The small world of the 9th art in the province of Luxembourg is in mourning. Libramontois Étienne Willem has left the world of bubbles. This 52-year-old father of two was originally from Charleroi. He had been living in the village of Saint-Pïerre (Libramont) for years. He died Sunday morning at his home. Étienne Willem launched into comics in 2004 and made a good reputation for himself in heroic fantasy, a style in which he excelled in particular with The sword of Ardenois, to the Swiss editions Paquet, which features animal characters or even Old Heather and Silk Stockings (still published by Paquet, a story set in England in the 1930s)The Monkey’s Wings (still animal characters in America during the Great Depression of the 1930s), the trilogy The Gunners and, more recently, the cycle The Paris of Wonders published by Drakoo fantasy, the last volume of which The Enchantments of Ambermer was released last November. We will also remember the extraordinary adventures of Julie Petit-Clou whose journey we have been following for six years and who is still ongoing in the series “The girl from the world fair” to the French editions Bamboo.
During an interview, the self-taught artist revealed to us that he had the idea of drawing animals after watching the film Kung-Fu Panda with his children. Scriptwriter, designer, colorist, the Libramont artist got up early in the morning to work in his small studio set up in part of his house in the center of the village: “My style of semi-realistic drawings is very simple. I want to move away from caricature and if my characters seem to evolve in the middle of the Middle Ages, like for The Sword of Ardenois, it’s an atmosphere because there is no real period. precise. This leaves me free rein to create my characters who also come out of clichés. It’s within reach of children and it appeals to adults at the same time.”
No slender characters like Merlin and no animals like Hausman either for his animal-like heroes. And even if he loved Brittany as much as the Ardennes – he had created Pays de Herbeutagne, a portmanteau made up of Herbeumont and Brittany – he saw the legends of the two sister regions as so much reason to draw a Middle A joyful age and not as gloomy as we want to represent it in history books.
Before launching into comics on his own, the Libramont resident began his career in 1997 at the 352 animation studio in the Grand Duchy, specializing in cartoons. At the time, he had no degree in graphic arts, but learned on the job. When he started in comics, Étienne Willem continued his part-time job at Studio 352 as a storyboarder. A heroic adventure that he abruptly stopped this weekend.
So long the artist.
The designer Stédo: “Etienne was a p…. of a designer! “
Joined in France where he is signing, Stéphane Dauvin, Stédo, the Paliseul designer of Firefighters at Bamboo, a publishing house for which Étienne Willem worked, learned the terrible news this Monday morning: “I am in shock. I learned about it this morning because I’m in France. what happened doesn’t fit the character. He never stopped joking. Recently, I drove with him to the south of France to take part in a comic book festival. There are a little less than 1,000 kilometers and yet, every kilometer, he said a pun. He was a very happy and fine guy. And, what’s more, he was a f….. designer! What talent ! I was really a fan of his drawings. He knew how to do everything. What a loss for the world of comics. I am still very moved. Bad day. Messages are pouring in from everywhere on the networks. No one understand. It’s true that it’s incomprehensible what happened.”
