Person

Person Information
NameAndré-Paul Duchâteau
Context Information
StoryCarol détective: Mission en 2012
StoryLa montre aux 7 rubis
StoryLe grimoire de Lucifer
André-Paul Duchâteau
Comments
from the article "The first publications (1995)":
Andreas: We worked on Udolfo when I moved to Paris, that was in 1978.
For Udolfo you were given a scenario. Could you decide yourself which points of view, ways of cutting pictures, and what positioning of the characters to use?
I had the scenario of André-Paul Duchâteau, specifying on the left what happens on each picture and on the right the dialogues, picture by picture. But I had a lot of freedom. Eddy Paape wanted me especially for the plate layout, the mise en scène.
from the article "Rork and the fantastic (1995)":
The first episodes of Rork appeared short after Udolfo. Yet, a difference of style was immediately visible. It didn't look like Paape.
Andreas: I asked André-Paul Duchâteau, who was chief editor of Tintin/Hello BD (fr); Kuifje (nl) back then, if I could make something for him. He said "yes" and accepted my proposal about Rork - at least, he could more or less agree with it. So, the first two, three episodes I made when he was still chief editor.
Rork was influenced by American comics, which I liked and still like: a bit of adventure, relatively classic comics. Rork was of course the first thing I made entirely by myself. That's why it was important to me. I worked hard on it, put a lot of energy in those first episodes. It was not great, but it was the best I could do at the time.
How were your contacts with the other comics writers of Tintin/Hello BD (fr); Kuifje (nl)? Was Rork well received?
Tintin/Hello BD (fr); Kuifje (nl) was then not what it had been. Greg was no longer chief editor. The haydays were gone when André-Paul Duchâteau succeeded him. After that Vernal took over and the quality deteriorated even more. The editors were very uninterested. When you delivered the plates you were told: "Yeah, yeah, put them over there!" Nobody was really interested in them. Moreover, they published Rork pretty carelessly. Between two episodes was sometimes a hole of six months, so the readers couldn't understand anything about it any more. They already thought it was "hard", so you can imagine what such a frequency of appearance could do... At the popularity poll I was not even part of the first fifty. I believe that Rork was not at the right place at Tintin/Hello BD (fr); Kuifje (nl). The comic was appreciated by other authors, at least so I heard here and there.