Par
Stéphane Fouilleul
Published on Oct 24, 2024 at 10:16 a.m.
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“I had no other professional plan than to become a screenwriter. » 30 years of career and nearly 200 screenplays to his credit. Fred Duval is a reference in the world of comics. Sensitive to current issues such as ecologythe Rouen author is the guest of the “literary aperitif” organized Friday October 25, 2024 by the association Aux idées semées, at the third place of the Maison sauvage de Hauville (Eure).
Although he assures that he is not part of any political party, he is very interested in citizens involved in preserving the environment. In his comics, deforestation, water treatment or global warming are among the issues that inspire him: “I read a lot of summaries of the IPCC* reports,” he explains.
Science fiction and history
It was in 1995 that Fred Duval published his first album 500 rifles. The same year, he signed his first major science fiction success Carmen Mc Callum. Other albums like Travis, Hauteville House or Meteors belong to the same literary genre. History is also an integral part of his work. In 2012, he published volume 1 of man of the yearwhich takes place during the Great War. In 2014, two albums were released dedicated to Esterhazy and the Dreyfus affair.
In Wonderballthe screenwriter tells the story of a mysterious shooter who kills nine people in nine seconds on a San Francisco street. The speed of the killer refers to the case of the assassination of the President of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963.
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Fred Duval is also a screenwriter open to challenges. In 2018, he adapted the novel with the designer Didier Cassegrain Black water lilies of Michel Bussione of the most read contemporary writers in France. A 100% Norman collaboration which continued since Fred Duval also adapted Don’t let go of my hand et A plane without her.
Contrary to what one might believe, adapting a 300-page novel into a comic strip does not involve reducing the original work.
It is true that the drawing can suffer from an image of simplification. But my ambition is not to simplify the novel. That doesn’t interest me. Otherwise I would adapt novels on the chain. Drawing is above all another way of showing things.
Fred Duval
Fred Duval knows it. In the hierarchy of literary genres, comics are still considered a “subgenre” too often associated with easy, relaxing reading: “I think that its image has evolved despite everything. But comics remain on the fringes », Recognizes the author. Which doesn’t necessarily displease him. “I have royal peace over my content. I have never had an editor change a sentence because it was deemed incorrect. I have the feeling that comics are less scrutinized. I have total freedom in the choice of subjects that I wish to discuss. »
A new album from Thorgal
In 2020, Fred Duval became a knight of the Order of Arts and Letters. A great recognition for the screenwriter who, in recent years, has published other series of successful albums such as Renaissance et Neoforest in which, again, environmental concerns are addressed through the genre of science fiction.
In 2024, alongside the designer Corentin Rouge, the Rouen screenwriter revisits the myth of the tragic hero Thorgal, through the new album Thorgal, Wendigo. Sailing towards their lands from the country of Qâ, Thorgal, Aaricia and Jolan find themselves caught in the middle of the conflict between the People of the Water and those of the Forest.
In an interview given on April 22, 2024, to The Voice of the North, Corentin Rouge declares that “the album addresses deeper themes such as the colonization of a people, the influences and the cultural wars symbolized by the Indian and Viking deities which are respectively the Wendigo and the Jormungand. » The album also questions “the relationship with nature and its destruction. » Because you will have understood, the future of the planet constitutes one of the common threads of Fred Duval’s writing.
*Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Literary aperitif with comic book writer Fred Duval, Friday October 25 at 6:30 p.m., at the Maison sauvage de Hauville. Address: 18 Rue du Bosc-Lambert. The author will dedicate the albums of individuals or those which will be on sale on site (in partnership with the Lumière d’August bookstore in Rouen). Registration on the site by going to the “Events Calendar” section.
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