Blueberry (comics)
Blueberry is a Western comic series created in the Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées tradition by the Belgian scriptwriter Jean-Michel Charlier and French comics artist Jean "Mœbius" Giraud. It chronicles the adventures of Mike Steve Donovan alias Blueberry on his travels through the American Old West. Blueberry is an atypical western hero; he is not a wandering lawman who brings evil-doers to justice, nor a handsome cowboy who "rides into town, saves the ranch, becomes the new sheriff and marries the schoolmarm". In any situation, he sees what he thinks needs doing, and he does it.
The series spawned out of the 1963 Fort Navajo comics series, originally intended as an ensemble narrative, but which quickly gravitated around the breakout character "Blueberry" as the main and central character after the first two stories, causing the series to continue under his name later on. The older stories, released under the Fort Navajo moniker, were ultimately reissued under the name Blueberry as well in later reprint runs. Two spin-off, or rather, sub-series, La Jeunesse de Blueberry and Marshal Blueberry, were created pursuant the main series reaching its peak in popularity in the early 1980s.
It has been remarked that during the 1960s, Blueberry "was as much a staple in French comics as, say, The Avengers or The Flash here ".
Synopsis
Born on 30 October 1843 on Redwood Plantation near Augusta, Georgia, Michael Steven Donovan is the son of a rich Southern planter and starts out life as a decided racist. On the brink of the American Civil War, Donovan is forced to flee north after being framed for the murder of his fiancée Harriet Tucker's father, a plantation owner. On his flight toward the Kentucky border, he is saved by Long Sam, a fugitive African-American slave from his father's estate, who paid with his life for his act of altruism. Inspired when he sees a blueberry bush, Donovan chooses the surname "Blueberry" as an alias when rescued from his Southern pursuers by a Union cavalry patrol. After enlisting in the Union Army, he becomes an enemy of discrimination of all kinds, fighting against the Confederates, later trying to protect the rights of Native Americans. He starts his adventures in the Far West as a lieutenant in the United States Cavalry shortly after the war. On his many travels in the West, Blueberry is frequently accompanied by his trusted companions, the hard-drinking deputy Jimmy McClure, and later also by "Red Neck" Wooley, a rugged pioneer and army scout.Characters
Publication history
In his youth, Giraud had been a passionate fan of American Westerns and Blueberry has its roots in his earlier Western-themed works such as the Frank et Jeremie shorts, which were drawn for Far West magazine when he was only 18 - also having been his first sales as free-lancer - and the by Joseph "Jijé" Gillain heavily inspired Western short stories he created for the magazines from French publisher , in particular the series of short Western comics featuring the same protagonist Art Howell which can be considered as Giraud's de facto first realistic Western series, as he himself did in effect, since he, save the first one, endowed these stories with the subtitle "Un aventure d'Art Howell". This was followed by his collaboration with Jijé himself on an episode of the latter's Jerry Spring series in 1960, which appeared in the Belgian comics magazine Spirou, aside from his subsequent Western contributions to Benoit Gillian's short-lived comic magazine Bonux-Boy. Directly before he started his apprenticeship at Jijé, Jean Giraud had already approached Jean-Michel Charlier on his own accord, asking him if he was interested in writing scripts for a new western series for publication in Pilote, the just by Charlier co-launched legendary French comic magazine. Charlier refused on that occasion, claiming he never felt much empathy for the genre. Biographer though, has noted that Charlier, when he felt he was preaching to the choir, had the tendency to "take liberties" with actual events for dramatic effect. Charlier had in effect already written several Westerns, both comics and illustrated short prose stories, in the period 1949-1959 for various previous magazines. One such short entailed the text comic "Cochise" in Jeannot magazine, July 1957, dealing with the historical "Bascom Affair", which six years later would become the apotheosis of the first Blueberry story, "Fort Navajo". Furthermore, Charlier had already visited the South-West of the United States in 1960, resulting in several Native-American themed educational Pilote editorials.In 1962, the magazine sent Charlier on a reporting assignment around the world for its editorials, and one of his last 1963 ports of call was Edwards Airforce Base in the Mojave Desert, California. He took the opportunity to discover the American West, returning to France with a strong urge to write a western. First he asked Jijé to draw the series, but Jijé, a lifelong friend and collaborator of Charlier, thought there would be a conflict of interest, since he was then a tenured artist at Spirou, a competing comic magazine, which published his own Western comic Jerry Spring, and in which he was very much invested. In his stead, Jijé proposed his protégé Giraud as the artist. A happy coincidence was that Giraud was also intimately familiar with the landscapes that had inspired Charlier, as he already had been on an extended stay of nine months in Mexico in 1956, where the endless blue skies and unending flat plains of Mexico's northern deserts had "cracked open his mind".
