Sylvain et Sylvette

Sylvain et Sylvette is a French comics series created in 1941 by Maurice Cuvillier. The most popular and successful series relating the adventures of Sylvain and Sylvette were drawn by Jean-Louis Pesch and are currently published by Dargaud. This is the only series still unfinished and published.

The first series dedicated to the comics characters Sylvain and Sylvette was created by Maurice Cuvillier in 1941 for the magazine Coeurs Vaillants, and later published in the magazine Fripounet et Marisette. From 1956, Jean-Louis Pesch and Claude Dubois took over the series and drew and wrote albums on their own and separately, but still in the same series, published by Fleurus from 1953. Cuvillier stopped drawing in 1958, and a new series was launched in 1967, with the same authors and publisher. In 1973, an alternative series called "Seribis" was created, grouping Jean-Louis Pesch's albums and published in the casual size for comics, so that the former series stopped and from 1978, Dubois and Pesch published albums in distinct series. In 1986, Fleurus stopped publishing these adventures. While Dubois gave up, Pesch's series went on being published thanks to Le Lombard from 1990, then by Dargaud from 2001. All the albums of the former series "Seribis" were republished by Le Lombard and Dargaud.

At the beginning of the series, as drawn and written by Maurice Cuvillier, the story is a call to go back to nature and a traditional way of life influenced by the catholicism and the attachment to land. In the first series, Sylvain and Sylvette has less animals than in the current series. At that time, their pets comprised only Gris – Gris, Cui – Cui, Moustachu, Panpan, Barbichette, Mignonnet, Raton, Poulette, and all of them play active roles. As for the "compères", they are all very dangerous and mean and are the archetypes of the villains, so that the series was designed as largely dualistic and moralistic. The themes of justice and punishment are very present in the spirit of the Cuvillier's albums, and Sylvain and Sylvette don't hesitate to severely retaliate against their pets when they joke or do a mistake.

Gradually, these characters evolved under the influence of Claude Dubois and above all Jean-Louis Pesch who turned the comperes into comic protagonists and added some characters. But the theme of nature is still very present in the recent albums who praise the beauty and the harmony of the country. Jean-Louis Pesch focused much more than Cuvillier on the life in the forest and the necessary protection of nature. The graphic style of the series also evolved a lot, and while Jean-Louis Pesch had a style similar to that of Cuvillier and Dubois, his drawings became more original and individual.

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