CHÉRET - Rahan (1975)

In 1975, I was ten and an avid reader of Pif Gadget, the BD weekly that was funded by the French Communist Party (because it was a great source of income for them) yet contained no political propaganda beyond a vaguely progressive worldview common to the magazine’s various features.
My favorite one was RAHAN. Its eponymous protagonist was a solitary, brainy, blonde caveman wandering around, well, apparently practically everywhere on earth and encountering new people, new animals, as well as tons of “inventions”, some of which he figured out on his own. The things that guy could do with flintstones were just mind-boggling!
RAHAN was then among the most popular French BD characters, even though he was never adapted for cinema and had an animated TV show only in 1987. If you are a French person, especially male, born during the 1960s and 1970s, chances are very high that you know Rahan as well or better than Tintin.
Even though the character was handled by several artists, the best one was André Chéret (1937-2020), who had co-created it with writer Roger Lécureux (1925-1999) in 1969 in the debut issue of Pif-Gadget. Although Chéret’s career lasted over fifty years and produced lots of comics series, the one he is remembered for is RAHAN, where he displayed a brilliant draftsmanship largely inspired by his idol Burne Hogarth, whose influence shone through unmistakably in the adentures of Lécureux and Chéret’s caveman.
Back to young moi in 1975… Pif Gadget #357 came out just after Christmas, on December 29, with a splendid Rahan cover. The story inside « La vallée des tourments » (The Valley of Torment) had a gorgeous third page showing Rahan’s showdown with a lion. The kind of pictures and imagery you see at age ten and that remains etched into your brain 50 years later, until the day you see it is listed in an auction sale about to take place in Belgium…
Well the auction took place. I bid. And I won the original art of this page I had never forgotten.
And here it is for the enjoyment of everyone that is receptive to the sort of pleasure and excitement that only childhood memories of comic art can arouse decades down the road…
Ink on 20 x 15 ¼ / 50 x 38.8 cm art board.