Hughes, Robert (b. 1931) and Jean Lombard (b. 1929). Le Film de la vérité. An archive of materials for the publication of the comic book Tim l’Audace, third series, No. 13 (Editions Artima, 1963). Included are: (1) the original art for the story by Hughes, pen and ink, 20 pp., 22 x 31 cm; (2) the original cover painting for the comic by Hughes, gouache, 18.5 x 25.5 cm; (3) a color proof of the cover; (4) the original typescript for the story by Lombard with revisions, 13 pp.; (5) a handwritten listing of the contents of the issue; and (6) a copy of the published comic, 66 pp, 13 x 18 cm. All materials in near fine condition.

Rather fascinating in historical perspective, this cover story from of the long-running adventure comic Tim l’Audace offers valuable material for the historian of ethnographic film. Le Film de la vérité concerns a group of American cinematographers recently arrived in Northern Rhodesia where they encounter unexpected resistance – until Tim and his partner Salam step in to save the day.

Introduced in 1947, Tim l’Audace is a globetrotting journalist who, Tintinlike, continuously falls into adventure. In his first incarnation, penned by Robert and Raoul Giordan, he seemed continuously to lose all his clothes save his white briefs and to end up swinging from trees in the jungle like Tarzan. Sometimes he was accompanied by a rival journalist, Magda, who also never overdressed for an occasion. With the second series by Bob Leguay (the father, incidentally, of the modern illuminator Jean-Luc Leguay), the hero soon abandoned the role of Lord of the Jungle to refocus on his professional duties. He eventually took on a new partner, Salam, the chief of an African fishing village. As an interracial duo, Tim and Salam were on more of an equal footing than, say, Mandrake the Magician and Lothar. The heroes frequently found themselves pacifying tribes hostile to Europeanization. When Robert Hughes and Jean Lombard took over the character for the third and final series, Tim and Salam were reconceived as agents for the Bureau Internationale de Police Africaine (BIPA), a pan-continental peacekeeping force.

It is of course no accident that Tim l’Audace flourished in Francophone Europe during the period of the decolonization of Francophone Africa, and this chapter offers an interesting perspective on the uncomfortable representation of that process in French popular culture. It also represents a very early invocation of the new practice of cinéma verité, which had recently been introduced to French audiences through the work of Jean Rouch, Marcel Griaule, Germaine Dieterlen, and other ethnographic filmmakers.

Robert Hughes, born in Nice, drew several other adventure series in addition to Tim l’Audace. In the 1980s he turned his creative attention exclusively to erotic comics. Jean Lombard wrote extensively for French comics – he is credited with some 400 scripts across every genre. He was also a prolific novelist, publishing pulpy science fiction and suspense with Fleuve Noir under the pseudonym Max-André Rayjean.