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About Grégoire Bouchard

Grégoire Bouchard

Artist

Canada

Sci-Fi

Teen, Adult

Grégoire Bouchard was born in Montreal in 1965. In addition to obtaining a diploma in visual arts in 1986, he studied graphic arts in Orléans, France. He has contributed to various magazines, including Iceberg, where in 1993 he created Bob Leclerc, his character of a retired war pilot. Grégoire Bouchard is fascinated by the world of the '50s and the imagery derived from it, with which he infuses his disquieting science-fiction tales, rooted in a scathing second degree: “Science fiction, unconsciously in my case, speaks of the era in which it was conceived, more than of the future.” Jean-Paul Eid says he "is to Quebecois comics what David Lynch is to cinema. He's an author in a class of his own, reinventing science fiction in our comics. He inscribes the territory, making it fertile ground for criticism of America's values, of the patriotism that blinds us. His universe is rich, dense and elaborate." In Planet twist, published in 2001 by Éditions Mille-Îles, the author comments ironically on his fascination with the '50s: "It was 1968, the Cold War was in full swing. On TV, fortunately, there were plenty of clean-cut, likeable spies that psychedelia hadn't managed to contaminate. Series produced before 1968 (Lost in Space, Danger Man, Thunderbirds, Stingray) continued to be broadcast and enjoyed eternal immunity! Erected as a true cultural counter-attack, this audiovisual heritage, which television constantly rebroadcast for decades, very slowly overcame the hippie totalitarianism that was cracking everywhere. Even comic strips contributed to this memorable rout of the enemy. The syndicates relentlessly reprinted these old stationery books with their offbeat colours and cheap newsprint paper, which told children all over the world about the improbable adventures of characters who held the salvation of the West in their hands every week. (...) They gave children all over the world a completely twisted vision of history, it's true, but they were, as I used to say, the best thing that Western imperialism ever produced. Born in the '50s, these characters with their heroic faces and "Pepsodent smiles" were, for me, fuzzy gods who fell from grace somewhere in the late '60s, mowed down like dinosaurs by a merciless comet."

Books

Les rescapés de l'éternité – 2022, Moelle graphik

Awards

Nomination Bédélys 2023

Guest at MCAF

2017, 2018, 2023, 2024