Death of Raoul Cauvin, father of the "Blue Tunics" and giant of Belgian comics
Belgian screenwriter Raoul Cauvin at the Geneva Book Fair in 2011. © Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons
Text by: Edmond Sadaka
5 mins
The screenwriter died this Thursday, August 19 at the age of 82.
We owe him in particular the series
Les Tuniques Bleues,
a comic strip which has sold millions of copies in half a century.
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It was in 1968 that Raoul Cauvin created
the Blue Tunics,
eight years after his beginnings at the publisher Dupuis where he had notably been a cameraman in the Cartoons department.
Les Tuniques Bleues
humorously recount the adventures of two American soldiers who fought the “
Southerners
” during the Civil War in the 1860s.
The series made it possible to introduce this American conflict to a good number of Europeans.
The popular success has been phenomenal: more than 15 million albums sold in French, add to that countless translations in Europe.
Series often close to black humor
This popular success will push him to become a prolific author for his publisher Dupuis.
In the 1980s, he began more incisive series, often close to black humor, such as
Les Femmes en blanc, Pierre Tombal, Agent 212
or
Cédric.
In turn, these comics will experience exceptional success and longevity.
Some will even be adapted as a cartoon.
Raoul Cauvin was a modest man, very discreet, who hardly appeared in the media.
Last May, he announced on his blog that he was suffering from incurable cancer.
Coated Raoul Cauvin, comic book scriptwriter
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