Philémon #15

History

The story behind Le Diable du peintre begins in the mid-1980s, when Fred — already the Grand Prix de la Ville d'Angoulême laureate of 1980 — returned to his most celebrated character after a pause. Unlike every other Philémon adventure, its opening episodes were serialized in Charlie Mensuel rather than Pilote, reflecting the turbulent restructuring of the French BD press in that period; the serialization then continued in Pilote & Charlie in 1986. The story was first collected in album form (under the original pre-renumbering numbering of the series) in 1987 by Dargaud; the 2004 edition that carries the 'tome 15' designation is the post-renumbering reissue, the series having been reshuffled when the prequel volume Avant la Lettre — originally published as tome 11 — was promoted to the front of the catalogue in the 1980s, pushing all subsequent numbers forward. Fred (born Frédéric Othon Théodore Aristidès, 5 March 1931, Paris; died 2 April 2013, Eaubonne) wrote and drew the entire Philémon corpus solo, as he had insisted on doing since René Goscinny championed him at Pilote over the objections of early readers who found his raw, hatching-heavy line unconventional.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Full title: Philémon – Tome 15 : Le Diable du peintre. Written and drawn by Fred (Frédéric Othon Théodore Aristidès). Published by Dargaud, March 2004. ISBN 978-2-205-05518-4.
• The story was originally serialized in Charlie Mensuel (1985) and Pilote & Charlie (1985–1986) — making it the only Philémon adventure not to debut in Pilote or one of its direct spin-offs. It was first collected in album form by Dargaud in 1987.
• The '2004 tome 15' designation is a product of the series' renumbering: when the prequel volume Avant la Lettre (originally tome 11, published 1978) was repositioned as the opening volume of the series in the 1980s, all subsequent volumes were renumbered accordingly.
• Narrative context: the album picks up directly from the preceding volume, in which Barthélémy had been trapped as a two-dimensional image inside a painting. In Le Diable du peintre, Philémon, Félicien, and Hector encounter a forest painter whose canvases are mysteriously invaded by Barthélémy's likeness, opening a portal back into the letter-islands of the Atlantic.
• Central plot device: a 'third-class demon' and a painter who may have sold his soul for talent serve as Fred's vehicle for a sustained allegorical exploration of artistic inspiration, with color itself treated as a protagonist — observers noted that hues shift systematically to signal different realms and emotional registers.
• The album functioned as the de facto conclusion of the Philémon saga for approximately 17 years (original 1987 publication to the announcement and eventual release of the true final volume, Le Train où vont les choses, in February 2013).
• Fred received the Grand Prix de la Ville d'Angoulême in 1980 and the Alph'Art du meilleur album in 1994, making him one of the very few creators in Francophone BD history to hold both distinctions. A 200-page biography, L'Histoire d'un conteur éclectique (Dargaud, 2011, authored by Marie-Ange Guillaume), and a major Angoulême retrospective in January 2012 helped anchor Le Diable du peintre within renewed critical appreciation of the full Philémon corpus.
• In 2011, Dargaud reissued the complete 15-episode run (as it then stood) in a three-volume integrale, with Le Diable du peintre forming the closing chapter of that edition. A digital/ePub edition was subsequently released by Dargaud (February 2013, EAN 9782205163438).