{"id":11516,"date":"2026-03-23T14:52:03","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=11516"},"modified":"2026-03-23T14:59:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T19:59:29","slug":"hermann-1938-2026-sarajevo-tango-comicaday-70","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2026\/03\/23\/hermann-1938-2026-sarajevo-tango-comicaday-70\/","title":{"rendered":"Hermann (1938 – 2026) — Sarajevo Tango \u2014 #ComicaDay (70)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nHermann Huppen passed away yesterday<\/a>, aged 87, one of the giants of Belgian and European comics. Sarajevo Tango<\/cite> is not his best, but it is his angriest book.\n<\/p>\n

\"Sarajevo<\/p>\n

\nSarajevo Tango<\/cite> is the sort of realistic adventure story that Hermann made his career from. Svonko Duprez, a half-Yugoslav, half French cynical mercenary is hired to rescue the daughter of a wealthy woman from Sarajevo. It’s sometime in the early nineties, the civil wars in Yugoslavia have begun and the city is under siege by Bosnian Serbs. Hard enough to find one little girl when sniper fire and mortar bombardment could kill you at any time, but Svonko will also have to deal with the girl’s father who wants to keep her in the city. Worse, there’s a murderer hired by her mother’s new husband keen to prevent the daughter from coming home as well.\n<\/p>\n

\nSvonko is a typical Hermann protagonist: middle aged, world weary, who has only taken this assignment because he’s paid for it, yet is still honest enough to keep his promises. Despite all the dangers, the girl is safely reunited with her mother but Svonko himself doesn’t return from Sarajevo.\n<\/p>\n

\"Through<\/p>\n

\nAt first glance this may seen like just another torn from the headlines setting to give a bit of weight to a fairly standard adventure story, as Hermann had done before and after Sarajevo Tango<\/cite>. What sets it apart is his anger. Throughout the story we get vignettes like this, a glimpse at the daily horrors the inhabitants of Sarajevo had to deal with during the siege. These aren’t commented on by the characters, they just happen as the story unfolds. Hermann was only six years old as World War II ended, but he grew up in the shadow of it, the “never again” as the horrors of the war and especially the Holocaust became known. Yet here we were, four decades on and once again a genocidal war was fought in Europe and once again the so-called civilised world seemed powerless to stop it.\n<\/p>\n

\"Lord<\/p>\n

\nHermann’s anger is also shown in his depictions of the UN peacekeepers, as blue helmeted smurfs, with negotiator Lord Owens and UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali dancing the tango, “a tune from the good old days, 1938” in corpse strewn ballroom. A few pages further a giant wagging finger, courtesy of Boutros-Ghali floats over the city: “maybe this time it’ll last”, but it is deflating by the next panel. It’s not just the horror and revulsion of seeing the world powerless to stop this re-enactment of Europe’s darkest days that drives this satire, it’s also a personal anger that powered Hermann here.\n<\/p>\n

\nBecause caught up in this horror was his agent and close personal friend, Ervin Rustemagic, who ran Strip Art Feature, a comics publisher and agency, which had its offices in Sarejevo. Rustemagic mother was murdered by Bosnian Serbs together with the rest of her old peoples’ home in the early days of the war, while artillery bombardments destroyed the Strip Art Feature offices, destroying some 14,000 pages of original art in the process. It was Hermann’s failed attempts to get him and his family to safety that helped inspire Sarajevo Tango<\/cite>. Joe Kubert, who was also part of Rustemagic’s agency too would write about his ordeal that same year, in Fax from Sarajevo<\/cite>, which tells the story of life during the siege and how Rustemagic and his family managed to escape to Slovenia.\n<\/p>\n

\nAs a story, Sarajevo Tango<\/cite> is a bit mismatched, the fairly standard adventure plot is too slick, not matching the anger of everything else in it. As with Kubert’s similar attempt to come to grips with it, you get the feeling Hermann’s instincts as a commercial artist get in the way of the anger he wants to convey to you. Nevertheless, Sarejevo Tango<\/cite> stands as a testament to his character, to his ability to transform that helpless anger into something positive, no matter how flawed. Three decades on, it at least gives a good accounting of Hermann the artist as well as Hermann the person behind the artist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hermann Huppen passed away yesterday, aged 87, one of the giants of Belgian and European comics. Sarajevo Tango is not his best, but it is his angriest book. Sarajevo Tango is the sort of realistic adventure story that Hermann made his career from. Svonko Duprez, a half-Yugoslav, half French cynical mercenary is hired to rescue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11516"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11526,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11516\/revisions\/11526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}