“I like to draw women, their beauty, but also their strength, their intelligence”

In the glorious days of Franco-Belgian comics, more or less half a century ago, rare were the authors who did not wear a tie. Photographed in their workshops or during festivals, the Hergé, Uderzo, Franquins and others almost all appeared with their necks enclosed by a plain or patterned fabric, a pledge of a respectability that was then sorely lacking in an environment in need of recognition.

It is in tribute to this golden age, and to its fallen giants, that Bastien Vivès recently opted for the clothing accessory dear to Gaston Lagaffe from the very beginnings. Multicolored biplane planes cross on his polyester tie, tied on a striped shirt for the best effect. At the bistro-restaurant Le Temps des cerises, rue de la Ceriseraie (Paris 4^e), not far from his Parisian apartment, he orders a kir. In the seventies, the grateful cartoonist …

The end of “adolescence”

But what happened to the one who, these days, starts promoting his cover of Corto Maltese, the hero of Hugo Pratt? The first time her name was written in the World, in 2009, Bastien Vivès was 25 years old, and was escorted by a flattering reputation of “New prodigy” from 9^e art. Adept at drawing on a digital tablet, he embroidered bluettes riddled with thwarted love and impossible flirtations, which were especially valid for the fluidity of a narrative rich in cinematographic processes adapted to paper. The gifted man cultivated, at the same time, an image of an indecently retarded teenager, obsessed with women with large breasts and the emotions of the passage to adulthood.

The gifted cultivated an image of an indecently retarded teenager, obsessed with busty women and the emotions of coming of age

This slow maturity, Bastien Vivès has long accompanied it with an ad hoc look (long hair, round glasses, threadbare sneakers) and a facade of dilettantism. Until everything changed, five years ago, at a comic book festival in Toronto, where he met Ella, an English teacher with a keen interest in American literature, who became his wife: “It was she who brought me out of the melancholy of childhood”, he said. Then came Michel, now 3 years old. Where we return to the proud port of the printed tie: “My son had to be able to blossom in front of a strong father figure”, he jokes. All kidding aside, Vivès has turned the page on “adulescence”, that sort of non-choice between adolescence and adulthood. ” It was time “, he admits to himself, now 37 years old.

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