GOTLIB - Lot 74

GOTLIB MARCEL GOTLIB RHÂ-GNAGNA Volume 2, Audie 1980 Original plate no. 1 from the story Kung Fu Glacial, prepublished in Fluide Glacial no. 2, August 1975. India ink on paper 28 × 36 cm (11.02 × 14.17 in.) This is pure Gotlib from his best period, when he created Fluide Glacial magazine in 1975. The page features a twentieth-century cinematic icon, at his peak at the time: the Chinese-American actor and inventor of jeet kune do, Bruce Lee. He had died two years earlier, at the age of 32, and left behind him a veritable craze for kung fu among teenagers the world over. Here, Bruce Lee is the epitome of the slim, muscular athlete opposite an ostentatiously fag-smoking, pot-bellied SuperDupont, complete with beret, wifebeater, cape and Damart underpants. And he's pretty drunk, if the "Burp" at the beginning of the sequence is anything to go by. They don't need to talk, they're already funny. The composition of the page sets up the duel. Gotlib, heir to pantomime, achieves a hilarious expression that is unique in the history of comics.