Paul Gillon

The Look of Love: The Rise and Fall of the Photo-Realistic Newspaper Strip, 1946-1970

13, rue de l’ Espoir (13 Hope Street) by Paul Gillon was the most romantic of the photo-realistic Soaps, surpassing even its obvious template, Stan Drake’s Juliet Jones. This early daily (1960) shows two major reasons: Francoise Morel, the pony-tailed heroine, has a passion for each successive love her forthright American cousin Eve Jones never could muster and the urgent, seductive city of Paris itself is a major character, imbuing the strip with a palpable sense of youthful wonder and expectation. At this early stage, Gillon’s realism is a little overwrought. This is the third day of such melodramatic lighting and more was to come this particular week, the big buildup and aftermath to Francoise's first dramatic kiss onscreen. Through its 13 year run, Gillon eventually employed a much lighter touch, so direct that even the harshest critic of slick photo-based strips, Alex Toth, studied his storytelling and design. At this early stage, Francoise's look was still evolving but she never lost--nor did the strip--that sense of romantic longing.

One of the signal features of the photo-based strips is the evocation of a particular time and place. And it was more than just the clothes or hairstyles. Since the rendering required such specific photo reference, in the better strips one can recognize year and make of cars or a particular skyline. In the right hands, a good strip can capture the exact texture of a close-knit neighborhood or the intoxicating feel of a city at night. Perhaps no other strip of the photo era sought to mirror its real time and place as well as 13 rue de l’ Espoir, an evening daily in France-Soir, reflected the city of Paris, Europe, and the Sixties.

Paul Gillon, Espoir’s artist, was born on May 11 in Paris in 1926 and was drawing obsessively from childhood, as soon, he has admitted, as he was old enough to hold a pencil. At 12 he sold his own self-drawn comics to his school classmates, and by 14, he earned money with song sheets and poster-type ads for a local theatre that caricatured French music hall and movie stars like Charles Trenet and Yves Montand.

Remaining entirely self-taught, Gillon began working as an illustrator at 19 for Valliant in 1947. There he did a variety of assignments on established titles with various writers, including the white hunter/Jungle Jim inspired White Lynx (1947-50), Son of China ('50-53) a curious idealized tale about Mao's Long March seen through the eyes of a young boy named Cat, the lusty pirate series Captain Cormorant ('54-58), Radar ('56-58)--somewhat rendered in the vein of Frank Hampson's painted Eagle strips, Wango ('58-60), and his own written and drawn Jeremie in the Islands, a boy's adventure tale detailed in albums running from 1968-72 (the first installment, "The Cruel Gods," was reprinted in alternate Vampirella issues in the early 80s). In 1964, he branched out into serialized science fiction in collaboration with Barbarella's Jean Claude Forrest in the magazine Chouchou. For the serial, called Les Nufarges du temps (Castaways in Time or "Spacewrecked" in its later Eerie reprinting),

Forrest hid behind a pen name, as he was appearing elsewhere in the magazine with another strip. The duo revived the series in '74 and 75 for France-Soir and Nufarges was later frequently featured in the newly established Metal Hurlant and its counterpart, L’ Echo Des Savanes. After four long installments were completed with Forrest, Gillon eventually assumed the writing in '77 and produced six graphic albums on his own, taking the series all the way to 1989.

Other work includes Johnstone and Cushing type product advertising, magazine story illustration for Elle (including a nifty James Bond Casino Royale in the 60s), L’Equipe and Le Point, as well as literary adaptations Moby Dick, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and an erotic Joan of Arc series for Penthouse comics. Still active--he claims he will be at the drawing board as long as he can grip a pencil--his latest, The White Widow, was released in 2002.

Although little known here, Gillon is held in the same esteem as his countrymen Jean Giraud and Phillip Druillet, many believing his work compares favorably with the highest standard of American realism displayed by Foster, Raymond, and Caniff. When asked about his influences, Gillon plays down the American connection and mentions other French comics or lesser known gems like Ray Moore's Phantom (a significant Forrest influence too). But he has admitted a debt to Caniff and Raymond too. Many are amazed at the size Gillon prepares his pages. The Nufarges board on the right is 873mm X 710mm (roughly 34" X 28"). When Gillon began in comics a friend swore Raymond originals were huge and Gillon, hoping to find the "same elegant magic", followed suit and the large finished size has remained throughout his career The middle and right images come from here, galleries 1 and 4. An example of his rough layout on top of the finished page appears below.

From Sep 1959 to Dec 7, 1972, with brothers Jacques and Francois Gall scripting, Gillon drew 13, rue de l' Espoir for France-Soir. In 1980-2, the entire run, 4, 139 strips, was collected in two volumes.

