In contrast, almost from the start of his career, Dupuy has worked as part of the duo known as Berberian-Dupuy (often mistaken for a single person bearing a sophisticated, hyphenated surname but actually the simple combination of the surnames of Charles Berberian and Phillipe Dupuy). Dupuy had begun his career working for several different BD magazines over a three-year period, but when he met Berberian there was immediate synergy and from then on it has been a partnership, if not made in heaven, at least made for the delight of BD fans around the world.
L'Autoroute du Soleil
This lengthy album was a result of the experimental work of the Japanese-cartoon, or manga, publishing house, Kodansha, consisting of commissioning certain authors from the Occidental world to create comics for readers in Japan. It made its debut on the Japanese comics scene as a series of instalments in the weekly magazine entitled Morning, whose target audience was comprised of 20- to 30-year-old males.
It is a black and white comic or “graphic novel”, vibrant and stark at the same time, that is representative of the beginnings of la nouvelle manga, an ongoing project of some comics authors and publishers to mesh the Japanese manga with the French bande dessinée. This groundbreaking work reunited the two worlds in a big way, while preserving some of the main traits of Baru’s work: his inclusion of daily-life events, the protagonism of youthful characters, use of the anecdotal, and anti-racism statements (Serrano, 2003) often disguised in metaphor. The drawings are dynamic and the story line is quick, based on the almost cliché premise of the chase or the cat-and-mouse game, but at the same time achieving an accurate depiction of the times in France. The characters are very caricature-like, grotesque and deformed, contrasting against a backdrop of realistically-rendered buildings and scenarios (mic-culturilla.net, 2005). Baru combines the fast pace typical of manga with an eye for detail and the almost deliberate lack of kinetics that characterises a large part of bande dessinée in favour of the expression of movement through the pure graphic composition of each panel (see Excerpts 1 and 2, Beaty, Nevins and Gravett, 2004). It is considered to be a seminal resistance piece by many critics and reviewers (Garcia, 2003), because in it Baru addressed several issues that were relevant in France in the mid-1990's, such as racism and anti-immigration.
Excerpt 1 (Cover Page). Excerpt 2.
Cover of the French version. Page 7.
Baru makes good use of parallel montage and slanted "camera" angles –while putting a lot of thought into the composition, where nothing is accidental– to create an excellent specimen of a hybrid manga-bande dessinée, or nouvelle manga, creation. Incidentally, a not-so-known fact is that L'Autoroute du Soleil is the expansion of one of Baru's previous works, Cours Camarade (Polomé, 1995).
Journal d’un Album – L'année dernière
The duo of Charles Berberian and Phillipe Dupuy had their first hit with Journal d’Henriette, but gained true worldwide popularity with their comic strip, Monsieur Jean, which lets us into the day-to-day life of a rather unremarkable, yet lovable, character: a thirty-something single man living in Paris.
Worth mentioning is that from the very start of their professional relationship, Berberian and Dupuy worked closely, so closely that they were not the typical writer/artist combo, but rather combined efforts on both fronts, often working together side by side, both writing and drawing to create a single panel (Castrillon, 2004).
While they were working on the third volume of Mr. Jean, they decided to keep separate journals that would chronicle their artistic, work-related struggles and efforts encountered during the creative process, thus the Journal d’un Album (Diary of a Comic) was born. They kept the journals secret from each other and revealed their contents later on. Both were able to clearly see something that has always been an integral part of art and literature: the juxtaposition of their own personal situations into their work.
Specifically referring to the part of the Diary written by Dupuy, entitled L'année Dernière, the autobiography stamped in his drawings and narrations is bittersweet at best. At the time that they were making the third volume of Mr. Jean and writing what became Journal d'un Album, Dupuy was going through a rough time to say the least, having recently gone through a separation from his partner and his son, facing the death of his mother, struggling with the envy he felt towards Berberian, and putting up with a crazy neighbour who was always yelling at him. In an utterly inconsolable state upon receiving the news of the death of his mother, he commits to paper his feelings and memories of her in six mute panels with a single opening phrase: “Six panels for a life.” But he regains his footage in his own life, going back to his family and to his work with Berberian, overcoming the hurdle that getting the 3rd volume of Mr. Jean done was quickly becoming. He bravely continued with the journal, which shows us his transcendence of the situation and ultimately becomes part of a work that provides poignant autobiographies of both the artists, very opposite in nature and in their attitude towards life.
