Thierry Ségur is another (French) artist that I admire very much. Without his work, I wouldn't have made the transition from children comics to adult comics (or BD - Bandes Dessinées as they call them in France). By shifting to comics for a more mature audience, I understood that comics are more than just big-nosed funny characters.
So without Ségur's work, I would have probably lost my interest in drawing. At a certain age, playing guitar, being cool and impressing girls (well at least in my case ;-) ) becomes more interesting than drawing comics, which seems a nerdish hobby at that age.
But that dark scenario did not happen :-). So, why did I like Ségur's work?
Reading comics in the nineties
It all begin at a new years eve somewhere in the beginning of the nineties, when we were visiting my aunt and uncle and I was browsing through the new comics that my older cousin bought.
Among those comics was a particular case, titled "De legende van de dorre gewesten" (the legend of the droughty countries). Below you see the original French cover, which actually refers to "forgotten countries".
Why was this album so different for me
I was 14 years old at that time, and this album was quite different from what I had seen or read before:
- It was hard cover, and larger than A4. Flemisch comics at that time were on a smaller and softcover format. So Ségur's work looked more precious (or expensive).
- Flemish comics had a flat colouring at that time. Ségur's work was probably watercolor with other media. Actually this was the first time I saw painted comics.
- Ségur doesn't draw in a caricatural of realistic style, but somewhere between. At that time I only knew funny comics like Spirou (Robbedoes), les Tuniques Bleues (Blauwbloezen) or more realistic stuff like "De Rode Ridder" (the red knight).
- The story was pure fantasy. At that time, fantasy wasn't that mainstream as nowaday.
- The charactersmade a psychological evolution through the story, which was something new for me.
- The visual language was new to me, with the use of movie techniques like zooming, panning, ...
Someone who read French adult comics in the seventies must have been already familiar with all this stuff, but in the Dutch-speaking market this was all fairly new.
If this album would have been published right now, it wouldn't be so unique anymore, except maybe for the authentic painted style that Ségur uses.
A first look at the book
Just by opening the book, the reader dove into the world that Ségur created. The first spread that is glued to the hardcover, was a gigantic close-up from one of the most impressive images from the book: Hürl the thunderknight making his entry among a raging storm of flashlights...
Maybe not that impressive here on screen, but on a 50x35cm format: wow!
Ségur's drawing style
As already told, Ségurs work was the first painted comic that I saw. I suppose it's mainly watercolor (aquarelle). In the first album, the colours are all quite bright and vivid, just like the atmosphere of the story itself. When the story evolves, in the second and third album, the colors are scaled down and Ségur uses more desaturised (greyish) colours, which fit perfect with the darker atmosphere in the third part.
The opening page (click to zoom)
Also his linework evoled from thicker in the first album, to thinner in the third.
Page from the third album.
My personal "Aha-erlebnis" (wow-moment) was that Ségur's drawing showed me that a good drawing is actually a flat representation of a 3D-object. You always end up with a line-drawing, but you should start by thinking about the three-dimensional form. Now that's common knowledge for me, but at that time it was new for me. I see this also when I teach my illustration courses: when you learn your students about perspective and dimensionality, they start making huge progressions.
I think that perspective and dimensionality are really essential for anyone who wants to draw stuff by heart, without reference.
Another visual representation of fantasy
Ségur's work was one of the earlier fantasy-comics. You can still see it when you look at how the fantasy-world was conceived: plants, rocks, etcetera are conceived quite differently from what you see in regular fantasy nowadays.
Click to zoom.
Click to zoom.
There are two reasons why Ségur's way of visual representation is different:
Firstly, the global influence of internet makes that nowadaysthere is a certain canon of how fantasy should look like. Orks, elves, etc. have a general look, as if there is a standard, or a canon about it. Especially since Lord of the Rings, fantasy has been streamlined into a certain visual style. Ségur made his work before the internet really boosted (end of the eighties), and had to make up his world by himself, without much help or influence from others.
Secondly, Ségur is French. Frenchmen are a bit more chauvinist when it comes to accept influences from other countries/cultures.
In the seventies and maybe still the eighties France was even quite protectionistic towards its own cultural production. I believe that in that time (and maybe still now for certain radio or television networks) there was a quotum on the minimum amount of French songs that should be played...
This typical French mentality made that French fantasy and science-fiction evoled a bit more independent than in countries where the American influence was bigger.
French science fiction style was actually so apart from the American style, that in the seventiefrench SF series Valerian (by Mezières) actually influenced Star Wars (the design of Han Solo's spaceship, and even Darth Vader). Other authors like Moebius made designs for movies like Twelve Monkeys (that's in the mid-nineties). For Luc Bessons's "Fifth Element" (with Bruce Willis) both Mezières and Moebius developed the layout of the movie (e.g. the flying cabs).
So the American influence on French artists was at that time quite marginal, which resulted for the French comics in more original storylines and graphic design.
Of course, nowadays French SF and fantasy is much less original than it was back in the seventies and eighties.
Of course now it seems that only Ségur worked on these albums, but the script was written by Chevalier. He and Ségur knew eachother through the world of Role Playing Games. Actually there has been made an RPG from "La légende..." later on. I do not know what influence Chevalier had on the visual style of the albums...
The story itself.
The story itself was written by Chevalier, and was one of the very first French fantasy albums (even before "The cristal sword"). "Editions Delcourt" published the albums as one of the very first fantasy series. Nowadays publishers like Delcourt and especially Soleil are publishing too much fantasy and SF; in general there is even an overproduction of comics in France (every day 6 new comics are published).
But in those days, "La légende..." was unique and trendsetting. If "La légende" was published in 2015 instead of of the late eighties, I
do not know if the albums would still stand out in a shop among all the
other new albums...
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| Cover for the second album. |
In the story itself, 3 dwarfs have to fullfill a quest: finding their king. That starting point is used a lot in fantasy. For this purpose, they make a fellowship (sounds also very familiar) but not in the same way as it happens in "The fellowship of the Ring" (LOTR). The three dwarfs engage Firfin, a thief from the Lïn-people, and the barbaric warrior Morkaï.
By the end of the first album, the fellowship breaks up after an attack of some kind of orks (just like in LOTR), but then the story takes another lead in the next two albums, when it turns out that the quest is manipulated by an old evil forcen and it seems that nobody can trust his friends or even family anymore...
The story consists of three albums. The second sold at the time 45,000 copies, a huge succes for a French fantasy series in those days.
It took some years before the third part was published, because Ségur did some storywork for the movie "Trooper" by Christophe Gans.
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| The three albums |
Ségur after this story
Thierry Ségur didn't make much comics after "La légende". He did more illustrationwork and some storyboarding for movies, like "Le pacte des Loups".
"Le roi des méduses" (the King of the jellyfish) was published a few years after "La légende", and was drawn in his particular style, but the story was quite complicated (it took me a while before I read the whole story). "Le roi des méduses", scripted by Igor Szalewa. Other work he did are Krok le Bô (1990), also scripted by Chevalier. It didn't find a translation of that in Dutch so I haven't read it yet (nor have I found the original version in French).
Some years ago, there were plans for a sequel to "La légende...", but eventually
the project was aborted.
Getting the albums
You can still get the albums in French language; if you're looking for a Dutch version you should check out the second-hand comic shops, where they can still be found. Not because they didn't sell well, but because the Flemish publisher printed too much copies at the time.
All images: copyright Ségur/Chevalier.
Click here to see the other comic artist that I admire.
