Soda 13 - 'Résurrection'.
Dan Verlinden, who has often signed with only his first name, was the longtime assistant of Tome and Janry on their gag comic 'Le Petit Spirou'. Since 2015, he has been the third artist to draw Tome's crime comic 'Soda'.
Early life and career
Born in 1972 in the city of Charleroi, Dan Verlinden enrolled at the Art Academy in Gilly in the hope to learn the finer points of the comics profession. There he however discovered that the comics workshops held by Vittorio Leonardo at the Academy of Fine Arts in Châtelet were more suitable for his needs. He finished this six-year education in three years time and saw his first comic page published in a 1990 collective comic book dedicated to the 20th anniversary of François Walthéry's air hostess 'Natacha'. Shortly afterwards, he was hired to work in Vittorio Leonardo's coloring studio as a printing platemaker. As Leonardo was assisting Morris on his 'Lucky Luke' artwork, Verlinden had the opportunity to illustrate some 'Lucky Luke' and 'Rantanplan' displays as well.
Assistant to Tome & Janry
Subsequently, Dan Verlinden was employed by Éditions Dupuis as a letterer and revisor, while also making some editorial illustrations and headers for Spirou magazine. In 1993, he joined Tome and Janry in their atelier in Woluwé-Saint-Lambert, which was also frequented by Bruno Gazzotti and colorist Stéphane De Becker. As a test he was asked to draw one of Tome's scripts for the duo's gag series 'Le Petit Spirou'. The team-up was a match, and the young artist became the regular assistant on this gag comic about the mischievous younger years of Spirou's titular hero. He participated in the penciling, inking and plotting until 2012. Instead of being an anonymous co-worker, Dan was credited for his contributions from the start. Whenever Dan provided the core part of the art duties, his name appeared first in the credit byline. Dan also inked some backgrounds in Tome and Janry's 'Spirou et Fantasio' stories 'Luna Fatale' (1995) and 'Machine qui rêve' (1998). Tome and Janry also supported their assistants in doing their own projects. One early project of Verlinden and Tome was a science fiction saga about animals, called 'Rages'. It was meant for the now defunct Cosmo collection of Éditions Dargaud, but has remained unpublished.
Soda
During the 2010s, Tome wanted to revive his hardboiled crime comic 'Soda', about a NYC police officer who hides his dangerous day job from his ailing mother by pretending to be a priest. As the series had been on hiatus since 2005, the comic's artist Bruno Gazzotti was not available. By then, he was too busy with his hit series 'Seuls', so a new artist was needed. Verlinden offered his services to Tome, and the two men began working on a new episode, aptly titled 'Résurrection' (2014-2015). Verlinden maintained the dynamic action sequences of his predecessors Luc Warnant and Bruno Gazzotti, but turned to coloring the spaces between the panels black, to add to the story's dark post 9/11 theme. In 2015, the first album produced by Tome and Verlinden was published by Dupuis as the thirteenth installment in the series.
When the duo were 30 pages into the second volume of the reboot, Tome died unexpectedly. As a result, the 'Soda' comic lay dormant for another nine years. In 2023, the regular series kicked off again, this time with Olivier Bocquet as writer and Bruno Gazzotti back on art duties. For the occasion, the 'Résurrection' album by Tome and Verlinden was extracted from the regular collection and rebranded as a non-series special. Together with the scriptwriters Zidrou and Falzar, Dan Verlinden eventually completed the second installment of Tome's final story, which was published in 2024 under the title 'Révélations'.
Graphic contributions
In 1990, Dan Verlinden paid graphic tribute to François Walthéry in the collective homage book 'Natacha: Special 20 Ans' (Marsu Productions, 1990), which celebrated the 20th anniversary of Walthéry's series 'Natacha'. In later years, he has contributed to the collective comic books 'Népal, 25 avril 2015' (Place du Sablon, 2015) and 'Destins animés' (2019), published by the French retailing symbol group Les Mousquetaires.
'Le Petit Spirou'. Dutch-language version.