Tif et Tondu
Encyclopedia
Franco-Belgian comics
Franco-Belgian comics are comics that are created in Belgium and France. These countries have a long tradition in comics and comic books, where they are known as BDs, an abbreviation of bande dessinée in French and stripverhalen in Dutch...
originally created, written and drawn by Fernand Dineur. Several artists and writers have worked on the series but the most popular version is that drawn by Will
Will (comics)
Willy Maltaite known by the pseudonym Will, was a comics creator and comics artist in the Franco-Belgian tradition...
, with writers Maurice Rosy
Maurice Rosy
Maurice Rosy , is a Belgian comics writer who also worked as artistic director of Spirou during its golden period.-Biography:...
, Maurice Tillieux
Maurice Tillieux
Maurice Tillieux was a Belgian writer and comic artist. He is regarded by many as a major figure of post-war Belgian comics.-Early life:...
and Stephen Desberg
Stephen Desberg
Stephen Desberg is a Belgian writer of comics. In 2010, he was the 10th bestselling author of comics in France, with 412,000 copies of all his comics together sold that year.-Biography:...
. The strip first started in 1938 and lasted just one year short of its 60th birthday.
Main characters
Tif and Tondu are adventurers and detectives who solve cases around the world, from the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to the Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...
. The central irony of the series' title was that the two friends had names which actually better suited the other:
- Tif is French slang for "hair" yet the character is bald-headed and clean-shaven. He also tends to be more reckless and has an eye for the ladies.
- Tondu is the French for "shaven" but he wears thick hair and beard. He is also more level-headed and is the brains of the partnership. He often takes up journalism when short of money.
The beginning
Spirou (magazine)
Spirou magazine is a weekly Belgian comics magazine published by the Dupuis company...
as Aventures de Tif, written and drawn by Fernand Dineur. Within a few issues Tif had made the acquaintance of Tondu, a shipwreck
Shipwreck
A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....
ed sea captain, and the two joined forces, travelling the world in search of adventure.
In 1949 Dineur passed the drawing over to Will
Will (comics)
Willy Maltaite known by the pseudonym Will, was a comics creator and comics artist in the Franco-Belgian tradition...
, but continued to provide the scenarios for the next three years before retiring from the strip. At this time their adventures were also published in Héroic Albums, drawn by Dineur.
Another artist, Marcel Denis
Marcel Denis
Marcel Denis was a French-speaking Belgian comics creator. He was the creator of the series Hultrasson and Les Frères Clips in Spirou. He also made two episodes of Tif et Tondu. He was a part of the so-called Marcinelle School, influenced by Jijé and André Franquin.-Early life:Marcel Denis was...
, also contributed a handful of stories in the early 1960s.
Will himself worked on the strip for almost 40 years in collaboration with various writers. This period, kept together by his distinctive drawing and handling of the characters, is seen as the strip's golden age.
The golden age and Monsieur Choc
Will's first strips post-Dineur were short-lived collaborations with writers Henri GillainHenri Gillain
Henri Gillain was a Belgian teacher and comics enthusiast who on several occasions wrote scripts for Franco-Belgian comics publications in the segment known as Bande Dessinée...
(aka Luc Bermar) and Albert Desprechins (aka Ben), but then Maurice Rosy
Maurice Rosy
Maurice Rosy , is a Belgian comics writer who also worked as artistic director of Spirou during its golden period.-Biography:...
came along and worked on the strip till 1968. It was Rosy who created one of the series' most memorable characters: the villain Monsieur Choc.
Knight
A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
's helmet
Helmet
A helmet is a form of protective gear worn on the head to protect it from injuries.Ceremonial or symbolic helmets without protective function are sometimes used. The oldest known use of helmets was by Assyrian soldiers in 900BC, who wore thick leather or bronze helmets to protect the head from...
which covered his head. His true identity was never revealed. When he did not wear his helmet he used face-masks, make-up or bandages. In one adventure it was only in the very last panel that Tif and Tondu discovered that it was Choc that they had been fighting all along. On one occasion, in a short story published in 1976, Tif and Tondu did get to see a photo of Choc's face, but it was not of much use since it was one of him as a sweet little baby !
Choc came up with increasingly fanciful ways of taking over the world. These included a giant robot (Le Réveil de Toar, 1966), the manipulation of dreams (Le Grand combat, 1967) or becoming invisible (Traitement de Choc, 1984).
Other characters from this period included the young Countess Amélie d'Yeu (known as Kiki), Inspector Ficshusset of Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
and Inspector Allumette of the French Sûreté
French National Police
The National Police , formerly the Sûreté Nationale, is one of two national police forces and the main civil law enforcement agency of France, with primary jurisdiction in cities and large towns. The other main agency is the military Gendarmerie, with primary jurisdiction in smaller towns and rural...
