Andre Franquin’s “Die Laughing” – An Outstanding, But Dark, Humor Book
Andre Franquin’s
“Die Laughing”
<img width="299" height="242" src="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/selfportrait_rightjustified-e1492305030151.jpg" alt="Augie De Blieck Jr. self portrait" loading="lazy" />
<h4>BY AUGIE DE BLIECK JR.</h4>
<p style="caret-color: #3d3d3d; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 19px;">Do you like dark humor?</p><p style="caret-color: #3d3d3d; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 19px;">No, I don't mean the way a villain might crack a joke in the latest issue of "Batman."</p><p style="caret-color: #3d3d3d; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 19px;">I'm talking about a book that has multiple guillotine jokes -- and they're the cleanest jokes about death. Let's not talk about the impaling chair, the hangings, the chicken processing plant plucking, or the numerous bombs blowing everyone to shreds.</p><p style="caret-color: #3d3d3d; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 19px;">"Die Laughing" is not a gross-out book, but it is dark. It's possibly the darkest book I've ever read.</p><p style="caret-color: #3d3d3d; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; font-size: 19px;">But it's also the darkest book I've ever LOL'ed my way entirely through.</p>
<img width="800" height="531" src="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/die_laughing_bunny_hunter_large.jpeg" alt="Andre Franquin enjoys killing rabbit hunters in Die Laughing" loading="lazy" srcset="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/die_laughing_bunny_hunter_large.jpeg 800w, https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/die_laughing_bunny_hunter_large-300x199.jpeg 300w, https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/die_laughing_bunny_hunter_large-768x510.jpeg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" />
<h2>The Genius of Franquin</h2>
Yes, this is the same Andre Franquin who gave us the cute and cuddly <a href="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/beginning-bd-what-is-a-marsupilami/">Marsupilami</a>.
He also had multiple axes to grind concerning some of the most politically charged items of his day in the late 70s/early 80s when he drew this strips: animal rights, military build-up, nuclear annihilation, religion, cigarette smoking, and even the inhumanity of boxing.
Perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, those issues persist. Some of the trade dressing is different — nuclear war has been replaced with terrorist attacks, I guess — but the fundamental issues that Franquin pokes at here have not gone away.
Putting aside the politics, there are any number of just generically depressing cartoons in this book. The father who yells at his kids for being afraid of the dark goes outside to confront a gaggle of sinister looking shadows. The man lost and afraid he’ll never return to civilization finds hope, until it is dashed in the glowing eyes of a dozen wolves looking for dinner. The friendly bird feeder sparks a frenzy that chooses to eat him.
It’s a very cynical and dark view of the world Franquin shows us here. No doubt some of it is informed by his own battle with depression. The leap is not too great there, at all.
In the end, most of it is just classic gag page structure: Set the joke up, twist it around on the protagonist, and pay off the joke by going in an unexpected direction from where the set-up lined you up.
The techniques are classics, but the results are singular.
The Art of Franquin
Franquin’s art in his career already made a dramatic shift, from the atomic style of the 50s to the Marcinelle School style of the 1960s that he’s best known for. The work in “Die Laughing” is a mutation of that latter style to an extreme. Underneath it all, you’ll see Franquin’s usual collection of idiosyncratic tricks, but on top of it all is a whole new inking style that transforms the art to a new level. It’s not something that would work for many books, but it perfectly fits the tone of the material it’s being used for.
To put it in modern terms: Imagine the art styles of Sergio Aragones, Don Martin, and Skottie Young packaged together. Add in Frank Cho’s careful cross-hatching from his Bic pen drawings.
At the core, it’s still Franquin’s art. The proportions are the same, with the slightly bent knees as the people just stand there. The large hands and big noses rule the day.
But then he does something more. He tells just about all the stories in partial silhouette. The eyes remain white and there’s some rim lighting so you can clearly make out the figures and the gestures, but that’s it. It’s a stark black and white book, usually with those characters silhouetted in front of blank white space.
