INTERVIEW
On a walk with Frédéric Taddéi on Europe 1, Philippe Geluck, whose 22nd volume of the Cat was released last October 30, spoke about freedom of expression and the dark side of the drawings he produced for satirical newspapers Siné Hebdo and Monthly, Sunday.
The author of Belgian comic strip, who recognizes that Le Chat allowed him to "pay for his house, feed his family, help his children get started in life", reminds him that he gave him the freedom. A freedom he used to draw in styles very different from that of the famous feline, especially for Siné Hebdo then Siné Monthly, in which his column was entitled "Geluck is loose". A homonymous collection of politically incorrect texts and drawings will be born in 2009.
"Without any taboos"
This dark side, "it has always been in me," says the artist. "I made my first drawings and in some I went further than the most ultra of the band Sine". Drawings on pedophilia in the Church, on Schumacher, on jihadism, the burqa ... He crunches "without any limit and without any taboo". Far from the image of the cat, and yet. If he admits to being "sometimes on the verge of nausea by looking at" his drawings (and sometimes dead laughing), the buyers of his comic book hero are also very demanding, according to him, his collections more iconoclasts. "I was signing old ladies who bought Le Chat every year and there came to ask for this book", he amuses himself. "So finally it's nice, and we're happily in a country where we like it".