Original publications in French
Blueberry was first published in the October 31, 1963 issue of Pilote magazine - hence Charlier's corresponding October 30 birth-date for his fictional character, when the magazine was printed and ready for dissemination. Initially titled "Fort Navajo", the story grew into 46 pages over the following issues. In this series Blueberry - whose physical appearance was inspired by French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo - was only one of many protagonists; the series was originally intended to be an assemble narrative, but quickly gravitated towards Blueberry as the central and primary character, even though the series' title Fort Navajo, une Aventure du Lieutenant Blueberry was maintained for a decade by original publisher Dargaud for the numerous reprint, and international, runs, before the "Fort Navajo" moniker was finally dropped in 1973 with the book publication of "L'homme qui valait 500 000 $". Charlier came up with the name during his American trip: "When I was traveling throughout the West, I was accompanied by a fellow journalist who was just in love with blueberry jam, so much in love, in fact, that I had nicknamed him 'Blueberry'. When I began to create the new series, and everything started to fall into place, I decided to reuse my friend's nickname, because I liked it and thought it was funny. I had no idea that he would prove so popular that he would eventually take over the entire series, and later we would be stuck with that silly name!" In an anecdote, Charlier related how caught off guard he had been: "My memory is a somewhat like a sieve. In the first album, Blueberry was called Steve. I forgot that first name and then I named him Mike. So, in order to get things straight, I coined him Mike Steve Blueberry eventually; this kind of forgetfulness happens to me often".Part of the Blueberry's breakout popularity, had been his rebellious, anti-establishment character traits he had been intentionally and uncharacteristically endowed with by co-creator Charlier and very much the opposite of the other law abiding, squeaky clean comic heroes, Charlier had usually created up until then. This was however, in line with the prevailing mood of the counterculture of the 1960s, influences from which even the right-wing conservative Charlier could not escape entirely. It has enticed him to indulge in a little creative experimentation with the Blueberry character, having become somewhat bored and fed up with his own squeaky clean comic heroes, the military ones like Buck Danny in particular - Charlier usually reserved foibles for his secondary main characters to provide his creations with some levity and humanity, such as Blueberry's flawed friend Jimmy McClure. In stark contrast, one of the other intended major characters of the Fort Navajo series had been Blueberry's friend and colleague lieutenant Graig, who was very much a classic Charlier comics hero, law abiding, a stickler for rules and regulations, unquestioning in his blind obedience to, and acceptance of, authority, and so on. Charlier had apparently expected the presence of the Blueberry character in his creation to be of a transient nature, as he represented everything that Charlier was personally opposed to in private life, quite strongly so according to biographer Ratier.
Due to the fact that Blueberry became the most popular character so early on in the Fort Navajo story-arc, Charlier was forced to do an about-face and started to write out the other main characters, including lieutenant Graig, he had in place in order to make room for Blueberry. However, in one instance that had an unexpected side effect; when Charlier killed off the Native-American lieutenant Crowe in the fifth and last installment of the story-arc, "La piste des Navajos", the editorial offices of Pilote received many angry letters from readers accusing Charlier of murdering a sympathetic protagonist. Taken aback, Charlier later stated: "It was too late to do anything about it, it was done. A strange experience, Giraud in particular took it very hard". Still, while all characters slated for prominence were written out, Blueberry excepted, one major, recurrent secondary character was written in over the course of the story arc in "Le cavalier perdu", Blueberry's friend and sidekick Jimmy McClure. Actually, and by his own admission, Charlier had originally written McClure as a temporary, minor background character, but Giraud was so taken with the character that he asked Charlier to expand his role in the series, and which stands out as the earliest known instance of Giraud exercising influence on the scripts of his senior colleague.
