Berck (Berckmans, Arthur) - 1 Original page - Lombok - 1960

About the cartoonist;
Berck's drawing style was influenced by Raymond Macherot (Chlorophyl) and André Franquin (Guust), "the best comic artist in the world," according to Berck. Berck drew for a young audience with a touch of appeal for adults. He believed that the drawing itself should be able to tell the story, but the accompanying text provides the refinement that suits the work. He educated himself by watching old films and consulting books.
As a child, Berck already loved drawing. He studied at the Sint-Lucas Institute in Brussels and anatomical drawing in Leuven. When he turned 18, he got a job with the Jesuits in Leuven where he did administrative work part-time and supplied illustrations part-time for the religious magazine Pro Apostolis. There he mainly worked on biographies of saints up to comic stories. Eight years later he began working for the comic publisher Le Lombard where he supplied illustrations for the magazine Chez Nous. He also designed advertising drawings for the agency Publiart.
In 1958 he published in the weekly Tintin the comic Pechvogel (French: Strapontin), with René Goscinny writing the scripts. This comic series revolved around a Paris taxi driver. In 1965, when Goscinny became too busy with the successful series Asterix, Pechvogel got another scriptwriter, Acar. With him Berck continued the series for another two years. Berck's humor is often a bit caustic, especially in the stories he himself conceived.
After this he created the James Bond pastiche "Ken Krom", but had to drop the series after protests from his publisher. With Yves Duval as writer he drew the comic series Hansje, about a young drummer in Napoleon's era. The comic is called Rataplan in French, a name that has nothing to do with the dog from the Lucky Luke series.
Together with Leo Loedts, Berck under the pseudonym "Studio Arle" created the comic series Wim en Eric: De Verdwenen Sloep (1965) and the adventure series De Zwartepinken (1965-1972) with scripts by Maurice Renders in the magazine Zonneland. In 1967 Berck left Tintin. He then went to Robbedoes, where under scripts by Yvan Delporte and Raymond Macherot he drew the comic series Kapitein Mulligan. Mulligan was the captain of a tugboat in 1920s America during Prohibition.
Two years later Berck proposed to Raoul Cauvin to make a detective comic. Cauvin had ample inspiration for this and used the same historical background. Inspiration was the television series The Untouchables. Cauvin created two main characters: Sammy Day (the small dark-haired one) and Jack Attaway (the tall blonde and the leader of the duo). In March 1970 the first Sammy adventure appeared in Robbedoes. At first the stories took place mainly in Chicago, later also in other parts of the world.
Besides his comic series for Dupuis, he also published for the Dutch comic market the series De Donderpadjes, about a gang of Boy Scouts, and Lowietje, a series about an orphan who is also a wealthy heir. This series was later published in the French edition of Robbedoes as Lou. In Flanders he published the daily strip "Lombok" in Gazet van Antwerpen together with Daniël Jansens. From 1972 to 1974 he conceived the humorous science fiction series "Mischa" for the German Rolf Kauka studios in the magazine Primo, often together with Francis Bergèse, Raoul Cauvin, Guy Bollen or Lucien De Gieter.
Berck retired in 1994. Artist Jean-Pol took over the "Sammy" series. During his career, Berck would have liked to draw a humorous cowboy strip, but he never found the time. In 1973 Berck was the laureate of the Prix Saint-Michel for "Best Humorous Artist" and again in 1975 together with Cauvin for the best humorous comic Les gorilles font les fous (The bodyguards are crazy). In 1979 he also received a Bronze Adhemar for his entire oeuvre.
Berck passed away in December 2020 at the age of 91.

This lot concerns an old page of LOMBOK. It is a page in which a panel has been "worked" on because it was used for different publications. A beautiful page of a comic from a period when almost nothing circulated and almost nothing had ever been offered before.

See also the photos which form part of the description. The centerpiece will be well packaged and sent by registered mail.