1920s to 1940s

Jean-Michel Charlier showed a particular interest in storytelling at a young age and thought up knight comics, for example, which he drew in large notebooks. In 1942 he began to study law. From 1944 he published simple comic strips about the profession of airplane pilot and aviation in the Belgian comic magazine Spirou . At that time, Charlier was still working as an author and draftsman in personal union. His highly detailed airplane pictures were very popular with the young readers of Spirou magazine. In 1946, Charlier met the young draftsman Victor Hubinon and began working with him to design the aviator comic series Buck Danny . At the end of the 1940s, Charlier acquired a pilot's license for research purposes and worked for a time as a courier pilot for the Sabena . In Buck Danny, Hubinon and Charlier told the adventurous experiences of three US pilots around the globe and produced 34 albums up to Hubinon's death in 1979. Since 1983 the series has been continued by the draftsman Francis Bergèse .

1950s and 1960s

Buck Danny’s success prompted Charlier to quit the legal profession and work as a comic book writer. From the late 1940s onwards, he provided a variety of comic book scenarios for Spirou magazine and proved to be a highly prolific writer. Among other things, he wrote the pirate comic Surcouf , the knight series Belloy (draftsman: Albert Uderzo ) and told the adventures of the big game hunter Tiger Joe . These early stories were spread with great naivety and carelessly made use of many content-related clichés (colonial romanticism, etc.). In 1954, Charlier started the long-lived scout series La Patrouille des Castors (Eng. The Blue Panthers ), which was tailored to the needs of Spirou's young readership . In the mid-1950s, the indefatigable copywriter was responsible for eight comic series simultaneously.

Jean-Michel Charlier was increasingly dissatisfied with the working conditions and the pay at the Spirou publishing house in Dupuis . Together with his colleagues Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny , he went into business for himself and founded an advertising and press agency. But he continued to work for Spirou . In the fall of 1959, the trio started the French comic magazine Pilote , which was very successful from the start. While Uderzo and Goscinny presented the humorous series Asterix in Pilote , which soon became a global success, Charlier launched the two realistic adventure series Tanguy et Laverdure (German: Mick Tangy ) and Barbe-Rouge (German: The Red Corsair ). Many Pilote series had a strong connection to France.

In 1963, together with the young draftsman Jean Giraud , Charlier created his most important series: the Western Lieutenant Blueberry . Charlier initially provided Lieutenant Blueberry with relatively conventional (albeit exciting) scenarios, which over the years became more and more complex and subtle. The plots of the series almost always extended over several comic albums, which is why the corresponding cycles were often only completed after several years. From the 1970s onwards, the sub-cycles were also linked so that the narrative took on an epic form.

The adventures of the unconventional lieutenant became a classic of European comic culture thanks to the brilliant texts of Charlie and the extraordinary drawings of Giraud. By the time he died, Charlier had written 28 Blueberry albums. Today the series continues with various illustrators and authors.

1970s and 1980s

Until the early 1970s, Charlier continued his established series with high productivity. During this time he was also involved in the script for the cartoon for Tim and the Shark Lake . In 1972 he resigned as editor-in-chief of Pilote because he no longer agreed with the editorial line of the magazine, which had become increasingly modernized and radicalized. Charlier worked as an editor and TV producer and was briefly editor-in-chief of the comic magazine Nouveau Tintin . He only continued his established series sporadically. Around 1980, Victor Hubinon and Jijé, two of his most important draftsmen, died. He had her series Barbe-Rouge and Tanguy et Laverdure continued - with a significant loss of quality - by other artists. From 1985 he realized three youth adventures by Lieutenant Blueberry with the New Zealand draftsman Colin Wilson .

Jean-Michel Charlier, known for his hectic workday and his excessive fondness for good food, was admitted to hospital in the spring of 1989. There he died on July 10th of the same year at the age of 64.

Contents and ideology of Charliers Comics

Jean-Michel Charlier is one of the central figures in European comic history. His exceptional productivity resulted in over 200 comic albums. Charlie's knowledge and ingenuity ensured that he could invent thrilling adventure stories for almost every genre. As a rule, Charlier did not move beyond the boundaries of the respective genre, but saw himself in the tradition of classic storytellers like Alexandre Dumas , who only wanted to produce exciting entertainment. Like Dumas, Charlier liked to let his fictional characters act in front of a concrete historical background with historical personalities in order to give the event a sham authenticity.

Unlike Goscinny, Charlier usually did not deliver his draftsmen the finished scenario for the entire album. Rather, he gradually gave the artists the texts for the individual pages, which they often found frustrating. Because of his enormous workload, Charlier regularly found it difficult to deliver texts on time. Albert Uderzo said that the scenarioist once dictated the end of an album to him over the phone in an improvised manner.

Many of Charlie's protagonists correspond to the classic hero type: strong, good-looking men who are morally infallible and who make the right decisions. They are happy to be joined by emphatically funny supporting characters who provided humorous interludes. Charlier was known to be conservative and, for example, told the adventures of the French fighter pilots Tanguy et Laverdure in a clearly nationalistic context. In the 1980s, Buck Danny pilots fought against communist conspirators and left-wing terrorists.

Charlier's portrayal of women is usually characterized by ancient role models: attractive women mostly spy for the opposite side, less attractive women are used for grotesque gags (one exception is the self-confident saloon singer Chihuhaha Pearl, with whom Lieutenant Blueberry falls in love). The ideological / political context of Charler's scenarios can be viewed critically from the temporal distance. In many cases the author used and confirmed time-related prejudices and clichés with relative ease.

Although almost all of the major Charlier series have been published in Germany over the decades, there is still a great deal of material from him that has never been published there.

Works

literature

  • Erik Svane, Martin Surmann, Alain Ledoux, Martin Jurgeit, Gerhard Förster and Horst Berner: Blueberry and the European Western comic . Zack -Dossier 1, Mosaik , Berlin, 2003. ISBN 3-932667-59-X .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Charlier, Jean-Michel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian comic artist
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Liege , Belgium
DATE OF DEATH July 10, 1989
Place of death Paris