In post-war Europe, it has been tradition to release comics in "pre-publication" as serialized magazine episodes, before publication as a comic book, or rather comic album, typically with a one to two year lag. In French, Blueberry has firstly seen serialized pre-publication in Pilote and ' from publisher Dargaud, the parent and main publisher of Blueberry, with Giraud frequently creating original Blueberry art for the magazine covers and illustrations for editorials, aside from creating on occasion summarizing, introduction plates, none of which reprinted in the original book editions. Nonetheless, much of this material did find its way in later reprint variations, particularly in the editorials of the [|2012-2019 main series anthology, or omnibus, collection] - invariably called "integrals" in the respective languages of mainland Europe - of parent publisher Dargaud, and in those of their licensees such as Egmont for their earlier German/Danish/Norwegian 2006-2017 all-series integral edition collection
The first Blueberry comic album, "Fort Navajo", was released in September 1965 and originally appeared as the 17th volume of the La Collection Pilote series. Actually, this collection had been an initiative of Charlier himself in his function as publishing co-editor, and the 17 titles in the collection were in effect Dargaud's first comic album releases, and an influential release at that. In order to give these releases a more "mature" image, the books were from the start executed as hard cover editions. Favorably received and though not being the first, the hard cover format became the norm in France definitively, where henceforth all comic albums were executed in the format - becoming indeed generally accepted as a mature part of French culture eventually - whereas the vast majority of the other European countries continued to employ the soft cover format for decades to come, somewhat reflecting the status comic books held in their respective societies at the time. These included for the time being French-Belgium as well, Charlier's native country, where the exact same collection was concurrently licensed to, and released by Le Lombard, albeit as soft cover only. Charlier's initiative was not entirely devoid of a healthy dose of self-interest, as over half the releases in the collection, were, aside from Blueberry, titles from other comic series he had co-created. After "Fort Navajo", the collection was suspended and each comic hero hitherto featured therein, spun off in book series of their own, including Blueberry or rather Fort Navajo, une Aventure du Lieutenant Blueberry as it was then still coined.
After Dargaud had lost publishing rights for over a decade for new Blueberry titles to firstly German publisher and subsequently to Belgian publisher, as a result from a conflict with the creators over Blueberry royalties, the series has seen, predominantly one-time only, French pre-publication in such comic magazines as Métal Hurlant, L'Écho des savanes and '. Other European countries followed the same template with local magazines. However, the format, for decades a staple in Europe and shaping entire generations of comic readers, went out of vogue in the late 1980s/early 1990s and the vast majority of European comic magazines have since then become defunct by the mid-1990s, including those from Belgium, the country were the phenomenon was born in the late 1930s. Ironically, while "Le bout de la piste" and "Arizona Love" became main series titles to see serialized pre-publication elsewhere, neither were serialized as such in France itself, where "La tribu fantôme" had previously become the last Blueberry title pre-published as such in L'Écho des savanes. Henceforth, new Blueberry titles were until 1997 directly released in album format, starting with the 1990 La Jeunesse de Blueberry title, "Le raid infernal". Any subsequent French magazine, or newspaper serialized publication occurred after the initial book release while Blueberry was housed at Novedi and its successor, Swiss publisher, and which had actually already included "Angel Face" in Nouveau Tintin, and "La dernière carte" in Spirou previously, both having been serialized after their respective book releases.
After Charlier had died on 10 July 1989, Giraud, aside from completing "Arizona Love" on his own, wrote and drew five albums, from "Mister Blueberry" to "Dust", until his own death in 2012. Additionally, Giraud also scripted the intermezzo series Marshal Blueberry, but had no creative input for the La Jeunesse de Blueberry prequel series, after the first three, original volumes.
By the time Giraud embarked on the OK Corral cycle, publishing rights had returned to Dargaud, and that publisher decided to revitalize the magazine serialized pre-publication format as part of their marketing effort on behalf of Blueberrys return , albeit with a twist; As Dargaud no longer had a comic magazine of their own, it was decided to farm out pre-publication to parties who showed the most interest, resulting in that Blueberry titles in that cycle became serialized in different publications, not all necessarily comic-related by origin. The summer of 1997 saw the serialization of "Ombres sur Tombstone" in the French daily newspaper Le Monde, followed by the pre-publication of "Géronimo l'Apache" in the monthly comic magazine, directly before the album release in October 1999 as part of Dargaud's substantial marketing campaign for the album. The next title, "OK Corral", was published in a similar manner in the summer of 2003 in the "L'ExpressMag" appendix of the non-comic weekly news magazine L'Express.
The mere fact that serious newspapers and magazines were by then vying for the opportunity to run Blueberry in their publications first, was testament to the status Blueberry and its creator had by then attained in Francophone Europe.