'Baron Ignace Karnemelk - De Steen der Wijven'.
Tom De Cuyper was an obscure Belgian comic artist, most notable for his absurd one-shot comic book 'Baron Ignace Karnemelk - De Steen der Wijven' (1997). Not much is known about his life or career.
Life and career
Coming from the East-Flemish town of Deinze, Tom De Cuyper participated in the 1997 'Cartoondebuut' contest for young cartoonists in the nearby city of Ghent. The first prize was the release of a comic book by the winner through the publisher Utopia from Merelbeke. De Cuyper won and on Wednesday 2 July 1997, his book, 'Baron Ignace Karnemelk - De Steen der Wijven' received an official press release meeting in the Hotsy Totsy bar in Ghent. Comic artist Fritz Van den Heuvel was present too. There's no information available about the exact nature of the contest (whether, for instance, the contestants had to create an entire story, or just one test page), nor how many people participated in total. It has also not been recorded how old De Cuyper was at the time. He was presumably a young adult, or maybe even still a teenager.
Baron Ignace Karnemelk
De Cuyper's 'Baron Ignace Karnemelk - De Steen der Wijven' is set in an anachronistic version of the Middle Ages. The title character is fed up with catching his brides in bed with his favorite horse Eddy. To win his current wife Anita back, the disgruntled nobleman goes on a quest to find the "Wives' Stone" ("Steen der Wijven", a pun on "Steen der Wijzen", the Dutch phrase for the Philosopher's stone). At the time, the story was described in press releases as a cross between Kamagurka and Pirana's work. Indeed, De Cuyper applied a loose graphic style with witty non-sequiturs, daft dialogues and bawdy comedy.
Although the back cover of 'Baron Ignace Karnemelk' praised De Cuyper as a "promising cartoonist", his career apparently never took off. His further whereabouts are unknown.
'Baron Ignace Karnemelk - De Steen der Wijven'.