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COMIC ALBUMS 1970s & 1980s
Blueberry
Blueberry is Western comic series created in the Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées (BD) tradition by the Belgian scriptwriter Jean-Michel Charlier and French comics artist Jean "Mœbius" Giraud.
It chronicles the adventures of Mike Blueberry on his travels through the American Old West. Blueberry is an atypical western hero; he is not a wandering lawman who brings evil-doers to justice, nor a handsome cowboy who "rides into town, saves the ranch, becomes the new sheriff and marries the schoolmarm." Instead, in any situation, he sees what he thinks needs doing, and he does it.
The series spawned out of the 1963 Fort Navajo comics series, originally intended as an ensemble narrative, but which quickly gravitated around the breakout character 'Blueberry' as the main and central character after the first two stories, causing the series to continue under his name later on.
The older stories, released under the Fort Navajo moniker, were ultimately reissued under the name Blueberry as well in later reprint runs.
Two spin-offs series, La Jeunesse de Blueberry (Young Blueberry) and Marshal Blueberry, were created pursuant the main series reaching its peak in popularity in the early 1980s.
It has been remarked that during the 1960s, Blueberry "was as much a staple in French comics as, say, The Avengers or The Flash here [in the USA]".
en.wikipedia.org:_Blueberry_(comics)
See also my write up on MyBlog 2010Q4 and MyBlog 2013Q4 ('de Pep')
Other comic series, not depicted here and which I liked very much (many of them coming to me through that weekly magazine 'de Pep') were (a.o.) Rob Palland, Rik Ringers, Erwin de Geweldenaar, Toenga, Michel Vaillant, Roodbaard, Blake & Mortimer, De Rode Ridder, Suske & Wiske, Bob Morane, Luc Orient... Good memories!
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Comanche & World War II
Comanche is a graphic Belgian comic series which takes place in 'the Wild West'. The series was started by writer Greg and draughtsman Hermann. The latter was at some place replaced by Rouge and again later Rodolphe tok oer the pen from Greg. Comanche is the owner of the 'Triple Six'-ranch in Wyoming during the 19th century. However, she is not the leading character in most stories here. The men in her employment are the leading characters. Red Dust, the foreman and a former gunslinger is one of those leading characters. Other persons are Ten Gallons, a sack of bones with a brazen attitude, Clem Tenderfoot and Toby. Whem the first albums appeared they created a stir for the violence in graphic details. This violence was depicted by Hermann in much the same way as on film, e.g. in the socalled 'spaghettiwesterns'. This comic series was published by 'Le Lombard'.
De reeks wordt uitgegeven door Le Lombard. (Wikipedia: NL!)
nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche_(stripreeks) (NL)
'Tweede Wereldoorlog in Strips' (EN: 'WW2 in comics') by Pierre Dupuis I don't recall very much, though I did have an avid interest in WW2.
Pierre Dupuis was a French artist of realistic comics, best-known for drawing historical and biographical comics, especially about World War II.
He was born Pierre-Léon Dupuis in Dieppe, France, and made his first comic story in 1950. This first story, 'Aigle Noir', was published in Gong, a magazine by Éditions Elan. He then worked as the assistant of Paul Gillon on his production for Éditions Vaillant, including the series 'Fils de Chine'.
Dupuis contributed his second solo story to the Vaillant pocket book 34, before he made his first appearance in the magazine Vaillant with several short stories in 1951. This magazine is not the same as the comics on Michel Vaillant by Lombard.
www.lambiek.net/artists/d/dupuis_p
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Buck Danny - Tanguy & Laverdure
Now of these comic albums I was an avid collector, as from an early age (12?) I had an interest in military aviation. Buck Danny appealed to me the most, Tanguy & Laverdure were perhaps a little too French and only had a modest interest in Dan Cooper (I don't recall the exact motivations).
Buck Danny isthe leading character but he doesn't go anywhere without his partners Tumbler and Tucson.
Danny is an America who after leaving school goes in search of a job shortly before WW2 and lands a job as an engineer on Hawaii, on a shipping wharf.
With the attack on 07Dec1941 on Pearl Harbor Buck Danny joins the Navy as a pilot (promoted to the rank of captain, on board the USS Yorktown).
During the war he meets his loyal friends Sonny Tuckson and Jerry Tumbler. Danny is soon promoted to major and after the war is promoted to the rank of colonel.
In spite of his rise through the ranks he decides to leave the military after the war. With his two friends he goes to Arabia and they soon finds themselves in a smuggling adventure.The outcome makes them all three very rich.
And they return to the (US) Air Force as pilots.
