Gotlib
Marcel Gotlib | |
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Born | Marcel Mordekhaï Gottlieb[1] 14 July 1934 Paris, France |
Died | 4 December 2016 (aged 82) Le Vésinet, Yvelines departement, France |
Area(s) | comics artist, writer |
Notable works | Gai-Luron Les Dingodossiers Superdupont Rubrique-à-Brac Hamster Jovial. |
Signature | |
www |
Marcel Gottlieb (14 July 1934 – 4 December 2016), known professionally as Gotlib, was a French
Early life
Youth
Marcel Gottlieb was born on 14 July 1934 in Paris to parents of Romanian and Hungarian
Vaillant and Pilote
At 17, he left school to work for a pharmaceutical agency while taking art classes in the evening. This led to a job as a letterer at Opera Mundi, a French publisher which translated and published US strips. After his 28-month military service, Gotlib settled as a freelance letterer and illustrator. His first comics were accepted by Vaillant, a magazine for children later renamed Pif-Gadget. His one long-running series at Vaillant started as Nanar, Jujube et Piette, which was renamed Nanar et Jujube then Gai-Luron for the supporting character who had by then taken centre stage. Gai-Luron is a dog heavily influenced by Tex Avery's Droopy, who almost never laughs or displays any emotions and is incorrigibly somnolent.
In 1965 Gotlib submitted strips to
Rubrique-à-Brac was a hit with Pilote's readers and made Gotlib famous. It introduced several signature Gotlib gimmicks, such as the extensive use of random running gags (Isaac Newton getting hit on the head by random objects being the omnipresent one) and the presence of a miniature character, a ladybug mimicking the action, to make up for the absence of settings, which Gotlib disliked drawing.
In 1971, Gotlib gave up the Gai-Luron series to his collaborator
L'Écho des savanes and Fluide Glacial
In 1972, Gotlib launched the comics magazine
However, the trio's complete lack of business training meant the magazine went deep in the red and they were forced to sell it to a publishing concern. Gotlib's contributions to the magazine were published in album form as Rhââ Lovely (named after a rapist's line in
Gotlib saw there was a strong market for adult comics and decided to start a new publication and have it run more professionally. To do this, he enrolled childhood friend, Jacques Diament, as administrator and another Pilote veteran,
Gotlib created two characters in Fluide Glacial: Superdupont with Jacques Lob and Pervers Pépère. Superdupont is a French, highly patriotic answer to US super-heroes who wears a vest and beret and fights a secret organisation called Anti-France. Gotlib mostly wrote or co-wrote Superdupont stories, though he drew a handful of them. The strip was successful enough to be made into a stage show by Jérôme Savary. Pervers Pépère is a stereotypical mac-sporting dirty old man who appeared in one-page stories. In the 1980s, he increasingly focused on running Fluide Glacial — in which he also wrote a column — and gradually withdrew from cartooning. However, he resuscitated Gai-Luron in 1986 when the back-catalogue was re-published by Audie and needed promoting; he drew enough new stories for a final album, La Bataille Navale.
Later years
In 1991, Gotlib received the Angoulême Festival Grand Prix and, as per tradition, chaired the jury of the next year's festival. In 1993, he wrote an autobiography, J'existe, je me suis rencontré, focusing on his youth, and in 2006 a more thorough one with journalist Gilles Verlant: Ma Vie-en-Vrac.
In 1995, having taken a back seat for a couple of years, Diament and Gotlib sold Fluide Glacial and Audie to publisher Flammarion and relinquished responsibilities, though Gotlib continued his column for some time. Fluide Glacial remains profitable and has outlived all its competitors such as Vaillant/Pif, Pilote and the Hara-Kiri stable.[1]
Graphic style
Gotlib's first series were made in a very humoristic tone. Each story consisted of two to four strips drawn in white and black. Rubrique-à-Brac and Les Dingodossiers consisted of didactic dossiers of short unrelated strips, drawn in black and white. They revisited an extremely wide range of subjects and dealt with stereotypes and clichés in a caricatural way. Gotlib used caricature and parodies to depict the everyday life, and greets it with extreme derision. In Cinemastok and Gai-Luron, the same technique was used, although these series were presented in a different manner.
