Will - Lot 43

Will WILL TIF ET TONDU Le Retour de la bête (T.25), Dupuis 1977 Original plate no. 4, prepublished in Le Journal de Spirou n° 1988, May 20, 1976. Signed. India ink on paper 36.5 × 47.5 cm (14.37 × 18.7 in.) Tif et Tondu are back in England, with Inspector Fixchusset of the Yard and Kiki, to explain why, on the east coast of England, near the town of Grimsby, a fairly drunk fisherman has come across four skeletons carrying a coffin in the middle of the night. This 1976 story is directly inspired by a Bob Bang episode that Tillieux had written for Héroïc-Albums in 1947: Quatre Squelettes et un cercueil (Four Skeletons and a Coffin). He sets it in England, linking it with the monster from Tif et Tondu: Sorti des abîmes. Here, Will accurately depicts the English countryside, with its Gothic manor houses and eerie shadows against a windy sky. This scene is repeated on the album cover. Two things are worth noting. The first is that the car is French, but the driver is on the left, so we're in England. Secondly, look at the plate number: each time, Will draws a clearly identified cartouche, so that when he returns the plates, he can identify which album it is. Tif et Tondu's precision and efficiency weren't just in the drawing...