Franquin goes a step further, tough, and adds in enough noodly details, wiggly lines, and crosshatching marks to give every panel texture. Every panel feels like a labor of love. It’s the kind of book I imagine a lot of artists will look on with awe and admiration. The level of detail Franquin suggests with his detailed line work is like nothing else I’ve ever seen in comics.
I mean, just look at the unnecessary details he puts into this panel filled with missiles:
It’s not necessary, but it’s what makes the book look so different from everything else in comics. It’s amazing and backbreaking detail work.
The only person who comes close to this is Gerhard, with his “Cerebus” backgrounds, and maybe Francois Schuiten. Those two use that kind of work to fill out the backgrounds, though. It’s the complete inverse of this situation. Cerebus was filled with cartoony figures, and Schuiten’s work has normal humans in the foreground looking realistic but not over-detailed.
It’s even crazier than all the little lines Scott Williams has to ink over a Jim Lee drawing.
Franquin is crazier than all of them here. This is a supreme effort.
I imagine this is the kind of book that drives modern inkers and creators nuts. They must look at this and shake their heads and wonder how someone could pull this stuff off. It’s a style nobody has time to imitate anymore.
Just because Franquin hadn’t filled each page with enough detail, he also gets creative at the bottom of most pages with his signature. He morphs it in a way to fit the gag, whether its an ink splatter in the middle of his name after a gag where someone falls to their death, or a jackhammer look to the “F” on a page where a construction worker can’t stop his always-vibrating body.
The lesson to learn with this book is that you should never give up on any page until you’ve reached the edge of the page. There’s something on every square inch.
About Andre Franquin
Andre Franquin is one of the most influential and revered cartoonists of the Franco-Belgian comics world. Born in Belgium in 1924, he started work at an animation studio right out of school alongside the likes of Peyo (“The Smurfs”) and Morris (“Lucky Luke”).
From there, he’d go on to draw for both Spirou and Tintin magazines, eventually settling in at Spirou. He was the third artist on the title series there, created Marsupilami along the way, and then starting his own strip, “Gaston La Gaffe,” which became very, very popular.
He is not only a fan favorite artist in Belgium and France, but also one of the biggest inspirations for the artists there. The list of artists who would consider Franquin an influence would be too long to list here. Even Herge (“Tintin”) expressed admiration for Franquin’s work, despite having a wildly different style. (It’s not that far off from Franquin’s “atomic style,” really, but that’s a discussion for another day.)
Franquin died in 1997, but not before founding Marsu Productions to handle his creations. The Marsupilami album series has been running for thirty years now, and Gaston La Gaffe is finally now being translated into English via Cinebook.
Available in Print from Fantagraphics
Fantagraphics published “Die Laughing” in print in the spring of 2018. The hardcover edition is beautifully designed and considered. The pages are heavy enough to prevent the black ink from leaking through to the other side. They’re slick enough to hold every tiny detail of every line from nearly all the pages. (There’s one or two where I suspect the source material might be at fault from a final reproduction that doesn’t look quite up to the rest of the book. )
The book measures up to 9 x 11 inches, which makes it just a bit bigger than a standard piece of paper. That makes it about the same size as paperback editions of Asterix, or any of the full size albums from Cinebook.
It’s only 80 pages, but for a hardcover at $20, I can’t complain about that. There’s only so much material Franquin produced for this series.
The book begins with a helpful eight page essay by Cynthia Rose describing the series and how it came to be. It’s a nice summary of Franquin’s career and his health issues. It puts the rest of the book nicely into its historical context.
You can read the book and understand the humor at a surface level, but this introduction will add depth. It’s the perfect kind of introduction for a book like this — both historical and entertaining.
That all said, I am jealous of the French. They have multiple editions of this book under its original name, “Les Idees Noires.” This video shows all of them. That oversized edition looks like an “Artist’s Edition” size tome. I would love that one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvd2e7yYhTE
Jump ahead to 11:38 to see those gloriously large pages opened up for a sample.