Later, from his departure from Pilote in 1972, Gotlib style changed a lot, the scenario as well as the illustrations. The last tome of Rubrique-à-Brac is already marked by this evolution, but it became more obvious with the series published in L'Echo des Savannes and Fluide Glacial. These two comics magazine were created by Gotlib for an adult audience exclusively, and made it possible for Gotlib to express himself entirely freely, while censorship was present in Pilote, magazine made for a young public. Rhââ Lovely , Rhâ-Gnagna and Pervers Pépère are series exclusively dedicated to sex satire, but sexual matters are also present in Hamster Jovial. Most of Gotlib's strips are background-free, with a large portion of the panels being occupied by elaborate dialogues. Also, the large majority of his series were black-and-white in their original publication.[citation needed]
In 1973 he designed the album cover for French guitarist Marcel Dadi's record 'La Guitare à Dadi' (1974).[1]
Awards
- 1976: Best French comical work at the Angoulême International Comics Festivalfor Gai-Luron
- 1991: Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême
- 2007: Grand Prix Saint-Michel, Brussels, Belgium[5]
- -: nominated for the Prix Saint-Michel Press Prize for Gotlib 1: Ma vie en vrac[6]
- Asteroid 184878 Gotlibis named after Marcel Gotlib.
Bibliography
- Goscinny (Dargaud, 3 volumes, 1967, 1972, 1975)
- Rubrique-à-Brac (Dargaud, 5 volumes, 1970 to 1974)
- Clopinettes with Mandryka (Audie - Fluide Glacial, 1974)
- Cinémastock with Alexis (Dargaud, 3 volumes, 1974 and 1976)
- Trucs En Vrac (Dargaud, 2 volumes, 1977 and 1985)
- Gai-Luron (Audie - Fluide Glacial, 10 volumes, 1975 to 1982)
- Rhââ Lovely (Audie - Fluide Glacial, 3 volumes, 1976 to 1978)
- Lob, Alexis and Solé(Audie - Fluide Glacial, 5 volumes, 1977, 1980, 1983, 1995)
- Hamster Jovial (Audie - Fluide Glacial, 1977)
- Rhâ-Gnagna (Audie - Fluide Glacial, 2 volumes, 1979 and 1980)
- Pervers Pépère (Audie - Fluide Glacial, 1981)
- Dans la joie jusqu'au cou with Alexis (Audie - Fluide Glacial, 1979)
Further reading
- Gotlib, Marcel; Verlant, Gilles (2006). Ma vie-en-vrac. Flammarion. ISBN 978-2-08-069071-5.
- "Gotlib publications in Vaillant".
- "Pilote".
- "L'Écho des Savanes".
- "Fluide Glacial". BDoubliées (in French)
- "Gotlib albums". Bedetheque (in French)
- "Marcel Gotlib in Pilote". Archived from the original on 23 September 2008. Coffre-à-bd (in French)
References
- ^ a b c d e "Marcel Gotlib".
- ^ Laurence Durieu (15 July 2008). "Biography of Marcel Gotlib" (in French). VSD.fr. Archived from the original on 29 September 2011. Retrieved 27 September 2010.
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - ISBN 978-2-08-069071-5.
- ^ "Marcel Gotlib".
- ^ Belga. "Grand Prix St-Michel à Gotlib" (in French). La Libre Belgique. Retrieved 7 March 2015.
- ^ "Les nominés 2007" (PDF). Retrieved 7 May 2015.[dead link]
External links
- "Gotlib official art gallery" (in French). Archived from the original on 16 September 2008. Retrieved 21 July 2008.
- "Gotlib biography". on Comiclopedia
- "Le cas Marcel Gotlib" (in French).
- "Another dossier" (in French).
- "Interview on L'Express magazine website" (in French). 31 October 2007.