Berberian and Dupuy went on to face and also document in their journals the complications of getting their finished works published because, to top it all off, their publisher, Humanoids, was on the verge of bankruptcy. Both Monsieur Jean and Journal d'un Album were finally published, and were a huge success, acclaimed as the some of the best works to be released to the public in France in the nineties.
Journal d’un Album is very simple and minimalist in its style, with sparing lines, no use of shadowing or layering, and a stark black and white with no shades of grey. Both the authors often use visual metaphors to express their feelings, like in the Ally McBeal show (Serrano, 2002). But Dupuy’s section (see Excerpt 3) confers a feeling of hopelessness and, to be honest, self-pity, a stillness and solitude which. although allowing us to gain a rare view of an artist's inner world, also highly contrast with the cheerful, often witty, depiction offered by Berberian in the first part of the Diary, where there is more movement to the composition and a livelier use of lines and expressions in general.
There is an important part in the Diary, L'année Derniere (pp. 81-85), where we can see the full extent of Dupuy’s breakdown when, at the height of his crisis, he actually goes so far as to assume the identity of Mr. Jean (Mora, 2002). This leads us to some obvious questions. How many pages of Mr. Jean were actually inspired by Dupuy’s and, for that matter, Berberian’s situations or problems at the time? Were they hoping that, through Mr. Jean, they could bring to the light and ultimately find solutions to their problems? Would Mr. Jean sometimes become an excuse for working out their concerns in black and white, getting it down on paper, so to speak?
Whatever the answers to these questions may be, Journal d’un Album is a rare piece, a comic about the making of comics but also a catharsis (largely on Dupuy’s part), an almost therapeutic exercise that took a lot of guts to publish and that we, as readers, are lucky to have available.
Excerpt 3.
Journal d’un Album, panel by Phillipe Dupuy.
References
Baru. (2005). Laniek Comiclopedia. Retrieved September 2, 2005, from http://www.lambiek.net/baru.htm
Boilet, F. (2003). Nouvelle Manga. Boilet.net. Retrieved September 5, 2005 from http://www.boilet.net/am/nouvellemanga.html
Castrillon, M. (2004). Beyond borders. Ninth Art. Retrieved September 5, 2005 from http://www.ninthart.com/display.php?article=788
Franco-Belgian Comics. (2005). Wikipedia. Retrieved September 2, 2005, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Belgian_comics
Garcia, J. (2003). Rutas hacia la resistencia. Tebeosfera. Retrieved September 2, 2005 from http://www.tebeosfera.com/Obra/Tebeo/Astiberri/AutopistadelSol.htm
Harvey, R. C. (2003). Letter in response to The graphic novel silver anniversary by Andrew Arnold. TIME Online Edition. Retrieved September 5, 2005, from http://www.time.com/time/columnist/arnold/article/0,9565,547796,00.html
Libros. (2005). Baru: La Autopista del Sol. mic-culturilla. Retrieved September 2, 2005, from http://mic-culturilla.iespana.es/libros/calendario/2005abril.htm
Mora, J. (2002). Somos dibujantes hacemos tebeos. Tebeosfera. Retrieved September 5, 2005 from http://www.tebeosfera.com/Obra/Tebeo/Planeta/BerberianAlbum.htm
Nevins, M.D., Beaty, B., & Gravett, P. (2004). The twenty best European novels you haven’t read. Indy Magazine. Retrieved September 5, 2005 from http://www.indyworld.com/indy/summer_2004/european_gns/
Polomé, P. (1995). Sur la route de Baru. BDParadisio. Retrieved September 2, 2005 from http://www.bdparadisio.com/baru.htm
Serrano, J. A. (2003). La Autopista del Sol. Guíadelcomic.com. Retrieved September 2, 2005, from http://www.guiadelcomic.com/comics/la_autopista_del_sol.htm
Serrano, J. A. (2002). Diario de un Album. GUIAdelCOMIC.com. Retrieved September 5, 2005 from http://www.guiadelcomic.com/comics/diario_de_un_album.htm
Torres-Eça, T. (2004). Critical understanding of comics in art education.
Artday Network. Retrieved September 5, 2005, from, http://artday.org/modules/soapbox/print.php?articleID=9
The term "graphic novel," as it applies to the "long-form comic book," was originally coined in November 1964 by Richard Kyle in a newsletter circulated to all members of the Amateur Press Association (R.C. Harvey, 2003).
See Boilet (2003) for an in-depth look from the standpoint of one of its primary founders.
