WEBORGERS-

The Belgian Comics (8)

SOPHIE

SOPHIE

Sophie boarding a locomotive

_{Sophie the adventurous young girl}

A FEMININE CHARACTER AS A CENTRAL CHARACTER?
When in the early 60's, Jidéhem wanted to promote a young woman as his future character for a new series of comics, Dupuis his editor discouraged him, still under the pressure of the decency act for youth publications, promoted by the French government in the 50's and strictly applied.
It even came so far that any realistic feminine silhouette was banned by the zealot French censors.
Fearing a cohort of troubles and rebuttal of their publications, Dupuis advised to stay with young pre-nubile characters if Jidéhem wanted to use a female hero.

SOPHIE: VERY YOUNG AND ADVENTUROUS GIRL..
Sophie, young teen-ager In charge of the illustrations for the 'Starter chronicles' giving comments on cars of these days, Jidéhem incorporated the character of Starter in full features action stories. Amongst the secondary characters appeared in 1963 a young girl: Sophie.
This 10/12 year girl will soon be the leading character of new adventures, for which Jidéhem created a full environment of supporting characters and a mixing of fantasy and light science-fiction. She was named after the name of Jidéhem's daughter.
Sophie will have 20 adventures, all published in albums after a first publication in the 'Spirou Magazine'.
In her latest stories, Sophie will acquire a slightly more mature look, as seen in the illustration on the right.

JIDÉHEM : ALL THINGS TECHNICAL AND... A LOT OF FANTASY
Already at ease with the cars he drew for the "Starter Chronicles", as well as for all the gadgets in Gaston Lagaffe, Jidéhem shows an evident taste (and high talent) in drawing all things technical. From the reality or from his wide imagination.
Old and futuristic cars This gave to many of the Sophie adventures this nice soft science fiction touch, and a cascade of cars, trains, planes (just name it...) masterfully rendered in a semi-realistic style of drawings, but with exact details!
_{Old and very new... in this illustration from a Sophie comics (left)}

Check out our file giving more details about Jidéhem, this fine Belgian comics creator, his comics characters from other series, as well as illustrations of his first class car drawings.

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