ECC Cartoonbooks Club: July 2012

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Olympic Humor cartoons by Blachon and Serre

The Olympic Games 2012 in London are 100% English, but the cartoon books below are draw by 100% French cartoonists.

If humor was an olympic discipline, the French Roger Blachon (1941-2008) and Claude Serre (1938-1998) would certainly have earned gold medals.

Roger Blachon was one of the greatest sport cartoonists ever... enjoy some cartoons of him to come into the spirit of the olympic games... (Mehr Spass Beim Sport, Eichborn, 1992, ISBN 3-8218-2118-3/ and Dessins Sportifs Tome1 , Glénat Humour, 2002, ISBN 2-7234-4035-4)

The cartoon above is the first cartoon of Blachon published in 1985 in 'l Equipe Magazine. He got some bad reactions such as 'I find your sence of humor not funny at all' and 'it's scandalous to publish such a drawing in an interesting magazine...>'

Of course, we cartoon lovers, know better...

In 'Le Sport', (Glénat, 1977, ISBN 2-7234-0071-9) Claude Serre, drew some other great sports cartoons...

Of course, the Belgian cartoonists must not be forgotten. Please read the article on the ECC blog about Olympic cartoons in the Belgian House at het 2012 Olympics in London.
You can admire some great cartoons by Cost, Jan Dufour, Nicola Hendrickx, etc...

Learn more:
Roger Blachon on our blog + links
Claude Serre on our blog + links
London 2012 – Olympic cartoons in the Belgium house

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Cartoon book exhibition

In September our local library is putting the cartoon in the picture. There will be an exhibition of drawings by Karl Meersman and I was asked to present some cartoon books to the public. The big task is to choose which books I'll put in the exhibition. The place is limited, and the book selection will be tough.

The idea of promoting cartoons in libraries is fine. In Flanders (Belgium) where I live most local libraries have were high quality standards,especially of course the library of Wevelgem ;-) ... and Kruishoutem.

I'm curious how cartoons are presented in libraries in other places and countries. Please feed the discussion on our facebook page! What kind of cartoon books do you find in your town's library?

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Tour de France 2012 - what I saw...

Stage 2 of the Tour 2012 finished in Tournai, Belgium yesterday, 2 July 2012. I had never seen the Tour 'live' in my life and Tournai is only 35 km from my home... so I got to be there to watch one of the biggest sports events in the world. As always... there is a cartoon link as you'll notice further in this post.

Tournai, 3 km from the finish line - 2,5 hours before The Tour arrives
in town

One hour before The Tour passes, the Publicity Caravan arrives...

To my surprice I spotted drawings on the Vittel (a water brand) publicity vehicles that looked familiar to me... and yes, I was right: those were the style of the great French cartoonist Roger Blachon (1941 - 2008).