Comic Art Museum - Brussels

The Belgian Comic Strip Center can only apologize for exhibiting an album as depressing as “” in our Gallery. To defend their choice of such a morbid subject, the authors of course push their tongue-in-cheek humour to the very limits and beyond. But we feel obliged to strongly denounce this hilarious series which has already claimed many (willing) victims among the readers of the magazine Spirou, some of whom expired in fits of laughter.

J.C. de la Royère, Belgian Comic Strip Center.

Born in 1952 in Liège, Marc Hardy made his debut in the comic strip world at the age of 14. After a few collaborations and illustrations, his vivid and energetic style found a place in the magazine Spirou in 1982 when he created the series “Pierre Tombal” with Raoul Cauvin, bringing black humour within everyone’s reach. Hilarious despite its seemingly macabre subject, the series is about a cheery gravedigger who also looks after the cemetery, and his trials with its unruly occupants. The often ill-tempered Death is certainly not the easiest character to deal with, and things have not been going too well since happy-go-lucky Life took up residence in the cemetery with his flowers and his eternal youth. Happily Pierre Tombal is able to manage this little world and its inhabitants with fatherly wisdom… so long as no-one gives him too much grief, or ever dares to mention the word “cremation” in front of him!

Volume 29 “Des os et des bas” is a concentrated piece of black humour with macabre tendencies by Cauvin and Hardy, who remain on brilliant form. As a bonus, and specially for this anniversary edition of the series, it includes a 16-page compilation of all the “Pierre Tombal” cover drawings from the Spirou magazine.

Sophie Dumont, Dupuis.