'Bernard Tempête', A.K.A. 'Don Winslow of the Navy' (Le Journal de Mickey #415 (10 January 1943).
Georges Sogny was a French comic artist, illustrator and painter. After starting as an illustrator and caricaturist for the Angers newspaper L'Ouest, he became a talented illustrator for pulp novels and a comic artist with Le Journal de Mickey, for which he drew 'Bernard Tempête' (1942-1944), a local version of the American comic 'Don Winslow of the Navy', originally created by Frank Victor Martinek and Leon A. Beroth.
Early life
Georges Sogny was born in 1900 in Épernay, a city in the northern French department of Marne. Artistry ran within the family, as his brother became a cabinetmaker and his niece was an opera singer. During World War I, he served his country in the French army. He got wounded during the Battle of the Somme, and evacuated to the city of Mayenne.
Caricaturist
Based in the eastern Maine-et-Loire department of France, Sogny found employment with the Angers edition of the newspaper L'Ouest, for which he made drawings for local events and performances. Between November 1923 and September 1927, the newspaper ran over 250 installments of Sogny's 'Profiles Angevins', a section with caricatures of local Angers personalities. The originals of 81 of Sogny's graphite caricatures are in the collection of the municipal library of Angers.
Cover illustrations by Georges Sogny for 'Le Justicier Souriant', 'Le Secret du Docteur Schnaffer' and 'Pour Un Soir d'Amour'.
Painter
As a fine artist, Sogny made watercolor paintings, pastel drawings and sculptures. He regularly visited relatives in Limoges, where he found inspiration for family portraits, drawings of several local districts and monuments. Described as discreet and private, he mostly painted for his friends and family. However, he participated three times in the French artists' salon and won the 1934 prize with his remarkable portrait of "Mme G. de B.".
When World War II broke out, many people fled to France's southern regions. Among them were Sogny, his wife and father, who ended up in the village of Le Vigen, where they stayed until the end of the war. There, Sogny became well-known among the locals as a painter of landscapes and portraits.
Pulp illustrator
In 1938, Georges Sogny became a productive illustrator of French detective and romance novels. For publisher Ferenczi, he illustrated hundreds of small books of popular literature, appearing in the collections Le Verrou, Mon Roman Policier, Le Petit Livre, Le Petit Roman and Le Bandeau Noir.
'Bernard Tempête', A.K.A. 'Don Winslow of the Navy' (Le Journal de Mickey, 4 June 1944).
Le Journal de Mickey
During World War II, Sogny was also a notable comic artist for the Disney magazine Le Journal de Mickey. Launched in 1939, the magazine ran Disney comics, but also other imported American material, including the espionage newspaper comic 'Don Winslow of the Navy', scripted by Frank Martinek and drawn by Leon A. Beroth. In Le Journal de Mickey, the feature ran under the title 'Bernard Tempête'. By 1942, the editors ran short in their supply of American comics, since the Nazis had banned the import of all U.S. media after the country declared war on Nazi Germany. As a result, the editors of Le Journal de Mickey hired Georges Sogny to continue the 'Bernard Tempête' comic. His local version of the strip ran until July 1944. By that point, the Allied Forces had already invaded Europe and were slowly but surely reconquering France.
Final years and death
After World War II, Georges Sogny moved back north and settled in Chartêves, L'Aisne, where he lived until his death in 1962 at age 66.
Self-portrait from 1923.