Paris (AFP)

Plantu signed his latest front page drawing for Le Monde on Wednesday, which pays tribute in an eight-page supplement to its star designer, while Liberation published a special issue to mark the retirement of its official cartoonist Willem.

Coincidentally, the two cartoonists asserted their retirement rights in their respective dailies at the same time.

For his last drawing on the front page of Le Monde, which adorns the edition published on Wednesday and dated Thursday, April 1, Plantu shows President Macron at the Elysee Palace, spinning and not knowing, a few hours before his speech, what new measures announce against Covid-19.

A drawing that is accompanied by multiple winks to readers of Le Monde: little mice (animals that often decorate his drawings) waving a handkerchief to say goodbye, a masked Marianne, and several doves (his other favorite animal), one of which holds a question mark in its beak, a reference to his very first drawing published in the newspaper in 1972.

The daily retraces his career spanning nearly half a century in an eight-page supplement, with an interview with the artist and a selection of his most striking drawings, decade by decade, in which we see the evolution of his style.

As the director of Le Monde Jérôme Fenoglio explained to AFP, Plantu will be replaced by cartoonists from the international collective "Cartooning for peace" that he has confused, and to whom the newspaper will now call for its front page.

For its part, Liberation dedicated its Wednesday issue to Willem, who is also retiring after 40 years with the newspaper.

Here again, the daily offers an interview, testimonies and numerous reproductions of his drawings.

Willem has caricatured himself on the cover of the newspaper, where we see him from the back, a glass in hand, in front of a white sheet surrounded by characters that he took pleasure in deriding ...

Finally, Libé publishes on the last page a (written) portrait of her new official cartoonist, Coco, "the first woman to have such a role in a national daily", in the form of a letter addressed to the thirty-something, survivor of the Charlie Hebdo attack in January 2015. The designer will begin in her pages on Thursday.

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