Volume 2 1982

Love at 20. Francoise began the strip in 1959 very much in the Brigitte Bardot vein. A college student who must abandon her studies at the Sorbonne because of an injury to her father, her face at the outset is thin, cheekbones prominent, overbite and pout intact. Soon, when the storylines had her out and about in the city, Gillon changed direction, so Francoise became an archetypal ingénue, about 19 or 20. The bottom portion of her face became rounder with larger eyes and simply outlined lips, always accompanied by the pony-tailed, beribboned hair. That look predominates the rest the strip and several stories suggest Francoise affecting another look is a clue to an inappropriate love or a bad life choice. It becomes clear that Gillion now was restricted in what he could do to modify her likeness, even had he wanted to. In the middle of the strip’s run, say 1965, while Francoise has the same stock expression day after day, the supporting characters, usually the dark-haired female friend, were much more animated.

The New Wave. Gillon is a fine, fine draftsman. These two successive dailies highlight his threefold rendering ability: a convincing, youthful, lean figure by the sharp outline and variety of line weight Drake method Gillon so admired and followed; just the right amount of background detail to nail the setting; the exactness of anatomy even in the smaller figures. Where Gillon differed from Drake was the staging (see below as well). This type of bedroom voyeurism, the undressing/dressing bit that has a monthly frequency in Juliet Jones, is fairly uncommon in Espoir. In the 13 plus years covered in both volumes of the collected strips, perhaps two dozen weeks have something similar to the scene above. The proportions of the female characters were always slight and small-breasted. Late in the strip, Gillon develops the elongated figuration that will become his trademark.

The Kiss The strip was created specifically to be a French "Heart of Juliet Jones" (known as "Juliette de mon couer") which had been a wildly popular strip in Europe since its introduction there in 1955, but with the charge to replace the two American sisters with a "une petite francasie." Gillon says he was in the process of contacting France-Soir about a similar idea just as they were trying to reach him about the proposed assignment. Gillon, working without an assistant, produced every one of the run's 4000+ strips. (He often tells the story of his only close brush with missing the deadline. The strip was only a 3-4 days ahead of publication [as he tells it], his usual custom making 3 strips a day and working straight for 2 days. Once, during a vacation in the Greek Isles with what he thought was a 15 day cushion, he received a telegram saying the newspaper had lost 5 strips of continuity about to run in 3 days. He hopped on a boat to Athens, redrew and inked the replacements on the boat and at a hotel room near the airport, then sent the new strips on their way after a full night of working.)

If Robert Doisneau’s “Kiss by the Hotel DeVille, Paris" (1950)--although marred by the revelation during a early 90s court case that the photo had been staged--remains the enduring image of spontaneous young passion in the French capital, then Gillon’s Espoir is no less wildly romantic and idealistic, no less enthralled with the idea of perfect love.

The major change in the storytelling between the Gallic soap and the American one I gather is the feeling of real passion. In Juliet Jones, there never is much doubt that once a story arc is finished, the leads will move on. On the contrary, in Espoir, Francoise has reveries of past affairs and current plot will remind her and other characters of long buried heartache and pain, much like the Marvel Universe has a continuity, a connection with previous stories that happened decades ago. (e.g. In one Espoir story, a character tries to commit suicide over a love affair that had been presented two years before.)

Yet, each love is like the first, inevitable once the couple meets, even when the lovers are mismatched as in one story when Francoise became involved with a much older business tycoon. Just being in the presence of each other, at night, a chance meeting, a look, will draw the couple together with a magnetic attraction. They embrace and kiss. (Many times the sequence will be wordless.) The kissing often takes up more than just a single panel on a single day, going as long as three days on occasion.

In an American strip, if the lovers are together at the end, that is the happy ending. In the last panel or the next day a new story starts. In Espoir, the wedding is sometimes shown, with the lovers incredibly happy, the bride in traditional white. I am at a loss to explain why the lovers part, if that’s the resolution, as it’s usually explained in impenetrable [for me] dialogue. My guess is the

handy expedient of distance.

Gillon says his aim was honest work, to not be ashamed by the limitations imposed by the form. He said he stopped the strip because he felt it had become "a trap." I think this is just public modesty, as in other ways, he has shown a tremendous affection for the strip and his time and effort.

The strip ends abruptly. Just as a new love affair begins with a reclusive artist hiding out in the countryside, Francoise receives a telegram that her father is ill. She rushes back to Paris to find her father sick but on the mend. She decides to stay at home, as she had done in 1959 when the strip started. The final panel is her note to the last young man, wishing him happiness and farewell and thus saying goodbye to her readers as well.

Solange in the Afternoon. The mood and rendering of the stories are not static. Gillon for some sequences would heavily apply tint and then it wouldn’t be seen again for months. Others are quite spare in the use of blacks. And, for awhile, it seems he lost interest in portraying blonde Francoise and instead concentrated on the black- haired secondary characters, creating quite an array of dark beauties. In another departure from Drake, Gillon did not experiment with expression. His best expressions featured a closed mouth, obviously not articulating the speech balloon and inked to emphasize the full lower lip. Young married Solange Boulais was a regular character throughout the life of the strip.

Mise En Scene 13 rue d’l Espoir is overflowing with rich, period detail taken from photographs. Sidewalk cafes and pastry shops. Rain darkened streets. Trees in season. Passer byes and street lamps. Legible signs on storefronts. Distinctive buildings. After she drops out of school, Francoise obtains a job as a tour guide, and she travels all across the city and countryside. (Stories are set elsewhere too: Venice, Rome, New York and Los Angeles, for example.) In transition from one story arc to the next, many dailies show her reacquainting herself with the neighborhood, just walking around, enjoying the day, before the next love affair begins.

