Bernadette Després, the designer of “Tom-Tom and Nana”, is dead

The designer, who illustrated the adventures of the turbulent Tom-Tom and Nana for several decades, died at the age of 83.

The designer Bernadette Després, and co-creator of Tom-Tom and Nana in 1977, died, Bayard editions announced to Le Monde this Wednesday. She was 83 years old.

Co-creator of this flagship comic strip of the magazine I like to readBernadette Després had drawn 371 stories of Tom-Tom and Nanamostly written by Jacqueline Cohen, then by Evelyne Reberg. A true publishing phenomenon, the 34 albums in the series have sold more than 16 million copies.

For more than 30 years, the one who also claims a “caricatural side” in her drawing has greedily drawn the nooks and crannies of the restaurant À la bonne couverture and its cheerful inhabitants: Tom-Tom and Nana, but also their parents Yvonne and Adrien, their sister Marie-Lou, their aunt Roberte.

Inspired by her children

Inspired by Snipe, Tintin or even Zig and Chiphis drawing was marked by a permanent search for movement and lightness. Like the children she draws. “It has to move!”, she told us in 2019 during a retrospective dedicating her work to the Angoulême Comics Festival.

Originally titled The Adventures of Tom-Tom at the Good Forkthe series was inspired by his own children. Nana thus has the face of her daughter and Tom-Tom the pointed face of his son Etienne. The character's name comes from the nickname of the son of a friend of Jacqueline Cohen. And that of Nana from the screenwriter's daughter.

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