French Comics Artist Gotlib Was A Music Lover

Alyson Camus|December 5, 2016

Bob Dylan, Captain Beefheart, Deep Purple, Frank Zappa, Joe Cocker, John Lennon, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the who

The Beatles’ Abbey Road

Marcel Gotlib was a French cartoonist, a very prolific artist and writer who wrote many comics that I enjoyed very much reading when I was young….

His most famous series included La Rubrique-à Brac (an assortment of short stories most of the time drawn in black and white, telling stories about everything and with several recurrent historical figures such as Isaac Newton), Gai-Luron (a dog heavily influenced by Droopy, the famous character in Tex Avery’s cartoons), Superdupont (the adventures of a very Nationalist douchebag French guy), Cinémastock (a parody of a few great classic movies). It was always irreverent, clever and very funny.

His ‘Hamster Jovial et ses Louveteaux’ was a comic strip published by the French music magazine ‘Rock et Folk’. Each month, we were following the adventures of Hamster Jovial, a scout chef, whose main passion was rock and pop music. He was desperately trying to share his passion with his three small protégés, 2 boys sharing the same girl, who were perverse little brats, totally uninterested by anything Hamster Jovial had to say, and already very mature for their young age.

While Hamster Jovial was continuing his efforts to educate his little gang about life and music, Gotlib was hiding famous album covers in his comic strip, and these parodies of album covers of the 70s probably were the funniest parts for music lovers. This completely made sense, since Gotlib was writing this for a music magazine! The parodies probably totally escape the kids who are reading the book these days, as they escaped me at the time

Gotlib was a cartoon genius and a music lover, he loved the Beatles and Frank Zappa, and he even recorded a few songs! He died on Sunday at the age of 82.