Tightrope Walker During the Occupation – Part 2/4[1]

by Antoine Sausverd

Translated by Annick Pellegrin

Edited by Harriet Earle

Original publication: Sausverd, Antoine. « Les Aventures du professeur Nimbus : Funambule sous l’occupation. » La Crypte tonique septembre – octobre 2013: 13-18. Print.[2]

Daix, Francist Partisan

To add to his money-related dissensions, the artist had political conceptions. One part of his personality did not show in the drawings that he created for the general press: his ferocious political engagement. Indeed, the artist became a member of the French fascist movement, Francism, shortly after its creation, in September 1933, and he remained a faithful partisan throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

Close to both Mussolini’s Italian fascism and Hitler’s national-socialism, Francism was led by the charismatic Marcel Bucard, a former ultranationalist fighter. His theses were radical: the party attacked Freemasons, Jews (starting from 1936), and Léon Blum, before going after all the capitalists of the US. He is also a self-declared opponent to the parliamentary regime and of the “front socialo-communiste” [social-communist front]. But on the political playground, Francism was mostly isolated and did not have much weight.

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Tightrope Walker During the Occupation – Part 1/4

by Antoine Sausverd

Translated by Annick Pellegrin

Edited by Harriet Earle

Original publication: Sausverd, Antoine. « Les Aventures du professeur Nimbus : Funambule sous l’occupation. » La Crypte tonique septembre – octobre 2013: 12-18. Print.[1]

Before World War II broke out, in France Les Aventures du professeur Nimbus were one of the most popular bandes dessinées of the 1930s. The gags of this strip feature an always elegant, glassed scientist, whose distinguishing feature is his sole hair, raised as question mark on his bald head. His absent-mindedness, which is nowadays legendary, was the source of many misadventures that made many readers laugh.

The history of bande dessinée would retain that it was the first French mute newspaper strip. It also marks one of its darkest moments. The German occupation that followed the defeat of 1940 would reshuffle the cards of the game in which professeur Nimbus was at stake. Broadly speaking, we know our history but today, it is possible, thanks to the various sources kept in the national archives,[2] to bring to light the then tumultuous relationships between the different actors at the origins of Les Aventures du professeur Nimbus: the press agency Opera Mundi, the artist André Daix and Le Journal, the first daily to welcome the strip in its pages.

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