Review — ‘Billy & Buddy Volume 9: Symphony In Buddy Major’ Finds The Brilliance In Simple Comedy

The latest volume of Billy & Buddy by Christophe Cazenove and Jean Bastide is a perfect example of how well done even the (seemingly) simplest of Euro comedies can be.

I regularly preview Cinebook‘s latest releases as I honestly believe they’re the sort of comics that really need wider recognition. They’ve been working for many years to bring the very best of the vibrant and diverse world of Euro comics to an English-speaking (and reading) audience and there are some wonderful comics amongst their output. But sometimes, as I’m doing the previews, I find myself getting so involved in the work that I simply have to tell you more about them. And this latest volume of Billy & Buddy was just one of those.

 

Billy & Buddy (originally Boule & Bill) is just so wonderfully simple, but its a deceptive simplicity that means it’s all too easy to overlook the real skill of doing something that looks this simple and making it an absolute joy to read.

Originally created back in 1959 by Jean Roba, the adventures of this boy (Billy) and his cocker spaniel (Buddy) have been taken on by various writers and artists, including Roba’s assistant Laurent Verron and this more modern team of Cazenove and Bastide, always in the style of Roba.

Like I say, the set-up is wonderfully simple, and something that will be immediately familiar to many of us. There’s bits of Dennis the Menace, Calvin and Hobbes, The Perishers, Fred Bassett, and many more in here. The comparison to newspaper strips is apt, as each volume of Billy & Buddy has a newspaper strip feel, with the simple set-up, each page a new scenario, albeit often working up a theme over the course of the album, in much the same way those newspaper strips do day after day, week after week.

Billy & Buddy are free spirits, there to cause chaos and mischief – but always very gentle and heartwarming mischief – to the lives of Billy’s mom and particularly his long-suffering, short-tempered, accident-prone dad, something Calvin & Hobbes lovers will immediately recognise in Calvin’s dad. (It probably says plenty about my age and having gone through the parenting of Molly many years ago that it’s often the dad strips that I find funniest.)

That’s pretty much the cast, with occasional appearances from the family tortoise, Caroline; Billy’s best human friend Pat, Buddy’s dog friends, and various other folks who are brought in to service whatever the gag of the page is. But in this simple set-up with a limited cast and a single page to play with in most cases, Cazenove and Bastide manage to work some wonderful magic, giving us gag after gag with perfect comic timing from words and art, Bastide’s control of the action and facial expressions in perfect synchrony with Cazenove’s plotting and execution of the gag.

And the best way I know of to share just how good these Billy & Buddy strips are is to show you just a few examples of what it is that makes them so very good.

Let’s start with the musical theme of the current volume, a very loose theme but one writer and artist return to throughout. It all begins with Billy wanting a flute. I briefly showed you this one in the preview but it’s worth showing you more and breaking it down more to illustrate just how clever, how good this is.

Anyway, Dad being Dad, he decides that no, he will not be buying a flute, not when he can make one…

Then of course we get the other part of Dad being Dad, where everything he tries inevitably goes wrong, first with a splinter and then, perfectly, a set of three panels that are everything that makes Billy & Buddy not just funny but so clever in it’s simplicity…

The sound effects coming from off panel, dad’s running commentary, punctuated with ‘Ouch’ and ‘Yowch’, but best of all is the way Billly and Buddy just stand there waiting – the look Billy gives Buddy in panel two is just a wonderful little touch.

And then of course we have the final two panels and the payoff to the gag here. That first panel, with dad being so proud of himself for teaching his son a life lesson is the setup here, with the bandages that have appeared on the fingers perhaps not something you’d immediately notice. But then we have that final panel and the end of it all, not just with Billy managing to deflate dad’s ego yet again but with dad standing there to make it obvious to all the trouble he’s caused himself…

 

A simple one-page gag strip? Not a bit of it. The work writer and artist have put in there is sublime, the timing is perfection, the facial expressions just so, the clever use of having the action go on off-panel making things all the funnier.

Another? Well, if you insist. Let’s keep with the musical theme shall we? A little later on we have Billy’s dad up in the attic hunting down his old Bodega, sort of like bagpipes. It’s a simple eight-panel page, two panels per tier, with the first four just all about setting up things once more, with Buddy complaining (in his thoughts) about the stink coming from the old chest dad’s opened.

Then we get two panels of Billy wondering just what sound the Bodega will make – a ‘Veeeeeeee’ or maybe more a ‘Weeeeeeeeeuwwwwww’ or a ‘Aehhuwwwwwwwww.’ Except that’s not the important part of those panels. No, the important part, the one-two punch of the gag here is to be seen with Buddy gently pushing the lid of the trunk closed with one ear whilst covering his nose with the other…

All of which leads to the next panel and a gorgeous bit of silent comedy from dad as the lid slams down on his hand. The little ‘gulp’ sound effect, the much larger ‘VLAM’ of the lid slamming down, but best of all the way dad’s trying to hold the scream in – as his hair shoots up and his cheeks fill with the pain of it all – so very good…

And if that was a one-two gag across those two panels, there’s a three in the next, with dad letting loose in cartoon perfection – the scream, the wide open mouth, the redness, and the always funny, always recognisable way lines of the hand to show just what he’s going through…

But we’re not done yet, Cazenove has a final panel to undercut what’s gone before with mom entering the scene and delivering the perfect word gag, all the while with Bastide’s art showing us the results – and Billy sneaking out, with an innocent whistle coming from him.

 

Again, it’s all so simple, a standard pratfall gag, but it’s done with so much style and energy from both writer and artist that it’s just flies.

How about another? Completely different structure here with this page – with the first three tiers just giving us six panels of pure set-up, as Billy, Buddy, Pat, and Caroline forming a very unlikely 22nd US Cavalry…

Again, so much to enjoy here – the writer and artist asking you to simply ignore the questions you might have of how they got the uniforms, how they got Buddy and Caroline to play along, just to go with it as any child reading this would.

But it’s all in service of the final panel and the payoff, as the gang give us their verdict on Billy’s carefully thought-out plan…

 

And finally, although I could keep going with this for so long, here’s another musical strip for you to enjoy. I won’t break it down too much, you surely get the idea by now. I’ll just point to mom and dad’s pained faces in panels 1 and 2, the innocent hopefulness of Billy’s face compared to mom and dad’s decidedly fed-up faces at being forced to put up with what you feel has been a very long flute recital and the surprise in panel four…

All of which leads to Bastide using four panels worth of space for a big single-panel payoff to this one…

Again, so much to laugh at in there, the facial expressions simply perfect, the idea behind it, of Billy rounding up the neighbourhood to support his little boy master, so ridiculous but so heartwarming – it all just works.

And thinking about it, ridiculous and heartwarming is as good a summary of Billy & Buddy as I can give you. Yes, it’s so simple on the surface but there’s a whole load of very clever work going on from both writer and artist to both make it look this simple whilst also giving us so much comedic depth.

 

Billy & Buddy 9 – Symphony In Buddy Major
Written by Christophe Cazenove

Illustrated by Jean Bastide in the style of Roba

Colours by Luc Perdriset and Jean Bastide

Translated by Jerome Saincantin.

Out now from Cinebook