Bande dessinée
Louis Renault comic book
The Rétromobile show is always good for a surprise. This year, one of these was a display named Louis Renault, which made us curious. On a small stand in Hall 3 we met up with Christine Renault, Louis’ great granddaughter, attending the show to promote a comic book about her ancestor.
The plan is to tell the tale of Louis Renault’s life in a two-volume comic book – a project that was initiated three years ago with a number of people known to Christine Renault meeting up and coming up with the original idea. Historian Patrick Deschamps and illustrator Harold Wassaux teamed up next. The first volume of the book is out now, describing the period from Renault’s birth to WW1. The second volume, which is still in the making, will report about the period between WW1 and Renault’s death in 1944.
Accessible
Christine Renault part lives on the Herqueville estate in a farm that is still family owned. This farm is partly rented out. Jean-Louis Renault, son of Louis Renault and Christiane Boullaire, had a grand total of eight children, or actually these eight children have four different mothers. It might explain why, as Christine says, communication between them is not always easy. The farm, for example, is overdue for some restoration work, but this has proved to be virtually impossible to realise.
But let’s go back to the book. Christine Renault: “We thought a comic book would be both an original as an accessible way to tell this story to a wide audience of all generations. So many people have now given up reading thick books, although they often do read comic books, of which the contents are not quite so heavy. This one has to be historically correct, though.”
Boullaire
The book was Christine’s idea, but she believed it would have been a real challenge to find a publisher willing to participate. Eventually everything worked out fine.
Christine: “I have friends who are real fans of the painter Jacques Boullaire, my grandmother’s brother. Patrick Deschamps, in his turn, is related to the Boullaires since he is married to a daughter of the painter. Throughout his life he made several documentaries and has now immersed himself into the life of Louis Renault for this project. The result is a comic book, which does not just tell you the story of Louis Renault, but which also places him within a historical perspective.”
The comic book ‘Louis Renault Inventeur de génie et artisan de la Victoire (Tome 1 - De 1877 à 1918)’ comes at 15,90 euros and is available through the editor as well as in bookshops, with the FNAC and on Amazon.