Editing Blueberry (comics) (section)

==The Blueberry biography==
{{blockquote |quote="In my function as literary editor, I also amused myself by mounting a massive hoax. It was meant to expand a bit upon the knowledge of Blueberry's past that I had introduced in the full ''Jeunesse'' stories. As an aside, I humbly apologize to the respectable professors and other eminent historians who have rock solidly believed in it, and who have overwhelmed me with requests for my sources. The idea came to me at the [[National Archives in Washington]], when I was looking for old pictures for a television show. One of them caught my eye on a pile of documents dating from the Civil War. It showed a young, anonymous officer, serving in the cavalry of the Union, who resembled the young Blueberry as drawn by Jean Giraud. It was too beautiful! I could not resist! I acquired a lot of other pictures of the era, representing southern plantations, black slaves in cotton fields, scenes of the Civil War, trains, forts, Mississippi Show Boats ... And, using them as starting point, I wrote the detailed biography of Mike Steve Donovan, alias Blueberry, which can now be read at the start of the album "Ballade pour un cercueil". I mingled many real facts and characters that had really existed into my imaginary biography. Thanks to the photos brought back from Washington, it became a flagrant truth. To complete this forgery, that amused me immensely, I commissioned my graphic artist Peter Glay for the superb false historical portrait that you can also admire. A detail that should not be lacking in all this pizzazz, the officers represented on Blueberry sides are, in reality, comic artists [[Jean-Marc Reiser]] and [[Jean Tabary]], who were relatively unknown at the time, but who have come a long way since the time they posed as Blue Coats! This hoax worked beyond all hopes: thousands of readers believed in the real existence of Blueberry, following the publication of this false, with authentic photos illustrated, biography. That my victims may forgive me: ''si non è vero è bene trovato!''"|source=Charlier, in a latter-day accounting for his ''Blueberry'' biography.<ref name="ratier240">[[#Sources|Ratier, 2013, pp. 240-243]]; Charlier's Italian proverb translates as "''If not true, then well found!''"</ref>}}

{{quote box|align=right|width=45%|quote="Blueberry can not die, I have the certainty and proof of that ever since I have read the biography, Charlier has written before he left us. He is such a rich character that people can not imagine him disappearing. According to Jean-Michel, Blueberry has even rubbed shoulders with [[Eliot Ness]]. The history of such a character can not have an ending".<br /><br />"With that biography, we encumbered ourselves with a mind-boggling task. We had created the possibility to highlight Blueberry in a panoramic manner by concurrently publish several different series, in which he is young, less young and, why not, old eventually. We even could have told the story of his death without ending the series. Blueberry is a particularly intimate life companion. He is part of me, but it should not become an obsession. That is the reason why I have given him the chance to escape me by entrusting him to others. In essence, it has become Blueberry's fate to be condemned to life by his creators".|salign=right|source=—Giraud, on his firm conviction that, due to the biography, ''Blueberry'' is now for the ages, and how it has allowed the ''Blueberry'' universe to expand beyond the boundaries of the main series.<ref>[[#Bosser|Bosser, 2005, p. 74]]; ''Blueberry: De mijn van Prosit & Het spook van de goudmijn'', p. 4, Castricum: Stichting Sherpa, 2011, {{ISBN|9789089880178}}.</ref>}}
In 1974 Charlier had a sixteen-page background article added to "Ballade pour un cercueil" ({{oclc|893750651}}), when the book was first released. The article concerned a fictitious biography of Mike Steve Donovan, alias Mike S. Blueberry, detailing his life from birth to death, and written from a historic, journalistic point of view. When asked about it a decade later, Charlier clarified that once it became clear to him that Blueberry had become the central character of the series he had conceived, he then already postulated in his mind the broad strokes of the complete life and works of his creation, including the reasons for Blueberry's broken nose and odd alias.<ref name="coll22">[[#Collective|''Collective'', 1986, p. 22]]</ref> By the time "Ballade pour un cercueil" was ready for its book release, Charlier deemed the moment had arrived to entrust his musings to paper. There had been a practical reason as well for this. The story already ran 16 pages over-length and as contemporary printers printed eight double-sided comic book pages on one sheet of print paper, the addition of the 16-page biography was not that much of a bother for their production process.<ref>Previously, "Le spectre aux balles d'or", had run four pages over-length, which, not being a multitude of eight, '''had''' been a bother for the contemporary printer as it resulted in excess paper waste.</ref> "Ballade pour un cercueil" therefore became one of the first Franco-Belgium comic albums to break the mold of the hitherto standard 48-page count format.

