MAURICE TILLIEUX (1921-1978) Lot n° 91

Gil Jourdan - Dragonfly escapes India ink on paper for the album cover. Signed at the top center. 29,2 x 20,2 cm. Dupuis, 1959. The relationship between Charles Dupuis and Maurice Tillieux was not a smooth one. Thanks to Jean Doisy, the father of one of his friends, the young man signs illustrations in Le Journal de Spirou under the pseudonym of Fantasio. But Charles Dupuis does not want his comics. So the young cartoonist went to do his training elsewhere: Bimbo, Jeep and especially Héroïc-Albums for which he created the famous trio composed of Félix, Cabarez and Allume-gaz. A decade later, his participation in Risque-Tout finally allowed him to join the Éditions Dupuis. And when this short-lived magazine stops its publication, his comic strip of Marc Jaguar allows him to be finally accepted. Fortunately for him, because Héroïc-Albums definitely did not manage to pass the French censorship, which condemned the magazine in the short term. For Dupuis, Tillieux transformed his previous trio into Gil Jourdan, Libellule and Crouton. The police and humor series begins with the story Libellule s'évade, and immediately meets its public, according to the returns of the first referendum. Of course, the liberties taken with Crouton will make Tillieux suffer again the cut of the French censorship, which forbids this first album in France. Fortunately, this does not affect Le Journal de Spirou and its hundreds of thousands of readers who continue to tremble and laugh when reading the continuation of Gil Jourdan's adventures. For Maurice Tillieux fans, this cover of Libellule s'évade does not only symbolize this album that French readers have waited for a decade. This museum piece is also and above all the image of Tillieux's consecration, when he made his debut with great fanfare at Dupuis after a decade of hard work in a half-dozen other magazines. The moment when the chrysalis turns into... Dragonfly !