'Arbalète, reporter'.
Jacques Lemaire, who used the pen name Lem, was a French sports cartoonist, working for newspapers like Ce Soir, L'Avant Garde and L'Humanité, as well as the specialist sports press. As a comic creator, he told the life stories of several sports champions in 34 Caméra, and also created sports-themed newspaper strips like 'A Poings Nus' (1951) and 'Arbalète, reporter' (1959-1960). Another comic series about this topic were his 1950 serials about female sports reporter Patty, printed in Paris Jeunes Aventures. He should not be confused with the Belgian illustrator Jules Gustave Lempereur (1902-1985), the Canadian cartoonist Lem or the comic artist Xavier Lemmens (b. 1980), who have all used the pen name Lem. He is also not the same person as the early 20th-century painter and poster artist Jacques Lem or the French movie director Jacques Lem (Lemoine).
Early life
Jacques Lemaire was born in 1925 in Vieux-Moulin, a small town in the northern French department of Oise. As a child, he was a big fan of the sports cartoons and other press drawings of Pellos. During World War II, he first worked in autogenous welding, then as a lumberjack and quarryman, before becoming an apprentice factory worker. There, he caricatured many of the sportsmen that had found employment in the factory during the war years. At age 19, Lemaire covered his first cycling race for L'Écho des Sports, a magazine he was affiliated with for ten years (1944-1954).
1955 cartoon by Jacques Lem starring caricatures of the cyclists Louison Bobet, Fausto Coppi and Tour de France organizer Jacques Goddet.
Sports caricaturist
During the 1940s and 1950s, Lemaire worked as a caricaturist for a great many other newspapers and magazines, including L'Humanité (1945-1949), Sports (1946-1948), La Tribune des Sports, Miroir Sprint (1947-1950), Ce Soir (1947-1953), Caméra (1947-1955), L'Avant-Garde (1951-1953), L'Équipe (1953-1954, 1959-1960), Marius, Le Hérisson (1957), L'Union and L'Alsace. For several years, he combined his work as a caricaturist with day jobs as layout artist and then editorial secretary. For L'Équipe, he designed a series of sections headers, which remained in use for several years. In 1961, he joined Shell, where he created and edited the staff magazine for fifteen years. Lem's caricatures have also been collected in the books 'Six Jours de Grenelle à Bercy' (Palais des Sports, 1984), made with writer Pierre Chany, and 'Coups de Crayon sur le Mondial' (Atlantica, 1998).
'A Poings Nus' (1951).
Comics
As a comic artist, Lem created sports-related newspaper serials, starting with 23 episodes of the vertical strip 'Le Roman du Tour' (1950) with writer Pierre Portier in Ce Soir (and later reprinted in Le Patriote de Saint-Etienne). Again with Portier, Lem created the horizontal boxing strip 'A Poings Nus' (1951), published in 40 episodes in Ce Soir. In L'Équipe, Lem and writer Fernand Albaret created two racing-themed serials with the character 'Arbalète, Reporter' (1959-1960): 'Les Lignes de la Main' (over 250 episodes) and 'Coup Fourré aux Courtines' (over 200 episodes).
Comic biography of François Dujardin, published in 34 Caméra #100 (5 June 1953).
In addition to newspapers, Lem also created comics for magazines. The magazine Paris Jeunes Aventures, published by SAGE, ran two of his comic serials about a female sports journalist 'Patty Rédacteur Sportif' (1950) and ' Patty Suit Le Tour de France' (1950). Between 1950 and 1955, Lem appeared in 34 Caméra, a pocket-format monthly comic book published by Éditions Vaillant. After contributing two short comic stories with writer Pierre Portier, he illustrated editorial sports sections by either Pierre Portier, Robert Vergne or Pierre Chany, and created one to five-page comic biographies of sports champions.
Final years and death
Between 1980 and 1993, Lem was a regular in France-Football. He died in 2009.
Self-portrait.