Posted in: Comics | Tagged: bd, Comics, entertainment, france, kim thompson, macherot

Macherot's Chaminou Finally To See Re-Publication In France

A comic that the late comic creator/editor/translator/publisher Kim Thompson really wanted to publish, but was tied up in rights disputes, is going to be re-released in France.

While he was working on translations on the Sybil-Anne books, Kim Thompson wrote copious editor's notes on something entirely different, Chaminou by the comic creator Macherot, a book he really wanted to translate and publish, but couldn't because of the legal situation.

Macherot went to Spirou, where they offered him the top-of-the-line 64-page hardcovers, freedom to do what he wanted, and he created Chaminou et le Khrompire, which as it turns out is one of the defining masterpieces of Franco-Belgian comics, and is both a huge leap beyond and summation of his previous work: It's a secret-agent funny-animal thriller, very self-aware, with some off-kilter characterizations (Chaminou is a bit of an egomaniacal dandy and occasional screw-up) and some genuinely dark moments. (Macherot tended to go a little more graphic in the animals-eating-one-another premise than most cartoonists.) There's a scene in it that conceptually duplicates the final scene in Freaks, one of the most horrific scenes in any movie ever made, and plays it for laughs. It's just unbelievably bold for the time (1964), one of those art objects that seems unique and decades ahead of its time, like Night of the Hunter (one of Macherot's favorite films, incidentally) or Kiss Me Deadly.

Well, when Dupuis bought Marsu Productions, Chaminou's last publisher, the dispute was resolved. And a Dupuis representative has answered a question to say  that, indeed, it will be the publisher's next release on its deluxe collection.

Bonjour,

Chaminou" est programmé pour mars 2015.

En revanche, "Le château maudit" étant en 5 bandes pour une partie, il ne peut donc pas rentrer dans le format de la collection 50/60"

It's such a shame that Kim isn't here to see it.

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