Marcel Gotlib had already built a fabulously successful career as a cartoonist in France by his late thirties. He had worked for the children's magazine Vaillant, where he created Gai-Luron, a cartoon dog that went on to star in a popular comic book of its own. He had gained nationwide fame at the French comics magazine Pilote, where he created Rubrique-à-Brac, a comic satire that mocked a wide range of fables, stereotypes, and clichés. Over the years, Gotlib's comics had grown increasingly adult in nature, but the youth-oriented Pilote wasn't an appropriate outlet for his most devious work.
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So in 1972, Gotlib recruited two like-minded cartoonists at Pilote, Claire Bretécher and Nikita Mandryka, to publish the adult comic magazine L'Écho des Savanes (the echo of the savannahs). The first issue sold like French hotcakes and went through several printings, which led its co-founders to turn it into a quarterly magazine the following year. L'Écho began to feature other creators as well, including Harvey Kurtzman, Moebius and Pilote artist Alexis (Dominique Vallet). Despite the trio's rocketing success, the publication ran deep into debt and the trio sold the magazine in the mid-70s. Gotlib soon launched another successful adult comics magazine, Fluide Glacial (frozen liquid), still going strong today.
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6th edition of the first issue |
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The sale of L'Écho des Savanes put the magazine on solid financial ground and it continued to grow, becoming a monthly magazine by 1976 and featuring work from the likes of Neal Adams, Richard Corben, Robert Crumb, Dick Giordano, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jeff Jones, Gérard Lauzier, Jacques Lob, Georges Pichard, Jacques Tardi, Martin Veyron, Wallace Wood and Berni Wrightson. Over time, the comics from Gotlib, Bretécher and Mandryka no longer appeared, but L'Écho kept adding new contributors, including Jean-Michel Charlier, Guido Crepax (creator of Valentina), Jean-Claude Forest (creator of Barbarella), Tanino Liberatore (creator of RanXerox), and Art Spiegelman. Many of these and other L'Écho creators also appeared in Fluide Glacial and Pilote, which had evolved into a more adult-oriented magazine after L'Écho's success.
In the late '70s and early '80s, L'Écho's success also spurred special editions exported to the United States and a short-lived French spin-off magazine, Virus. Publisher Albin Michel purchased L'Écho at the end of 1981 and put the magazine on a five-month hiatus for retooling. It relaunched in June of '82 and featured a new wave of alternative comic creators, including Milo Manara, Frank Miller, Jean-Marc Reiser, and Alex Varenne, as well as veteran artists like Will Eisner and Alex Toth. The magazine began to include articles with erotic photographs of women who also appeared on the covers. For a few months in 1984, the magazine even began to appear weekly, initially named L'Hebdo Écho des Savanes, and later L'Ebdo, before it reverted to its original title and publication schedule.
L'Écho des Savanes continued evolving through the '90s, expanding its scope and publishing a broad spectrum of French and international authors and graphic artists. After 34 years and a number of ownership changes (not all of which may be noted on this page) publisher Lagardère Active Media chose to shut down the magazine at the end of 2006. But it would not remain dead for long. The title was revived by French publisher Glénat in March of 2008 with issue #267 and L'Écho des Savanes is still published today, more than four decades after its debut. |