, who ably led the official struggle against Choc. In accordance with the attitude of French censors of the time, who disapproved of bungling police officers, Allumette (whose name means "matchstick") was treated respectfully; in fact he was often shown as a step ahead of even Tif and Tondu.
Rosy was succeeded by Maurice Tillieux
Maurice Tillieux
Maurice Tillieux was a Belgian writer and comic artist. He is regarded by many as a major figure of post-war Belgian comics.-Early life:...
who brought to the series the mixture of humour and mystery that he had employed in others such as Gil Jourdan
Gil Jourdan
Gil Jourdan is a Belgian detective comic strip created by Maurice Tillieux. It is considered a great combination of mystery, adventure and humour, and a masterpiece of European comics.-Origin and Premise:...
. Tillieux died in a car crash in 1978 and his assistant Stephen Desberg
Stephen Desberg
Stephen Desberg is a Belgian writer of comics. In 2010, he was the 10th bestselling author of comics in France, with 412,000 copies of all his comics together sold that year.-Biography:...
took over.
Desberg used the strip to highlight more political and social issues: the use of cheating in sport for monetary gain (Échecs et match!, 1981); the world-wide reach of organised crime (Dans les griffes de la main blanche, 1986); and the influence of the extreme right-wing in the south of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
(Les Phalanges de Jeanne d'Arc, 1987, and La Tentation du bien, 1989). Desberg also reintroduced the character of Choc who had been noticeably absent during the Tillieux period.
The decline
In 1990 Will and Desberg turned to other projects. Writer Denis Lapière and artist Alain Sikorski took over, turning the strip into a more mundane detective series. After saving the world on several occasions, Tif and Tondu were now simple, everyday private detectives with an office in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. Tondu also married a girl called Mona. Their investigations focused mainly on such cases as fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
, forgery
Forgery
Forgery is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents with the intent to deceive. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful misrepresentations. Forging money or...
, murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
and kidnapping
Kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...
. At their best, the stories looked at aspects of police procedure and that of other emergency services, but there was still little of the high-profile confrontations of the Will era.
The strip ended in 1997 and there appears to be little hurry to relaunch it. So far Spirou has been content to republish stories from the Will period, including Tif and Tondu's first encounter with Mister Choc, which coincided with the Dupuis
Dupuis
Éditions Dupuis S.A. is a Belgian publisher of comic books and magazines.Based in Marcinelle near Charleroi, Dupuis was founded in 1922 by Jean Dupuis, and is mostly famous for its comic albums and magazines. It is originally a French language publisher, but publishes many editions both in French...
publication of an omnibus edition of their early adventures with their sworn enemy.
Original Albums
- La villa Sans-souci
- Le trésor d'Alaric, 1954
- Tif et Tondu en Amérique centrale, 1954
- Oscar et ses mystères, 1956
- Tif et Tondu contre la main blanche, 1956
- Le retour de Choc, 1958
- Passez muscade, 1958
- Plein gaz, 1959
- Tif et Tondu (in Bibor et Tribar), 1960
- Choc au Louvre, 1966
- La villa du Long-Cri, 1966
- Les flèches de nulle part, 1967
- La poupée ridicule, 1968
- Le reveil de Toar, 1968
- Le grand combat, 1968
- La matière verte, 1969
- Tif rebondit, 1969
- L'ombre sans corps, 1970
- Tif et Tondu contre le cobra, 1971
- Le roc maudit, 1972
- Sorti des abîmes, 1972
- Les ressucités, 1973
- Le scaphandrier mort, 1974
- Un plan démoniaque, 1975
- Tif et Tondu à New York, 1975
- Aventure birmane, 1976
- Le retour de la bête, 1977
- Le gouffre interdit, 1978
- Les passe-montagnes, 1979
- Métamorphoses, 1980
- Le sanctuaire oublié, 1981
- Echecs et match, 1982
- Swastika, 1983
- Traitement de Choc, 1984
- Choc 235, 1985
- Le fantôme du samouraï, 1986
- Dans les griffes de la main blanche, 1986
- Magdalena, 1987
- Les phalanges de Jeanne d'Arc, 1988
- La tentation du bien, 1989
- Coups durs, 1991
- Prise d'otages, 1993
- A feu et à sang, 1993
- L'assassin des trois villes soeurs, 1995
- Les vieilles dames aux cent maisons, 1995
- Fort cigogne, 1996
- Le mystère de la chambre 43, 1997
Omnibus
- Le diabolique M.Choc, 2007
- Sur la piste du crime, 2007
- Signé M.Choc, 2008
- Echec au Mystificateurs, 2008
- Choc mène la dance, 2009
- Horizons Lointains, 2009
Sources
- Tif et Tondu publications in Spirou BDoubliées
- Tif et Tondu albums Bedtheque
- Tif et Tondu article on Krinein
Footnotes
External links
- Tif et Tondu Integrale at Dupuis Les intégrales Dupuis
- Monsieur Choc article at Cool French Comics