Les Petits Hommes - 'Le Trou Blanc'. Dutch-language version.
Pierre Seron was a prominent and longtime contributor to Spirou magazine and its Flemish equivalent Robbedoes, who between 1967 and 2004 entertained readers with his humorous and experimental comics. His signature series was 'Les Petits Hommes' (1967-2010), about miniature men and women living in the futuristic and hidden community of Eslapion. For Pif Gadget, he additionally created the family gag comic 'La Famille Fohal', also known as 'La Famille Martin' (1973-1976). Later in his career, he also drew the Greek mythology fantasy adventure series 'Aurore et Ulysse, Centaures' (1977-1986) and the erotically themed series 'Les Petites Femmes' (1999-2009).
Cover illustrations for Spirou issues #2056 (8 September 1977) and #2135 (15 March 1979).
Early life and career
Pierre Seron was born in 1942 in Chenée, a town in the Walloon province of Liège. Because of his father's traveling profession as engineer, he spent parts of his childhood in the French town of Libourne, the countryside of Bordeaux and the Ardennes, and even in Montreal, Canada. But wherever the family lived, Pierre found the opportunity to read his favorite comic magazines, Spirou and Tintin. Among his main graphic influences were André Franquin and Maurice Tillieux. Later in his career, Seron's graphic style resembled Franquin so strongly to the point that he polarized comic fans. Some praised him for imitating Franquin so perfectly, while critics dismissed him as a rip-off. With Tillieux, Seron shared a fondness for cynical characters who constantly insult one another during conversations.
Back in Belgium in 1957, Seron enrolled at the École Supérieure des Arts Saint-Luc in Liège, where he initially focused on graphic arts and decoration. Comics became his main goal after meeting fellow students and future colleagues François Walthéry, Jean Pleyers and Dany. Upon his graduation in 1961, he presented his work at Le Lombard in Brussels, the publisher of Tintin magazine. Seron became the assistant of the very productive artist Dino Attanasio, whom he helped on the backgrounds of the comic series 'Spaghetti', 'Bob Morane' and 'Modeste et Pompon'. During the same period, a young William Vance was also working for Attanasio.
Working for Mittéï: covers for Kuifje/Tintin issues #2 (10 January 1967) and #13 (2 April 1970). The second one is signed "Foal".
When Seron was drafted into military service, his tenure as Attanasio's assistant ended. During his eighteen months in the army, he was assigned to make educational drawings of Soviet tanks and military aircrafts. Back in civilian life, he got married and found employment as a decorator in the Liège-based department store Grand-Bazar. Pierre Seron didn't return to the comics profession until 1966, when he replaced Dany as the assistant of the comic artist Jean Mariette, better known as Mittéï. Seron worked as an inker and background artist on Mittéï's series 'Désiré' and 'Les 3A'. While assuming the pen name Foal, Seron also helped Mittéï with his own assistance work for Tibet's 'Ric Hochet' and Maurice Maréchal's 'Prudence Petitpas'. Having gained enough self-confidence, Seron presented his portfolio to Charles Dupuis, the publisher of Tintin's competing magazine Spirou.
Les Petits Hommes - 'Alerte à Eslapion-sous-Rajevols' (1967). Dutch-language version.
Les Petits Hommes
At Spirou, Seron presented his concept about the inhabitants of the small town Rajevols, who are shrunk to miniature sizes after they came in contact with a mysterious meteorite. Both publisher Charles Dupuis and editor-in-chief Yvan Delporte were enthusiastic, but first gave Seron a test assignment. His first work in Spirou was a short story, 'Des Vacances de Milliardaire' (29 June 1967), written by Victor Hubinon. 'Les Petits Hommes' ("The Mini People") started publication ten issues later, in Spirou #1534 (7 September 1967). Seron was paired with the more experienced scriptwriter and journalist Albert Despréchins, who wrote the first stories based on Seron's concept. The main character is called Renaud (his first name remains unknown throughout the series). In the early episodes the secondary characters are largely interchangeable. The shrunken townspeople have established their own community inside the nearby caves, called Eslapion. The town is characterized by an almost utopian nature and an advanced technology, especially since the introduction of the scientist Joachim Hondegger. Throughout the series, the characters are equipped with futuristic aircrafts and weapons. In most of the early episodes, the mini people have to infiltrate the "normal" world without being seen, while the main antagonists are the military.
'Des Souris et des Petits Hommes' (1969). Dutch-language version.