Their adventures see them involved in aircraft engineering, in the Korean War and (those I enjoyed the most!) their confrontations with Lady X...
The maffia, rebels at war, Russian involvements and terrorists, they all are featured in Buck Danny's adventures.
Buck Danny could have been promoted to the rank of general but he refused to land behind a desk.
nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_Danny_(stripfiguur) (NL !)
Tanguy & Laverdure (French: Les aventures de Tanguy et Laverdure) is a French-Belgian comic series ('stripreeks') about the adventures of two pilots, Mick Tangy (French: Michel Tanguy) and Ernest Laverdure.
This series was published in a French comic magazine and started on 22Oct1959.
In the Netherlands this comic series was published in magazines such as Pep, Eppo and Wham!
After the 3rd series, by Jijé, the serie was discontinued from Pep (Dutch). I was a long time subscriber of 'de Pep' .
There was even a television series on Tanguy & Laverdure, called 'Les Chevaliers du Ciel', broadcasted in 1967 uitgezonden on French television.
A second series, 'Les Nouveaux Chevaliers du Ciel', was broadcasted by TF1 in 1988.
Creator of this series was Belgian Jean-Michel Charlier, who had been a pilot hemself, for SABENA, and Frenchman Albert Uderzo did the drawings.
Uderzo was also respinsible for comics Hoempa pa (which I remember well from Pep magazine) and Asterix. Uderzo was more drawn to Asterix.
Tanguy & Laverdure was competition to series such as Buck Danny and Dan Cooper, which were published in Belgian comic magazines Spirou (Robbedoes) and Tintin (Kuifje).
Jean-Michel Charlier had been the scenarist since 1947of the Buck Danny series. In 'Gevaar op Groenland' (EN: Danger on Greenland') a meeting takes place between Mick Tangy and Buck Danny.
Honurs were reversed in Buck Danny-albums 'Blauwe Engelen' (EN: 'Blue Angels') and 'De piloot met het leren masker' (EN: 'Pilot with the Leather Mask') in which several drawings were dedicated to Tanguy & Laverdure.
In 1967 Uderzo wanted to concentrate fully on Asterix and nam Jijé (Joseph Gillain) was responsible for the drawings.
Later Patrice Serres worked together with Jijé on the comic series. After Jijé died 1980, Serres took entirely. He was later succeeded by Alexandre Coutelis and Yvan Fernandez.
Jean-Michel Charlier also wrote a novel about Tanguy & Laverdure, L'Avion qui tuait ses Pilotes, published in 1971 (with illustrations by Jijé).
When Charlier died in 1989, the series ceased. A new album was published in 2002, written by Jean-Claude Laidin and drawn by Yvan Fernandez.
Tangy and Laverdure are very different in character. But both are very good friends and excellent pilots.
Mick Tangy or Michel Tanguy is serious of character, very correct, virtuous and he makes no mistakes. In the series he is promoted lieutenant to major.
His friend Laverdure regular calls Tanguy a 'boyscout', because he is always getting Laverdure out of a mess.
In spite of Tangy's good looks he is no womanizer, Laverdure thinks he is... If Tangy falls in love, the romance often ends in tragedy.
nl.wikipedia.org:_Tanguy_en_Laverdure (NL)
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Dan Cooper
Dan Cooper (also known as Les Aventures de Dan Cooper) is a Franco-Belgian comics series about a fictional Canadian military flying ace and rocketship pilot.
The comics series was conceived in 1954 as Tintin magazine's answer to the Buck Danny series published in the rival Spirou magazine.
It was written and drawn by the Franco-Belgian Albert Weinberg (1922–2011); however, a handful of the stories were written by Jean-Michel Charlier instead.
As per the Franco-Belgian comics tradition, after being serialized in a weekly comic book magazine, each completed storyline would appear as a published album.
Dan Cooper is a test pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Early story-lines featured futuristic science-fiction themes such as piloting a rocketship to the Martian moon Deimos; however later stories were more rooted in present-day themes.
Speculative connection to D. B. Cooper:
Although fairly obscure in the English-speaking world since it did not appear in English translation, the comics series nevertheless gained a small measure of notoriety in 2009 in the United States as a result of speculation concerning the identity of the 1971 airplane hijacker who came to be known as D. B. Cooper, but who had actually identified himself as "Dan Cooper".
The Cooper Research Team led by Tom Kaye, working in cooperation with Seattle-based FBI agent Larry Carr, speculated that the hijacker may have chosen an alias based on the fictional character, suggesting that he may have been exposed to the comics while on a tour of duty in Europe, or that he may have been of French-Canadian origin.
