Rubrique A Brac (GOTLIB ANCIENNE EDITION, 4)

Rubrique-à-Brac #4

by Gotlib

Réédition : Tomes 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 Les premières Rubrique-à-brac font leur apparition dans Pilote le 11 janvier 1968. Gotlib donne naissance à de multiples personnages restés dans toutes les mémoires. Aux côtés de Newton, le lecteur retrouve l'inénarrable Coccinelle et le savant-professeur Burp ou bien encore Tarzan et le Petit Chaperon Rouge, sans oublier les policiers Bougret et Charolles. Véritable banc d'essai, ces Rubrique-à-brac imposent Marcel Gotlib comme l'un des pionniers de la bande dessinée pour adultes. Il abandonne cette série en 1972. La réédition de ces quatre tomes correspond aux histoires des deux premiers tomes de l'ancienne édition.

Genres: Bande Dessinée, Comics, Humor

80 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Gotlib (pseudonym of Marcel Gotlieb) was a French comics artist/writer and publisher. Through his own work and the magazines he co-founded, L' Écho des Savanes and Fluide Glacial, Gotlib was one of the key figures in the switch in French-language comics from their children's entertainment roots to an adult tone and readership. His trademark style fuses English-style nonsense, Jewish-American humour and French ribaldry, with a penchant for exaggeration of movements and sound effects.

Reviews

[Nadia Costa]

Et hop, première incursion dans l'oeuvre de Gotlib et fan convertie! Une aisance dans l'humour et une érudition telle qui fait que chaque planche soit un régal.

[Tristan]

I have a 1993 hardback reprint in French from Dargaud of an album originally published in 1973.

This particular cartoonist was one of the leading lights of the absurdist anarchical school of French piss take humour. The art is incredibly over the top in a way that was hugely inspiring to me when I was a young aspiring artist, the writing is erudite, self referential, full of in jokes developed with the other cartoonists of the magazine Pilote, at a time when cartoons were starting to *really* push the envelope of what was possible in the medium and what was permissible in print. I also loved, then like now, the play of words using English expressions written phonetically in French just for the hell of it, which was very much my thing as a bilingual child. I really got that.

Some of this is right at the edge of acceptable taste (in 1970s France, so quite shocking today), and these gags always held a naughty thrill for me as a child. Revisiting as a jaded grown up from the 2020s, I am shaken by the violence, the sheer rebellion against all forms of received wisdom, but also by the occasional appearance of gross misogyny and jaw-dropping racism.

I say “appearance” because the cartoons are also occasionally very forward thinking for the times, very equal in treatment, usually by allowing all its characters to be punks giving the middle finger to authority, and because the constant theme of the cartoons is to reflect and debunk everything that is wrong in French society at the time, particularly the unpleasant stuck up attitudes of the bourgeois. Hence is the gag straightforwardly offensive or absurdist satire? It’s hard to tell at times. So there’s some unease in rereading this book.

In any event, the vast majority of the humour is brutally complex for a publication that was intended for young readers and teens. Nevertheless, this collection is very funny and thought provoking, rewarding repeated reading. It is a thing of its time, but knowing the times I appreciate the piss taking and sheer adolescent rebelliousness of it all. This author’s work is unmistakable and unique, iconic even for those times. But those were not enlightened times …

[Furait]

voor liefhebbers van totentrekkers, not my cup