However, the quality of the early 'Petits Hommes' stories was inconsistent. Seron was still searching for his personal style, while Despréchins' straightforward scripts were in stark contrast with the artist's innovative ideas. As a result, these 1960s stories weren't collected in book format until decades later. Aid came from Mittéï, the artist whom Seron was still assisting at the time. In 1970, he became the series' new writer, while adopting the pen name Hao to avoid conflicts with his main employer, Tintin magazine.
Les Petits Hommes - 'Le Vaisseau Fantôme'. Dutch-language version.
With Hao, 'Les Petits Hommes' got its definitive form, subsequently becoming one of the staples of Spirou magazine, with its own comic book collection launched in 1972. The mini people settled in a new community called Eslapion II, and Renaud's sidekicks Lapaille and Lapoutre got more prominent roles. The stories also benefited from science fiction and fantasy plot elements, such as a group of miniature World War II soldiers ('Les Guerriers du Passé', 1973), a ghost ship ('Le Vaisseau Fantôme', 1975), an invasion of giant carnivorous plants ('Les Ronces du Samouraï', 1976) and an underwater society (the diptych 'Le Triangle du Diable' and 'Le Peuple des Abysses', 1977-1978).
Les Petits Hommes - 'Les Ronces du Samouraï' (with a cameo of Capitaine Lahuche by Francis). Dutch-language version.
Although Seron had already written several short stories himself, in 1980 he began scripting the long stories as well. The first one was 'Le Guêpier' (1980), in which the evil Duke of La Fourrière was introduced. The megalomaniac scientist continued to use technology, thugs and even animals to trap the little people in several later albums. New sidekicks were introduced in 'Petits Hommes et Hommes-singes' (1982). The sexy but unbearable Cédille became the female lead in the series, while the rather stereotypical character Dimanche added a multicultural element to the franchise. Dimanche (literally: "Sunday") is a black bespectacled man who is unable to pronounce the letter "r". His name alludes to the black character Man Friday in Daniel Defoe's classic novel 'Robinson Crusoë'.
Les Petits Hommes - 'Melting Pot'.
Experimentation
Seron's solo stories are characterized by their experimental nature, both in graphics and narratives. Most notable is the crossover with the sci-fi comic series 'La Scrameustache' by Gos and Walt. The album 'Le Pickpocket' (1985) showed the story from the mini people's point-of-view, while Gos told the same story with his characters in 'Les Kromoks en folie'. Seron additionally presented a world with inverted colors ('Le Planète Ranxerox', 1984), a world without color ('Le Trou Blanc', (1985), a story set in two dimensions at the same time ('Voyage entre 2 Mondes', 1989) and one set in a video game ('Melting Pot', 1995). The author enjoyed fooling his audience. In 'Le Dernier des Petits Hommes' (1987), Seron killed off the entire cast of his series, only to reveal at the end that the whole story was merely a film production. He also added a fair amount of self-mockery. Every now and then, an angry reader popped up between the panels to complain about the story's progression or mistakes by the author. In the 1990s, Seron started making more character-driven plots as well.
Seron shocks his reader in 'Le Dernier des Petits Hommes'. Dutch-language version.
In 1986, a theme park about 'Les Petits Hommes' was considered. It was intended as a set with miniature buildings based on Belgian tourist hotspots, livened up by Seron's characters. The park was to be called Eslapion, after the town where the characters live in the comics. However, the plan never went beyond some preliminary graphic sketches. Instead, another miniature park opened in 1988, not far from the Atomium: Mini Europe, which exhibits miniature versions of famous European locations.
'La Famille Fohal' (Pif Gadget #275, 3 June 1974).
La Famille Fohal
While working on his main series, Seron found time to do other projects as well. In the magazine Pif Gadget he used the pseudonym Fohal for the family humor strip 'La Famille Fohal' (1973-1976). Between 1990 and 1993, the series was collected in book form under the title 'La Famille Martin' by Soleil Productions.
