PIERRE FOURNIER, 1949-2022: Creator of Capitaine Kébec and Red Ketchup comics

Obituary by BK Munn

Pierre Fournier, the iconoclastic Quebec cartoonist, died November 11 of complications arising from Lewy body dementia. 

Fournier was at the vanguard of Québécois artists who began making funny, political French-language comics in the 1960s and 1970s. He self-published the groundbreaking superhero satire Les Aventures du Capitaine Kébec and went on to transform the character into a sort of mascot for the francophone comics community, with a a comics-themed tv show, "Les Amis du Capitaine Kébec", as well as more comics and strips. Fournier was among the first contributors to the humour magazine Croc, and introduced another long-running character, Michel Risque, in its pages in 1979. Co-created with artist Réal Godbout, the violent adventure comics parody and its spin-off, Red Ketchup, were intermittently-published in a variety of formats over the following decades (recently reissued in a series of graphic novels by La Pasteque). A Red Ketchup animated cartoon series is set to debut in 2023.

Outside of Croc, Fournier also contributed to the magazine Titanic and the Quebec edition of Mad. He edited his own short-lived humour magazine Anormal in 1991, and was an editor and art director for Matrix Comics. His contributions to comics were recognized with the inaugural Albert Chartier Award and the induction into the Joe Shuster Awards hall of fame in 2008.

As well as writing for film and television, Fournier organized exhibits about the history of Quebec bande dessinée beginning in the 1970s and was something of a comics, science fiction and horror pop culture historian, running a well-regarded blog, Frankensteinia, about aspects of the Frankenstein mythos for many years.

Fournier suffered from a lengthy illness and had been in long-term care since February. His death was confirmed by friends and family through Fournier's page on Facebook.

First Doug Wright's Family in The Canadian, 1967

Originally published in the nationally syndicated magazine Weekend (originating in the Montreal Standard but included as an insert in different papers across the country), the comic strip "Doug Wright's Family" moved to upstart competitor The Canadian in 1967. Here's the first strip from The Canadian, printed with a short article trumpeting their new acquisition, with a great photo of Doug Wright, pictured with his eldest son. Both magazines were general interest publications with features for the whole family, from political news, to sports, fashion, celebrity profiles, and weird Cold War fantasies like the one pictured here. The two magazines merged 10 years later.

FILM REVIEW: The Devil's Hand

 

The Devil's Hand aka Carnival of Sinners aka La Main du Diable (1943), directed by Maurice Tourneur.

Charming fantasy about a bohemian artist who buys a "Monkey's Paw" totem and makes a Faustian bargain for fame, love, and riches. The hero is pursued by a cute little devil who dresses and thinks like an accountant (or an SS agent), and there are some impressive spooky-looking shots and sequences. A cute satire on bourgeois art and commerce, directed by Jacques Tourneur's father! Made under German occupation, it's very French, very modern, and I've read it characterized as an anti-Nazi Resistance allegory.

GUELPH FASHION DESIGNER: JACK PURCELL

The most famous fashion brand to come out of Guelph may be the iconic Jack Purcell sneaker. Born in Guelph, Jack Purcell was the World Badminton Champion in the 1920s and 1930s, and a global celebrity. In 1935, he designed a badminton shoe for rubber company BF Goodrich's PF Flyers shoe brand. The distinctive Purcell "smile" shoes became *THE* shoe for all tennis and badminton players for the next 50 years. In 1972, Converse purchased the brand, and they are still made today, along with athletic wear and street wear accessories that carry the Purcell logo.

Mr. Freedom, Directed by William Klein

by BK Munn

R.I.P. William Klein (1926-2022), the expatriate American painter, photographer, and film director who created one of the more notable superhero films of the 1960s, Mr. Freedom. Known for his groundbreaking and award-winning street and fashion photography, the New York-born Klein spent most of his adult life in France, where he also directed tv commercials. Mr. Freedom is an absurdist satire on superheroes and U.S. imperialism that stars another expat, John Abbey, as the titular hero, a fascistic brute who is a clear predecessor to comic book characters like Judge Dredd, Marshall Law, and The Comedian.

The plot of the film has Dr. Freedom (Donald Pleasance) sending Mr. Freedom to France to stop the slide of the "crybaby" French culture into Communism and to investigate the death of French superhero Capt. Formidable (Yves Montand). The film was shot in France with mostly French actors (including Serge Gainsburg and the sublime Delphine Seyrig), although everyone speaks only English throughout. The film has many of the hallmarks of 1960s action and spy films (James Bond and its imitators) but despite it's dumb sub-Get Smart/Batman style plot and Saturday morning/comic book dialogue, it has many striking images and scenes, all shot in a primary colour, pop art style. Director Klein was knowledgeable about comics (he mentions his familiarity with Krazy Kat in one interview I've seen), and also produced a fumetti version of Mr. Freedom using stills from the film to promote it, pictured here. Famously, it has been called “conceivably the most anti-American movie ever made.” It's a beautiful thing!

Allen Baron: Director and 1950s Comic Book Artist

 by BK Munn

I recently had the pleasure of watching Blast of Silence, the brutal, existential 1961 film noir written and directed by and starring Allen Baron. Baron was born in Brooklyn and fell into making movies after a hardscrabble early life that included stints in the U.S. Navy, driving a taxi and working in the comic book industry of the 1950s. The story of the guerrilla production of Blast of Silence, shot on the streets of NYC without permits and with equipment "liberated" from Castro's Cuba, is the stuff of legend and makes for interesting reading. Baron went on to Hollywood and became a well-known tv director. Genre and comic fans may be interested in work he did on some science-fiction and fantasy themed shows like Kolchak the Night Stalker (he also directed more mundane fare like Barney Miller and The Brady Bunch), and he was nominated for a Hugo Award for the 1969 pilot episode of the short-lived The Immortal tv series. But it's his short stint as a comic book artist in the 1950s, directly preceding his first film, that I was curious about. 

A scene in Blast of Silence seems semi-autobiographical: when the ruthless antisocial assassin played by Baron meets a chum from his days in an orphanage, the friend tells a story about getting out of the army, going to art school, and getting a career in commercial art. This is the same path followed by Baron in real life. It looks like he did a batch of romance comics for Lev Gleason and at least one horror story for ACG, the haunting "Bride of the Swamp Monster" in Forbidden Worlds #9 from 1952. While the writer of the story is unknown (perhaps Baron himself), the story is notable for its Hollywood film setting with scenes of a small crew shooting a movie in the swamp.