[[File:General Winfield S. Hancock and Generals Francis C. Barlow, David B. Birney, John Gibbon.jpg|thumb|left|{{center|Charlier's "young, anonymous officer" on the far left, presented as "the only known photo of Blueberry" on page 10 of the biography. The photo actually depicts Union General [[Francis C. Barlow]]}}]]
Currently somewhat of a staple in European comics, at that time the inclusion of an informative background section in a comic book of that size and wealth of detail was hitherto unheard of and a complete novelty, and what Charlier had not foreseen was that many in the pre-internet era mistook the biography for real, factual history, propagating it as such in other outside media as well.<ref>In the Netherlands for example, it was the popular science magazine ''Kijk'' of March 1977 (pp. 42-44) where the edited biography was presented to its readership as factual history.</ref> Charlier, who also was an investigative journalist and a documentary maker with a solid reputation for thorough documentation, had previously already written several, shorter historical Old West background editorials for the 1969-1970 ''Super Pocket Pilote'' series (issues 4–9) as companion pieces for the ''Jeunesse de Blueberry'' shorts, which ''were'' historically accurate &ndash; and, incidentally, working much of the material contained therein, especially the photographs, into the biography for the post-war era<ref name="diligence">{{cite web | title=Charlier dans Pilote | url=http://bdoubliees.com/journalpilote/auteurs1/charlier.htm | work=BDoubliés.com | language=fr | access-date=2017-07-10 | archive-date=2007-04-08 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070408200611/http://bdoubliees.com/journalpilote/auteurs1/charlier.htm | url-status=live }} The eight-page each 1969/70 Western editorials concerned, "La [[American Civil War|guerre civile américaine]]" (issue 4), "Le dernier combat du "[[George Armstrong Custer|colonel Tête Jaune"]]" (issue 5), "Le dernier combat de [[Kintpuash|"Captain" Jack]]" (issue 6), "Géronimo" (issue 7), "La longue marche des [[Nez Perce people|Nez–Percés]]" (issue 8), and "Le plus sanglant vantard de l'ouest [["Wild Bill" Hickok]]" (issue 9), all of which actually implying that Charlier had already done his due diligence long before he wrote the biography.</ref> &ndash; and readers of the pre-internet-era therefore assumed that the biography was likewise.

Still, having written the biography within the historical context ''as postulated in the comic'', fully expecting his readership to understand it as such, Charlier originally had not the intention to perform a prank at the expense of his readers, despite him later presenting it as such in the above statement, mischievously poking fun at the "respectable" and "eminent", but gullible, scholars (while carefully not including the non-scholar ''Blueberry'' fanbase) &ndash; and which was in concordance with biographer Ratier's observation of the author's penchant for "taking liberties" with actual events for dramatic effect.<ref name="Ratier, 2013, p. 205"/> His "it was meant to expand a bit upon the knowledge of Blueberry's past" statement was actually indicative of his original intent on top of the incongruous circumstance that he had already left the employ of Dargaud and ''Pilote'' in 1972 as before-mentioned.<ref name="diligence"/> A baffled Charlier had declared on a prior occasion: "I have written a fictitious biography on Blueberry, accompanied by photographs found in American archives, and the whole world fell for it!",<ref name="coll22"/> having already stated on an even earlier occasion: "To this very day, because of "Ballade pour un cercueil" in which we gave Blueberry with a photographs illuminated biography, I still receive letters from readers &ndash; not from kids mind you, but from grownups &ndash; asking how on Earth we have managed to track down the real Blueberry. There are people who take it as real fact".<ref>[[#Berner|Berner, 2003, p. 26]] (quoted from the April 1978 ''Schtroumpf: Les Cahiers De La Bd'' magazine interview)</ref> The photos were indeed authentic, though their captions were not. To complete the appearance of a bonafide in-universe biography, a Civil War-era style group portrait, featuring Blueberry and flanked by the by Charlier mentioned comic artists, was included, ostensibly recently discovered and from the hand of American artist Peter Glay, but in reality created by Pierre Tabary under the pseudonym. Tabary, brother of Jean, was a French book illustrator of some renown himself, also working for ''Pilote'' as illustrator for their magazine editorials at the time.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://pabd.free.fr/BLUEBERY/BLUEBERY.HTM|title=Placard à B.D.|website=pabd.free.fr|access-date=2016-06-09|archive-date=2016-05-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160519171921/http://pabd.free.fr/BLUEBERY/BLUEBERY.HTM|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="ratier240"/> Incidentally, a salient detail was that events, as related in the biography, in Blueberry's life directly upon war's end, but before he arrived in the Far West, eventually became those of ''Jim Cutlass'', the other Giraud/Charlier western.

J.M. Lofficier has translated the biography in English, specifically for inclusion in the Graphitti Designs anthology collection (it was not featured in the originating Epic/ComCat editions), published in the fourth volume of the collection, ''Moebius #4''. Lofficier however, took it upon himself to slightly edit Charlier's original text in order to reflect Blueberry's life as featured in the post-1974 publications (despite being reprinted numerous times, not only in French but in other languages as well,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.stripinfo.be/reeks/strip/3055_Blueberry_15_Ballade_voor_een_doodskist/showall|title=Blueberry (Nederlands) 15 Ballade voor een doodskist - stripinfo.be|website=www.stripinfo.be|access-date=2016-07-06|archive-date=2023-04-05|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230405111234/http://www.stripinfo.be/reeks/strip/3055_Blueberry_15_Ballade_voor_een_doodskist/showall|url-status=live}}</ref> Charlier himself has never revisited his original text again), and as such it is not an entirely faithful translation as some elements were added, whereas some others were omitted, such as the aforementioned notion of a fully rehabilitated and to captain promoted Blueberry ultimately heading a unit of Apache scouts.