Some of the comics storylines seemingly match aspects of the D. B. Cooper case, including jumping out of a plane with a parachute, as well as a ransom being delivered in a knapsack.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Cooper_(comics)
stripinfo.be/reeks/index/1297 |
Bernhard Prince - Bruno Brazil
Bernard Prince is a Franco-Belgian comics series, featuring an eponymous character and his sailor-adventurer companions.
The series was created by Belgian cartoonists Greg and Hermann for the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Tintin, first appearing on January 4, 1966.
Synopsis Originally an agent of Interpol the heroic Prince, joined by the roguish Barney Jordan and the clever orphan Djinn, becomes an adventurer sailing through the contem-porary (1960s-70s) world on a sloop, the beautiful Cormoran.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Prince
www.bedetheque.com/ ... Bernard-Prince
Bruno Brazil is a Franco-Belgian comics series written by Greg, under the pseudonym Louis Albert, and drawn by William Vance.
It was initially serialised in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Tintin, first appearing on January 17, 1967.
The first album publication was in 1969, while the latest album was first published in 1995.
Bruno Brazil is the leader of a small, elite combat unit of the American secret service, the 'Cayman Command', of which each member has some special skills.
Together they fight crime and exotic threats. The series is notable for not avoiding casualties among the Cayman Command.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Brazil |
Roderik - Jeremiah
Jeremiah is a Belgian science fiction comic book series by Hermann Huppen. Jeremiah was created in 1979 for the German magazine Zack, and had a premiere in Sarajevo based Strip art magazine, since the editor of this magazine, Ervin Rustemagic, was also the Hermann's manager.
It has also been serialized in the French-language Métal Hurlant and Spirou magazine; as
well as the Serbian magazines Stripoteka and Politikin Zabavnik. Currently, there are 34 volumes and one 'Special Edition' in French and Dutch.
Plot:
Racial wars have torn the U.S. apart, resulting in a post-apocalyptic world. Many small pockets of civilization still exist; from isolated super high-tech fortresses, hidden research labs, or racial groups in walled-in cities - all fighting each other among the more regular population which in many ways resembles the "old west".
Jeremiah and his friend Kurdy travel the country, taking odd jobs and getting mixed up in various affairs. Jeremiah, being the more noble of the two, often sticks his neck out to help others, while Kurdy is a more wily, opportunistic scoundrel.
Despite its setting, Jeremiah's underlying motif is of hope and the survival of mankind. The storylines carry little from album to album, meaning they can be read individually.
Jeremiah has been translated into several languages, and has a large fan base in Europe.
Various attempts to introduce the series to the American market have had middling results, mostly due to the different tastes of the American and European comic book public.
After failing to reach American audiences in the 1980s and 1990s success was found with Dark Horse, beginning in the 2000s. In March 2012 Dark Horse Comics begun another English language reprint series in collaboration with SAF; three volumes of the Jeremiah Omnibus, collecting tomes 1 to 3, 4 to 6, and 7 to 9 respectively, have been released as of October 2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_(comics)
The titles 'Amathea' and 'De Oude Man van de Bergen' (EN: 'The Old Man from the Moun-tains') were the only titles I could find of the Roderick comic albums.
Both were published in 1975 and created by William Vance.
https://stripinfo.be/reeks/index/1326_Roderik
en.wikipedia.org:_William_Vance |
De Koene Ridder
De Koene Ridder (EN: 'The Brave Knight') was a Belgian comic series by draughtsman/scenarist François Craenhals.
The stories are about
Roland van Walburghe, liege to King Arthus.
His daughter Gwendoline is very much in love with Roland, butRoland is not of high birth and the King objects to their love for eacht other.
The estate of Rastigne (Rougecogne) is in the Belgian Ardennes and thus Arthus is not the same as King Arthur.
The French title of this series is 'Chevalier Ardent' and was first published in Kuifje magazine, in 1966.
The Belgian Post Office printed stamps in may 2003, of 49 eurocent, displaying 'de Koene Ridder' on horseback.
Between 1970 - 2001 20 albums were published by Casterman and between 1979 - 1981 a series of short stories by Paul Rijperman.
NL.wikipedia.org:_De_Koene_Ridder
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Kuife ('Tin Tin') - Biggles - Lucky Luke - Agent 212
The Adventures of Tintin (French: Les Aventures de Tintin) is a series of 24 comic albums created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé.
The series was one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century.
By 2007, a century after Hergé's birth in 1907, Tintin had been published in more than 70 languages with sales of more than 200 million copies, and have been adapted for radio, television, theatre, and film.