<h2>A Video Preview</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtLxEaspctVar287DtdsMww">On their YouTube page</a>, Fantagraphics provides videos of someone previewing their books. It's a simple show-off: an overhead camera, no narration, and a quick showing of the front and back covers, the spine, and a selection of pages inside.
They didn’t do one for “Die Laughing” that I saw.
That was a hole that I needed to fill, naturally.
Here I am with that:
https://youtu.be/mg1e9cmqi_Q
Recommended?
<p>Without a moment's hesitation, yes.
Yes, yes, and yes.
Franquin was an extraordinary talent whose work’s influence cannot be properly calculated in the Franco-Belgian world. And “Die Laughing” is a cut above even his own normal genius.
The gags are sharp and witty, usually with something to say. It may feel occasionally over-hyped and a bit simplistic. You might even find the book unbearably negative. But the gags work. They’re worth reading through.
The art is the kind of thing you could stare at for excessive periods of time. Once you stop to inspect how he pulled off the look of the book, you’ll find it hard to stop looking. You’ll find more detail as you look ever closer.
It’s even funny once you get past the idea that the guy who created Marsupilami is also doing a book filled with guillotine jokes and suicidal smokers. That initial shock only carries the book so far. The rest works so well on its own.
— 2019.001 —
Where to Buy “Die Laughing”
For the hardcover print edition, Amazon offers the book with a pretty good discount.
That is an Amazon Affiliate link. It won’t cost you a dime, but it’ll help support this site. Thanks in advance.
You can also buy the Kindle version from this link on Amazon, or via Comixology.
<h2>Other Andrew Franquin Books I've Reviewed</h2>
<a href="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/gomer-the-goof-v1-mind-the-goof/">
<img width="400" height="552" src="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/gomergoof_v1_cover_400.jpg" alt="Gomer Goof v1 cover by Franquin" loading="lazy" srcset="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/gomergoof_v1_cover_400.jpg 400w, https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/gomergoof_v1_cover_400-217x300.jpg 217w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /> </a>
<a href="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/gomer-goof-v2-its-a-van-goof/">
<img width="400" height="532" src="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/gomer_goof_v2_cover_400px.jpeg" alt="Gomer Goof by Andre Franquin. Volume 2 cover" loading="lazy" srcset="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/gomer_goof_v2_cover_400px.jpeg 400w, https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/gomer_goof_v2_cover_400px-226x300.jpeg 226w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /> </a>
<a href="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/spirou-and-fantasio-v13-z-is-for-zorglub/">
<img width="400" height="555" src="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/spirou_v13_cover.jpg" alt="Spirou and Fantasio v13 Z is for Zorglub cover" loading="lazy" srcset="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/spirou_v13_cover.jpg 400w, https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/spirou_v13_cover-216x300.jpg 216w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /> </a>
<a href="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/spirou-and-fantasio-v5-the-marsupilami-thieves/">
<img width="400" height="532" src="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/spirou_fantasio_marsupilami_thieves.jpeg" alt="Spirou and Fantasio v5 The Marsupilami Thieves from Cinebook" loading="lazy" srcset="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/spirou_fantasio_marsupilami_thieves.jpeg 400w, https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/spirou_fantasio_marsupilami_thieves-226x300.jpeg 226w" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" /> </a>
<h2>It's Like Franquin Saw Social Media Coming....</h2>
<img width="500" height="386" src="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/die_laughing_follow_me.jpg" alt="Andre Franquin's Die Laughing provides the perfect social media "Follow Me" image" loading="lazy" srcset="https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/die_laughing_follow_me.jpg 500w, https://www.pipelinecomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/die_laughing_follow_me-300x232.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" />
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<h2>Your Commentary and Review</h2>
Do you think that anyone will translate Franquin’s other series such as Modeste and Pompon and Isabelle into English at all you think?