In 1980 when the first volume of strips was published, some 600 pages and roughly seven years of continuity, the French national press used the occasion to write glowing reviews, not only praising the creative team's work, but musing on the thrill of the 60s, the way the culture throbbed and bubbled and how that energy fueled the strip: the emergence of TV, the New Wave, black wind-breakers, jeans cuffed just so, particular dances and phrases, pre- and post-Beatlemania. Several reviewers believed Gillon's uncanny choice of detail bordered on ethnography. Others compared the strip's bittersweet ability to recall a long lost era with the pang of favorite songs or black and white movies. (Although the volumes were a critical success, they sold poorly and it is rumored that remaining stock was destroyed, making them now extremely difficult to find.)

Automobiles are a Gillon specialty, done with the precision of noted automobile illustrator Ken Dallison: top down Sunbeams, Triumphs, Fiats, Puegots, Bugattis, Renaults, and all those unclassifiable service vehicles particular to Europe. A whole week’s POV would be pulled back far enough for this kind of detail. American Stan Drake would be appalled. As he working on

other series, how did Gillon find time to do this for 13 years?

Josh Shepard, a storyboard and comic artist, related to me in an email this story about Gillon's quick facility from Gerald Forton, a friend of Josh's and an artist who worked for years in French comics. According to Josh, "all the artists had to turn in their strip every week at the magazine, and everyone was always late (except Gerald!) I guess the deadline day was when these guys would run into each other at the office. Gerald came in with his stuff and the editor said 'Great, your stuff is on time.' Then Gillon would come in with a big piece of paper sort of rolled under his arm, and the editor said "So yours is done too." But when Gillon unrolled the paper, it was blank. He just sat there and cranked out his (large size) strip right there in a matter of a few hours, talking and joking with people--and the resulting art looked great. No less finished, etc. Gerald says he was known for being fast and versatile like that . . . .The paper he worked on was some sort of expensive, ultra slick printing paper-resulting in the crispest line and detail."

Eventually all of Gillon's previous work was collected and printed as albums, many scheduled to coincide with his Grand Prix fete at Angloueme in 1982, the year after Jean Giraud and the year before his Lost in Time collaborator Jean Claude Forrest. Like all things, it is a mixed blessing. Reprinting the entire 13 year run, 1, 050 pages of 4 undated strips per page, meant cheap newsprint, a shame when one considers Gillon possessed as sophisticated and assured inking technique as any comics artist in the world, a nuance diminished by the rough paper. (Compare the first strip top, Francoise's first kiss, with the inset from the original art that begins this section.) #2568 is a panel from one of the half-dozen exhibited in 2000 as part of the "Masters of the European Comic Strip" show in France. It's interesting to note the large size again. At 25cm X 65.2cm, Gillon worked roughly 4" taller and 5" wider in the daily than Raymond ever used on Rip Kirby or Williamson on Secret Agent Corrigan. The rough on top of the finished page and cityscape reference photograph shown above are from The Leviathans (1983). Gillon's roughs are really rough, a mass of swirling construction lines with confident inks laid directly over the loosest of pencils. It appears he does not transfer his thumbnails to the final paper by any mechanical means or measuring system, preferring to redraw the elements by eye. This twice-done process probably accounts for the elongated and vertical posing on most of his figures, the large paper, the eyeballing of proportions, and the full sweep of the arm when sketching adding extra height while it retains gesture. The period illustration bottom comes from a 1978 unfinished and abandoned collaboration with designer Pierre Cardin about Maxim's.

In The Survivor, Aude Albrespy, a marine biologist on a dive, surfaces to find herself seemingly the last human alive after nuclear holocaust. Set in the close future, robots continue to maintain a ghostly Paris, oblivious to the disappearance of those they once served. This serialization from 1985-91 is the most widely distributed of Gillon’s work here in the US, but be forewarned, it’s not for the squeamish and contains scenes an American reader may find distasteful. Gillon’s projects after Espoir show a fine versatility and his weaning on photographs did seriously restrain his imagination. In fact, no less an acerbic critic of Alex Raymond “glossy” photograph-based artwork, Alex Toth, raved about Gillon’s science fiction work from the 80s (read Toth’s introduction to the first volume of Lost in Time). Above, middle and right, pages from the second installment of Jeremie and the first American Lost in Time. Below, the TV adaptation Teva (1977), the 1983 black and white Eerie reprint of "Spacewrecked," and a panel from a recent 1998 album, The Last of the Obscure Rooms. Here's a link displaying a Lost in Time portfolio.

This page could not have been possible without the assistance of Claude Mazere, in one way or another responsible for many of the images I was able to post in this second examination of Gillon's work (see sources). Based in France, Claude welcomes contact with comic art fans on a wide variety of vintage and contemporary American and European realistic illustrators in addition to Gillon.