Chroniques de Fin de Siècle #1 - 'Autonomes'.
The Belgian Jacques Santi was active as a comic artist during the 1980s, working with scriptwriter Jan Bucquoy on series like 'Gérard Craan' (Deligne, 1982), 'Chroniques de Fin de Siècle' (Ansaldi/Alpen, 1985-1988) and 'Jérôme Tailleriche' (Ansaldi, 1984).
Career
Jacques Santi was the pen name of Aldo Mascio, an artist born in 1960. In the early 1980s, he got in touch with the Belgian anarchist, agent provocateur and writer Jan Bucquoy. Between 1982 and 1988, the two men worked on a couple of comic projects together, characterized by an anti-militarist and political tone.
Bucquoy and Santi's first co-creation were two volumes of 'Gérard Craan' (1982), an alternative history set in the 1970s, about NATO establishing a far-right dictatorship. The second volume, 'Au Dolle Mol', was first serialized in Michel Deligne's Félix Magazine. After two books published by Michel Deligne, the authors moved to publisher Ansaldi, where their series was transformed into the three-volume 'Chroniques de Fin de Siècle' (1985-1988). In a dystopian future, the country of Belgium is divided into three autonomous regions, with Wallonia becoming a hippie heaven and Flanders a fascist region. Brussels becomes a NATO-occupied territory, used as a district against communism. Meanwhile, the Belgian anarchist group Autonomes tries to overthrow the far-right dictatorship. The new main character of the series was Gérard Mordant, a former Belgian terrorist who joins the staff of the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in France. When he has an affair with the daughter of the French ambassador, the French President uses this as a pretext for war.
Chroniques de Fin de Siècle #3 - 'Chooz'.
With 'Chroniques de Fin de Siècle', Bucquoy and Santi mixed politics with explicit eroticism, and delved deeply into the already sensitive cultural division between Belgium's Dutch-speaking and French-speaking regions. Magazine editors and publishers were reserved in printing the stories, resulting in the series to changing publishers several times. Only the first installment was serialized in Glénat's Circus magazine, the other two parts were published directly in book format. After two volumes at Ansaldi, the third episode of 'Chroniques de Fin de Siècle' was published by Alpen publishers. A fourth and final installment was never completed, because publisher Alpen deemed the story too political, and demanded a rewrite, which the authors refused.
In addition to their main series, Bucquoy and Santi created the one-shot comic 'Jérôme Tailleriche' (Ansaldi, 1984), about a 1930s Parisian journalist investigating the murder of three of his friends and then acting out his revenge.
'Jérôme Tailleriche'.