Raymond Macherot Was Born on 30 March 1924 in the Belgian Town of Verviers, Just a Stone’S Throw from the Belgian Border with Germany and the Netherlands
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Raymond Macherot was born on 30 March 1924 in the Belgian town of Verviers, just a stone’s throw from the Belgian border with Germany and the Netherlands. His father died when he was just 8 years old and he was raised without luxury in an urban environment. He was an only child and his mother made women’s lingerie. Macherot was attracted by drawing at an early age, scribbling during his free time and doodling in his schoolbooks. He read widely as a child – ‘Tintin’ in the Petit Vingtième, ‘Flash Gordon’ and ‘Prince Vaillant’ in Robinson, and ‘Terry and the Pirates’ in Junior – and this was certainly a source of inspiration later on in his career as a cartoonist. With Hergé, Alex Raymond, Harold Foster and Milton Caniff as inspiration, he could not fail to be seduced by the art of the comic strip! When he was just 16 years old Macherot lived through the German WWII invasion of Belgium, and like all young people in this border region, feared that he would be enlisted into the German army. He therefore fled by bike along with his friend Maurice Maréchal, going to Ostend before joining the national exodus to the south of France, where he set up home for four months near Toulouse. On his return to Belgium he finished school in 1942 and then went to study Law at the University of Liege. He joined the British Royal Navy in 1945, serving on a minesweeper for a year, which enabled him to travel around the British coast. When he returned to Belgium he worked as a journalist for the Courrier du Soir in Verviers. He regularly contributed news-in-brief columns, but as he was known to be interested in painting, the Editor in Chief also sent him to local exhibitions. He met Josette Niesen in December 1949 and they got married six months later. In 1948 he worked for the satirical paper PAN, providing caricatures under the pseudonym Zara. At this point he realised that he could make a living from drawing. He went to visit cartoonist Jacques Martin, who lived in Verviers. Martin advised him to try humorous comic strips but Macherot went onto produce realist images. He drew a few plates for a series called ‘Le Chevalier blanc’ that he offered to the magazine Tintin. He was taken on to work for Tintin but ‘Le Chevalier blanc’ was given to Fred Funcken, as Macherot’s style was judged to lack maturity at this point. During his first two years at Tintin, he completed various projects, such as column headings and editorial illustrations. At the beginning of the summer of 1953, he created a four-page animal story called ‘Mission Chèvrefeuille’, featuring mice, rats and birds. Macherot’s career really got started with his first long adventure – ‘Chlorophylle contre les rats noirs’ – which was published in Tintin in 1954. The black rats’ invasion of the peaceful valley where Chlorophylle the dormouse and his friends live, reminded readers of the German invasion a decade earlier. Anthracite leads an army of rats in which discipline reigns, and in which there are assault platoons and sadistic interrogation methods. The rats invade with secret weapons and their aim is to rule absolutely over the conquered territory. Anthracite is deceitful, merciless, violent, cynical and filled with hatred – how could the Nazi dictator not spring to mind? Macherot subsequently worked on ‘Chlorophylle et les Conspirateurs’, which was published in Tintin in 1955. Anthracite, leader of the black rats, who was imprisoned at the end of the previous episode, is released by one of his own soldiers who wants to get his hands on his ultra-secret weapon that will enable him to become omnipotent. But he does not count on Anthracite’s intelligence and cunning. Anthracite disguises himself as his rescuer and then seeks to take revenge on Chlorophylle and his friends. The story is well put together, Macherot makes effective use of his brush and the cast of characters is surprisingly inventive. The influence of Walt Disney cartoons is keenly felt. In 1956, Macherot momentarily left the animal world to work on the adventures of ‘Père la Houle’ – an old seaman who is accidently mixed up in gangster stories. After this maritime interlude, Macherot wrote three new episodes for his flagship series – ‘Chlorophylle et les Croquillards’ in 1957, ‘Zizanion le terrible’ in 1958 and ‘Le retour de Chlorophylle’ in 1959. The first two episodes take place on a Mediterranean island, Coquefredouille, where the animals live in little houses, wear clothes, drive cars and have a sovereign, a police force and a postal service. It is a veritable animal paradise whose capital is ‘Le Fourbi’ (shambles)! Macherot took great pleasure in creating the first adventure during which Anthracite hires two killers – a weasel and a ferret – so that he can take over the island. Readers see a battle between the herbivores and the carnivores. The contrast between the kindness, naivety and also sometimes the stupidity of the island’s inhabitants, and the cunning and cruelty of the Croquillards is once again a caricature of the human world as Macherot saw it. He made a point of including a generous dose of black humour in the story. At the end of 1959, Macherot finally started work on a project that he had been dreaming about for several years – a detective story. He had the clever idea of combining three characters in one – scoutmaster, retired colonel and amateur sleuth – creating Harold Wilberforce Clifton, also known as Musical Heron in his scout troop. Working on ‘Clifton’ gave Macherot the opportunity to indulge in nostalgia for the England he had known during his time in the Royal Navy. In the spring of 1961, Macherot went back to ‘Chlorophylle’, with ‘La revanche d'Anthracite’, ‘Chloro joue et gagne’ and ‘Chloro à la rescousse’. He produced around hundred plates, his illustrations were magical, Anthracite was more ambitious and nasty than ever, but somehow things were just not quite right. The editing staff at Tintin had asked its young readers to vote on their favourite adventures, and they had shown a preference for the magazine’s big series, relegating Macherot to the bottom of the list. This result was perhaps at the back of his mind. In any event, he left Lombard publishing. At the end of 1963, Macherot joined his friends Franquin, Will and Morris at Dupuis publishing, which was responsible for Spirou magazine, a great rival of Tintin. It was therefore out of the question to work on ‘Chlorophylle’ for Spirou. On 19 March 1964, after a few months in the making, ‘Chaminou’ made its first appearance on the pages of Spirou number 1353. A number of specialists feel that ‘Chaminou’ shows Macherot at his peak. The story takes place in Zoolande where a lion reigns as king. He makes all of his subjects eat fruit and pasta so that they do not have to resort to eating each other. A leopard known as Khrompire escapes from prison and cannot forget his carnivorous past. Chaminou, a member of the king’s secret police, leads an enquiry and discovers a plot instigated by Governor Crunchblott. Once again, Macherot succeeded in creating a satire of human civilization, combining a detective story with often black, sadistic and cruel humour. Although this album is now considered to be his best work, it was not seen in this way during its pre-publication at Spirou. Franquin said that he did not like the story, and readers did not understand it and wanted ‘Chlorophylle’ back. Charles Dupuis nonetheless gave Macherot the green light to work on a second episode, but Macherot decided to abandon ‘Chaminou’. After ‘Chaminou’, Macherot created the ‘Sibylline’ series, which at first glance appears to be set in a very similar world to ‘Chlorophylle’. The characters are completely different, however. Macherot took it gently, the stories are more rural and the climate is more poetic. It represented a return to nature after the urban adventures of ‘Clifton’ and ‘Chaminou’. Behind this harmony, however, Macherot could not help depicting the society surrounding him and from which he sought to take refuge in his pastoral tales. In subsequent episodes, the adventures veered into fantasy. The fantasy ‘Sibylline’ saga survived for a good ten years, from around 1979 to 1990. Over time, the heroine and her fiancé Taboum were no longer at the centre of the intrigue and the setting moved to the land of Gutaperka. Macherot created a gallery of evil and dangerous characters that he manipulated in a supernatural atmosphere. The ‘Bosquet Joyeux’ (happy copse) where Sibylline lived, had to make way for serious, wintry and sometimes frightening atmospheres. Macherot eventually realised that these adventures were no longer in step with the material published at the beginning of the 1990s, as Spirou was no longer really aimed at young children as it had been in the 1950s and 60s. He had to face the facts – comic strips were becoming an adult affair. However, as Macherot had always been a child at heart, he simply decided to lay down his pencil and close his inkpot. He lived, until his death on 26 September 2008, in his house in Polleur, Belgium, where he had moved with his wife in 1959. The House of Comic Strip would like to pay tribute to this atypical author who defected from Tintin to Spirou and who worked on many adventures that were ahead of their time. We have said enough; now let the original plates speak for themselves! .