Benoît Sokal died at the age of 66 – AFP
It is one of the biggest names in the ninth art that is leaving. Belgian Benoît Sokal, comic book author with Inspector Canardo and creator of famous video games like Amerzone, died Friday at the age of 66, the designer François Schuiten announced on Saturday. The artist died after a long illness in Reims where he had lived for many years, according to his friend who collaborated with him for comics. Aquarica(2017).
The Duck Head Inspector first appeared in the comic book magazine, To be continued, before the investigations of this disillusioned and alcoholic private were published by Casterman in the early 1980s. More than twenty albums, some translated into ten languages, were published until 2018 with the last of the series , A con in winter.
” Canardo is a very important series. He’s the perfect antihero, an insufferable alcoholic with a lot of flaws. At the end of the 1970s, it is a character who will become one of the emblems ofTo be continued, which revealed many authors, ”recalls François Schuiten. Benoît Sokal designed both the drawings and the scenarios for Inspector Canardo.
A talent recognized as much in drawing as in video games
Sokal had started veterinary studies before entering the Institut des arts Saint-Luc in Brussels, his birthplace. He was notably influenced by the animal designer René Hausman and his magical universe. “For him, animals could reveal something more unique, more scathing than what he could do with human characters,” underlines François Schuiten.
In the late 1990s, Sokal also successfully launched into video games with Amerzone (1999) or the series Syberia (2002) whose third opus was released in 2017 before a fourth on which he was working at the time of his death. “In the world of video games, he had a very personal touch, a very original universe, it’s quite rare,” said François Schuiten.
Schuiten, who worked with him for several years on the screenplay for the first and second volumes of Aquarica, for which Benoît Sokal was drawing, will complete the last pages of the album, which is scheduled for release next year.