February 12th - Cubitus

A Year in Comics - February 12th

Sémaphore, Cubitus & Sénéchal - Cubitus

Luc Dupanloup, also known as Dupa, was born in Montignies-sur-Sambre, Belgium, on February 12th 1945.  Through his father, painter André Dupanloup, Dupa became interested in art, however in 1963 his interests shifted to comics, and at the suggestion of comic artist Maurice Tillieux, he followed studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels.  Shortly after completing his studies, he encountered comic artist Greg, who accepted him as his assistent for his work for the Tintin comic weekly.

An accident in planning left the April 16th 1968 edition of Tintin with a blanc page, and Greg asked Dupa to come up with a 'page filler'.  Dupa quickly worked out a gag, featuring a large, rotund, talking fluffy white dog with a yellow tail - and Cubitus was born.  The character was instantly popular, and was published from album form from 1972 onwards.

Early on, the dog's gags featured a friendly boy named 'Marcellin', but one year later, in 1969, Cubitus' owner, the retired sea captain and inventor Sémaphore was introduced into the comic, replacing Marcellin.  Around the same time, the character of Sénéchal was introduced: the neighbour's cat, Cubitus' often-time nemesis in one-page gags, but also his occasional ally in longer stories.

While Cubitus usually was a gag-strip, he also featured in longer stories and the occasional full-album story; some comics either crossed genres, with Cubitus imagining himself as a film-noir detective - or sometimes even parodying other comic series.

In 1977, Belvision, Tintin's in-house cartoon company, produced a number of Cubitus shorts, however in 1988 it became the first Belgian comic series to see a Japanese animé adaptation, in the form of the 52-episode Don-Don Domel to Ron, which was also translated to English as Wowser (distributed by Saban and with Cubitus/Wowser voiced in English by Mark Hamill), and to Arabic as Ka'abool.

Other than Cubitus, Dupa also took over Raymond Macherot's series Chlorophylle in 1971, before the series went on a hiatus in 1980.  He also wrote three albums about the adventures of truck driver Niky.

Unexpectedly, Luc Dupanloup suffered a stroke and passed away on November 8th 2000, aged 55.

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51st entry out of ?

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