Archives : Chaland

Champaka dedicates the end of the publishing year to Yves Chaland, the irreplaceable author of “Bob Fish”, “Freddy Lombard” and “Jeune Albert.” Isabelle Beaumenay-Joannet, Chaland’s wife and also his colourist, has completed work on “Vacances Studieuses”, a screenprint full of youthfulness and mischief. In November, the special collectors’ edition of “Les Inachevés” will present the work (sketches, illustration plates and overlays) prepared for the fabled “Bob Fish II.” Yves Chaland always spoke of his characters with pleasure and mischief:
Tell us about Bob Fish. He’s a hero without equal?

Chaland: He’s a wonderful hero, he’s the very model of a great hero. Moreover, he keeps turning up everywhere, in various guises. Take away the moustache and glasses from Ray Banana, or darken Phil Perfect’s hair and you’ll see him. I think that Benoît and Serge Clerc were thinking along the same lines. They started from an archetype that was common towards the end of the ’forties: thirty-five to forty years old, slicked-back hair, huge neck, athletic build, etc.

Bob Fish, then; and “Jeune Albert” as well…

Chaland: Yes, he was a minor character, a kid who, in my view, was the real hero of the story. Bob Fish was the standard, typical hero. Albert had to emerge from the crowd, unlike in most other such stories where the hero is marked out from the very first page: noble, loyal, generous, the saviour of widows and orphans. In my view, we shouldn’t be able to identify the hero from the first glance. Take the example of De Gaulle: who would have imagined, at the time of the First World War, that he would go on to become a hero of the Second World War and, ultimately, of the Fifth Republic? At the beginning, Albert was a fairly trivial character, and I brought him to the fore very gradually. Thanks to his cruel streak and his cowardice, he took on the mantle of hero.

Do you intend to develop this into a substantial album series?

Chaland: At a rate of a page per month, one album of “Jeune Albert” takes four years from start to finish. I keep to this rhythm in order to avoid burnout, and also because in it lies one of the unique strengths of the formula: there won’t be many Jeune Albert albums, but each one that does appear will reveal a new layer, distilled and refined over the drip-drip of time.

Source: Champaka News n°1, September 1992