The Belgian Comic Strip Center - Museum Brussels

“Can you laugh about anything”? Dodo and Cha certainly think so, as we can see from this album. Dodo, the scriptwriter, takes us in pursuit of his protagonists to Syrakia, in a tragicomedy which resonates all too closely with recent events. The storyline, hard-hitting and direct with scathing humour, highlights and ridicules the excesses of radical religion. Cha’s illustrations, which are energetic and expressive, are a perfect fit for the political tone of the work. As we can see in the selection of original plates on display at the BCSC, comic strips can be very useful in raising public awareness of sensitive topics. This exhibition of an album synonymous with laughter and freedom is the Comic Strip Center’s way of paying tribute to two talented authors, hoping you will enjoy the work and wishing you an excellent start to 2018!

Mélanie Andrieu, Belgian Comic Strip Center

The adventures of Gina and Aunt Alice in Syrakia!

Pauline has disappeared!

Worse still, ‘she has gone to Syrakia to join those Big Caliphate morons’… that organisation that ‘supposedly supports the oppressed against the diktat of non-believers’.

‘All that fanatical nonsense!’ rants aunt Alice, who is the feminist and 1968 activist of the family...

Through schoolfriends and dubious people smugglers, and always with the assistance of door-opening social media, Gina manages to follow Pauline’s trail right up to Harak, which is on the edge of the combat zone, where the recently converted girl is being held captive…

Will Gina succeed in getting Pauline out? And Alice, with her subtleness and discretion, will she help them or will she cause a disaster?

With drawings that are not only funny but equally well-documented, and with her auntie Alice, who reminds you of an alcoholic captain, The Black Veil follows in the great tradition of comic strip art that is suitable for both young and old, by concocting a knowledgeable cocktail of adventure and humour on one of today’s hot topics.

Dodo, singer in the band Dennis Twist (with Margerin and Vuillemin among others), who is especially renowned for her script-writing (from Métal Hurlant to Mickey!), has produced comic series with Ben Radis that are 100% up-to-date (Les Closh and Max et Nina, etc.), as well as some magnificent travel diaries with Jano.

Graphic artist Cha has drawn two two-part series (Pizza Road Trip and Un homme de goût) based on scripts by the creator of Lascars, El Diablo, and has collaborated on Tchô !, Spirou, Arghhh !

Her drawings, which depict documented backdrops and highly expressive expressions, do full justice to the side-splitting humour of Dodo’s scripts.