The series first appeared in French on 10Jan1929 in Le Petit Vingtième (EN: The Little Twentieth), a youth supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century). The success of the series saw the serialised strips published in Belgium's leading newspaper Le Soir (The Evening) and spun into a successful Tintin magazine.
In 1950, Hergé created Studios Hergé, which produced the canonical versions of 10 Tintin albums.
The series is set during a largely realistic 20th century. Its hero is Tintin, a courageous young Belgian reporter and adventurer. He is aided by his faithful dog Snowy (Milou in the original French edition and 'Bobbie' in Dutch).
Other protagonists include the brash and cynical Captain Haddock and the intelligent but hearing-impaired Professor Calculus (French: Professeur Tournesol), as well as the incompetent detectives Thomson and Thompson (French: Dupont et Dupond) and the opera diva Bianca Castafiore.
The series has been admired for its clean, expressive drawings in Hergé's signature ligne claire ("clear line") style.
Its well-researched plots straddle a variety of genres: swashbuckling adventures with elements of fantasy, mysteries, political thrillers, and science fiction. The stories feature slapstick humour, offset by dashes of sophisticated satire and political or cultural commentary.
en.wikipedia.org:_The_Adventures_of_Tintin |
Lucky Luke - Asterix - Bessy - Dommel
Lucky Luke is a western comics series created by Belgian cartoonist Morris in 1946. Morris wrote and drew the series single-handedly until 1955, after which he used other writers, beginning with Astérix creator René Goscinny. French artist Achdé has drawn the series since Morris's death in 2001.
The series takes place in the American Old West and stars the titular Lucky Luke, a gunslinger known as the "man who shoots faster than his shadow", and his intelligent horse Jolly Jumper.
Lucky Luke is pitted against various villains, either fictional or inspired by American history or folklore. The most famous of these are the Dalton Brothers.
The stories are filled with humorous elements parodying the Western genre.
Lucky Luke is one of the best-known and best-selling comics series in Europe and has been translated into numerous languages. 68 albums have appeared in the series as of 2014, at first published by Dupuis, then from 1968 by Dargaud, and from 1999 by Lucky Comics.
Each story was first serialized in a magazine: in Spirou from 1946 to 1967, in Pilote from 1967 to 1973, in Lucky Luke in 1974-75, in the French edition of Tintin in 1975-76, and in various other magazines since.
The series has been adapted to various other media, such as animated films and television series, live-action films, video games, toys, and board games. About half of the series' adventures have been translated into English.
Lucky Luke comics have been translated into 23 languages, including many European, African and Asian languages.
en.wikipedia.org/:_Lucky_Luke
'Bessy' was a long-running Belgian comics series created by Willy Vandersteen and Karel Verschuere in 1952.
Together with 'Suske & Wiske' and 'De Rode Ridder' it was once one of his most popular and best-selling series, with successful translations in Dutch, French, German and Swedish. It was terminated in 1997.
Inspired by the success of Lassie, Willy Vandersteen and Karel Verschuere decided to make a comic strip series about a female collie.
Contrary to the original 'Lassie'-series, though, it didn't feature any child characters and was set in the Wild West rather than the present time. Bessy was given an owner, Andy Cayoon, with whom she had many adventures involving cowboys and Native Americans.
'Bessy' was first published in the French-language Belgian newspaper La Libre Belgique on 24Dec1952 and translated into Dutch a year later, when the comics were published in De Standaard and De Katholieke Illustratie.
The series were also a tremendous success in Germany, where they were published in the youth magazines Pony and Felix. So much in fact, that Vandersteen's studio had a separate team drawing new titles, many of which were never translated in Dutch.
With 992 different titles, reissues included, 'Bessy' has the most album titles of all of Vandersteen's series. 164 albums of these were Dutch, 151 were French. The series was also published in Sweden under the name 'Bessie', which spawned 92 albums.
The high production unfortunately also had an effect on the quality of the stories and drawings. As a result, the German editions were discontinued by 1985. One of Vandersteen's assistants, Jeff Broeckx, then created a reboot 'Bessy
Natuurkommando' ('Bessy Nature Commando') (1984-1992), where Andy and Bessy were reimagined as present-day conservators of animals and nature.
Andy received a love interest, Aneka, and a little street boy named Kid, who travelled along with them on their missions.
The scripts were written by Marck Meul. Twenty-three albums were drawn before the series was terminated in 1992.
Broeckx tried a new reboot and redrew the first seven stories of the original series, as well as the 12th story from the first series. By 1997 the series came to a definite halt.
en.wikipedia.org:_Bessy_(comics) |
[30NOV2017]
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