It’s official now, Maurice Tillieux and Raymond Macherot tie for third place in Fantagraphics’ editor Kim Thompson’s personal backyard pantheon of European comic artists. I especially dig that Thompson likens Tillieux to Hollywood director Howard Hawks, not the first time I have read that comparison. Tillieux is on the level of Hawks, a master of dialogue and action. Raymond Macherot I have neglected until now, but with Thompson’s canonization of his works, I’d better get on board for that as well. Will 2011 be the year when eurocomics finally break through in America? We shall see… certainly no better candidates to start off with than Belgian artists Maurice Tillieux and Raymond Macherot. Make mine Marcinelle!
from http://www.comicbookresources.com/?id=29811&page=article
Can you talk a little bit about the next few books you have planned for 2011, namely “Gil Jordan” and “Sybil-Anne vs. Ratticus?” What are these books about and why are they significant?
Sure. The two greatest Belgian cartoonists who ever lived are Hergé (“Tintin”) and [Andre] Franquin (“Spirou” and “Gaston Lagaffe”). As opinions go, those are as close to unassailable fact as you can get. It’s on the “well, duh” level of whether Jack Kirby is the greatest super-hero artist ever. I would argue that Tillieux and Macherot are tied at #3.
Tillieux, who worked in a cartoony style that sort of split the difference between Hergé’s clear-line semi-realism and Franquin’s rubbery cartooniness, created several series but his best was “Gil Jordan,” a private-eye series that debuted the week I was born. Literally, the day I popped out, that was the issue of “Spirou” magazine on the stands. Among its many qualities are the flawlessly moody drawings, Tillieux’s amazing gift for action set pieces — there’s a dockside chase in the book we’re doing that’s just breathtaking — and he was the best smart-ass dialogue writer of his generation. It’s basically like Howard Hawks does “Tintin.”
Macherot is one of the few Belgian funny-animal cartoonists and “Sibyl-Anne” was his last great series. He draws like a dream, his writing is top-notch and even though it looks innocent there’s a bracing wit and sometimes snarkiness to it. (The irony is that even though among the “Spirou” magazine artists Macherot’s work looks the most childish, it’s actually in some ways the most knowingly adult, in the same way that Barks’s “Donald Duck” is more adult than any “realistic” comic.)