I
first met Bertrand DEMEY, alias BEB-DEUM, about 10 years ago. When he
opened his portfolio, I was immediately filled with wonder. At the time,
I used to publish comic strips for the newspaper "METAL HURLANT"
among others and I was used to seeing these rather shy young artists
coming in with full portfolios and the great disappointment that was
theirs when they started taking out their drawings, always similar and
approximate. Bertrand DEMEY's drawings were exactly the opposite. They
were perfect drawings, at the time architecture projects you would have
thought drawn by an architect, a rather mad one who'd have had financial
means no one ever had had before.
They were at once contemporary and Babylonian architectures, at once
futuristic and devoted to the past and there was in there all of BEB-DEUM's
world, that kind of extraordinary mixture, a blend of all ages, his
childhood memories, nostalgic catalogues of the fifties, most popular
science-fiction images, Russian futurism, American realism. The whole
would form an absolutely coherent achievement that was in fact a true
to life creation of his own vision of the world, not the physical one
that surrounds us but a mental universe where what he can see, feel
and what he has gone through, has admired and even hated somewhat emerges
from him in spite of everything he has seen or caught a glimpse of in
his young career and life.
Since then, he has kept asserting his own personality; human figures
have come over to stand outside his architectures; he was able to develop
sophisticated lines and shapes, close to 3D, which is a rare thing in
comic strips and he also proved to be capable of making things lighter
when necessary. He tells strange stories reminiscent of Kafkaian worlds
not very different from ours, worlds that are at once sinister and crazy
and that make us laugh in spite of ourselves. He tells us stories of
everyday characters in impossible situations but we can still identify
with them beyond the apparences. He even invents improbable creatures
we could feel like having near us, so brimming with life and conspicuous
they are. An architect and a chronicler of the human kind, he also seems
to be a zoologist.
I don't think I'm the only one to share this admiration since the first
time I showed MOEBIUS his drawings, certainly the greatest strip cartoonist
in the world, he immediately told me that we had here not a
talent but the new talent we had all been waiting for
since the eighties.
And please don't let him be regarded as a mere strip cartoonist. That
would limit him to one means of expression among others and he has more
than one string to his bow to enrich his illustrations. I do remember
one SPIROU version of his on a poster, the famous Belgian comic strip
hero, the eternal child-like liftboy, in an improbable hotel, he had
drawn when he was 60 or 70 perhaps, still dressed in his uniform, perfect
and logical illustration of the decline of the character if he had still
been alive and perfect illustration of what strip cartoons themselves
are, in their ageing process, irreversible whatever our regrets. His
ageing SPIROU was perhaps irreverent but awfully human and touching.
I don't know what he has in store for us but all I can say is that,
wherever he goes, we can expect great achievements and I think that
all the worlds, comic strips, video games and why not movies are legitimately
open to his talents.
I am proud of knowing BEB-DEUM and of having worked with him and of
being able to say right now what I think.
Jean-Pierre
DIONNET,
08/02/1993
