La revanche de Bakamé est l’adaptation d’une fable africaine, dans un cadre qui ressemble de près au Rwanda. Mais avec une bonne dose de fantaisie, de dérision et d’humour noir.

« Une variante africaine de notre Roman de Renart. » Michel Kempeneers – De Standaard

La découverte d’un talent pur, Jeroen Janssen, issu de la jeune école flamande et publié pour la première fois en France. Un Benjamin Rabier à la sauce reggae !

Un duo d’auteurs flamands experts en fables africaines : Jeroen Janssen a longtemps vécu au Rwanda. Quelques précédentes ruses de Bakamé et autres calvaires de Mpyisi avaient été précédemment publiés en langue flamande.

Un roman graphique de 320 pages, haut en couleurs !

If you’re looking for unknown Flemish comics talent, Jeroen Janssen (1963) and his expressionist painted comics are defenitely worth discovering. However, his work remains to be translated into’more accessible’ languages like English or French. Yet, for his latest album, De Grote Toveraar [The Big Magician], that would be a true challenge, as his writer, the Dutch comics journalist, translator and children’s book writer Pieter van Oudheusden (1957), did a stunning job on the dialogue, adding lots of French terms – the story is situated in an unidentified, Francophone African former colony, so this approach makes sense – with double meanings for those who want to see them. These ambiguities have mainly sexual connotations, as getting sex is what the main characters are continuously striving for. But Bakamé is the only one getting any. That’s logical because all the other characters are plain stupid and/or naive, and really ask to be cheated. Sounds familiar? That’s not surprising, as Bakamé is Janssen & Van Oudheusden’s take on the famous myth of Reynard the Fox, (re)locating it to Africa, where Janssen lived for several years in the 1990s. In this story the hyena Mpyisi is Bakamé’s main victim and gets the full treatment. As in the original Reynard stories, this is not innocent, for Reynard/Bakamé are mean characters without compassion. The story is not only very funny, but at the same time really clever. (Review in De Standaard)