Aurore & Ulysse
In Spirou magazine, Pierre Seron also delved into Greek mythology with the series about 'Aurore et Ulysse' (1977-1986), two curious teenage centaurs, who secretly travel from Mount Olympus to the world of the mortals through the "Door to the Unknown". Trying to find their way back home, they end up in a different time period every time they cross the portal. While the first episodes showed the two blue centaurs interacting with the human world, later episodes had more mythological elements borrowed from Homer's 'Odyssey' and 'Iliad', including the gods Zeus and Poseidon, the cyclops Polyphemus, the sirens of the seas and the Amazon warriors. Most of the early stories were written by Stephen Desberg, but Seron later assumed full artistic control over his series. The characters made their final appearance in the 1988 story 'Uwélématibukaliné' (retitled to 'Le Volcan d'Or' for the book publication), which was a crossover with 'Les Petits Hommes'. Between 1982 and 1985, Dupuis released four book collections, which were followed by two additional albums by MC Productions (1988) and Soleil (1989). In 2022, a Dutch-language luxury two-volume collection was initiated and published by Saga Uitgaven, containing all the stories and lengthy background dossiers by David Steenhuyse and Joris De Smet. The Saga volumes were subsequently sold to foreign publishers as well.
Aurore et Ulysse - 'L'Odyssée'. Dutch-language version.
Erotic comics
Starting in 1999, Seron was also making comics of a more mature and naughty nature for publishers P&T Productions and Joker Éditions. His best-known creation in this genre is 'Les Petites Femmes' (1999-2009), which, despite what the title might suggest, isn't a spin-off to 'Les Petits Hommes'. The author let his licentious spirit free on a series of sexually explicit, yet humorous fantasies set on tropical islands. Other erotic comics by Seron were the two albums of 'T'as De Beaux Yeux, Tu Sais!' at Joker Éditions in 2003 and 2010. Seron additionally contributed to publisher Bamboo's humor collection about hobbies, 'Les Fondus' (2008), drawing the installment about fishing, 'Les Fondus de la Pêche', scripted by Hervé Richez and Christophe Cazenove.
'Les Petites Femmes'.
Graphic contributions
In 1980, Pierre Seron was one of many Belgian comic artists to make a graphic contribution to the book 'Il Était Une Fois... Les Belges'/'Er Waren Eens Belgen' (1980), a collection of columns and one-page comics, published at the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Belgium. Seron also contributed to 'Les Enquêtes de Leurs Amis' (Soleil, 1989), a collective tribute album to Maurice Tillieux' hero detective 'Gil Jourdan'.
Final years and death
The adventures of 'Les Petits Hommes' were serialized in Spirou magazine until 2004. Between 2006 and 2007, two more stories were directly published in book format by Dupuis. Seron concluded his series with the album 'Eslapion 3' (Clair de Lune, 2011). On the cover, the artist announced his retirement from the comic by having Renaud tell the reader: "I came to tell you we are leaving!" Since 2010, the complete series has been collected in luxury volumes by Dupuis. After suffering from a cerebral infarction in 2014, Pierre Seron dropped all of his creative activities. The artist, who since 2010 had lived near Nîmes in the south of France, passed away on 24 May 2017, at the age of 75.
Legacy
Throughout his career, Pierre Seron has been compared to Spirou's lead artist André Franquin. When Franquin quit the 'Spirou et Fantasio' series in 1969, he was succeeded by the Breton artist Jean-Claude Fournier. However, with his Franquinesque style, Pierre Seron would have been a logical choice for the 'Spirou et Fantasio' comic, and indeed many readers sent in letters with that suggestion. But it was just because his style was too similar that Dupuis didn't pick Seron for their main comic. Later in Seron's career, the Franquin comparisons continued, and also resulted in accusations of plagiarism. Even though the complaints hurt Seron, he continued on his own chosen path, creating comics filled with graphic and narrative experimentations, as well as self-mockery through the insulting "reader between the panels".
Despite the criticism, Pierre Seron was a core member of the generation of creators that came after the Spirou magazine's 1950s/1960s "Golden Age", joining the ranks of François Walthéry, Willy Lambil, Raoul Cauvin, Berck, Jean-Claude Fournier, Roger Leloup and Lucien De Gieter. In 1994, Seron received recognition with the "Betty Boop" award for his entire body of work during the Hyères comic festival. Like Mittéï was for him, Seron has been a tutor to young artists like Marc Hardy, Achdé, Paul Glaudel and Didier Casten. All have assisted him on his series during certain periods in time. Between 1975 and 1980, Marc Hardy's wife Christine helped Seron with the inking of his comics. Pierre Seron was an influence on Thierry Capezzone. His nephew Frédéric Seron is active as a comic artist under the pen name Clarke.
Sequence from the Petits Hommes album 'Le Pickpocket' by Seron. Dutch-language version.
Same sequence from the Scrameustache album 'Les Kromoks en folie' by Gos. Dutch-language version.