Batango & Monsky - 'L'Androïde Associé' (Métal Hurlant #79bis, 1982).
Jean-François Bournazel is a French comic artist, who mainly made science fiction stories for Métal Hurlant and his own fanzine Rare & Cher in the 1980s. He was the creator of the sci-fi comic series 'Batango & Monsky' (1989) and the first album in the adventure comic series 'Les Cavaliers de la Mer'. Under the pseudonym Hergi, Bournazel also created the odd crossover comic 'Tintin contre Batman' (1995), in which Tintin fights Batman.
Life and career
Not much is known about Jean-François Bournazel's early life and career, except that he has been living and working in the Île-de-France region, near Paris. During the early 1980s, he appeared in the sci-fi/fantasy comic magazine Métal Hurlant. For this title, he created the short sci-fi stories 'Sauvetage du M–G–X–305' (#68, 1981), 'L'Arche' (#70, 1981) and 'Arrêt sur Syphilice' (#81, 1982), as well as the first appearance of his science fiction series 'Batango et Monsky' (#79bis, 1982).
Rare & Cher
Later on, Bournazel was the driving force behind the fanzine Rare & Cher, which hit the bookstands in 1984. He was joined in his initiative by Christian Imbert and James Brunier, among other people. Based in Saint-Ouen, Seine-Saint-Denis, a little north from Paris, Bournazel served as editor-in-chief with Imbert as his art director. Even though only thirteen issues were published between 1984 and 1989, the magazine has seen several incarnations, including as a landscape format shape and as a tabloid-sized paper. Bournazel contributed the superhero homage 'Dixie Midnight', new stories of 'Batango et Monsky' as well as 'Safari Folie'. Rare & Cher was also notable for printing early comics by David B.
A selection of Bournazel's sci-fi stories from Métal Hurlant and Rare & Cher were collected in the album 'Batango et Monsky' (Sorg, 1989). The artist later relocated to Antony, a town south of Paris.
'Safari Folie'.
Les Enfants du Réveil
Together with scriptwriter Jean-Luc Salmon, Bournazel created the first album in the ecologically-themed adventure series 'Les Enfants du Réveil' ("The Children of Awakening") for Vents d'Ouest, namely 'Les Cavaliers de la Mer' (1986). Éric Langlois provided the coloring. The second and final installment of the series was drawn by Jean-Marc Simon and Éric Simon, with no involvement from Bournazel.
Tintin parodies
In 1991, Jean-François Bournazel was one of several comic artists to make a graphic contribution to the official 'Tintin' homage album 'Fétiche Arumbaya' (1991). A couple of years later, he drew the 28-page parody comic 'Tintin Contre Batman', made under the pseudonym Hergi and published by the L'Oeil du Pirate imprint. The unauthorized story pitched Hergé's quiffed reporter Tintin against Bob Kane and Bill Finger's creation Batman, fighting it off in Gotham City. At first, the maverick crime fighters regard each other as rivals, but they eventually team up to find Tintin's kidnapped dog Snowy. Bournazel also made a few posters based on this comic strip. 'Tintin vs. Batman' was reprinted again in 2008 and 2015. In 1996, "Hergi" created another 'Tintin' parody, 'L'Aventure Improbable'. At Marlinspike Hall, Tintin is hit on the head by falling books, after which he discovers a 'Tintin' comic book with an adventure he does not remember.
'Tintin vs. Batman'.