Firmin Aristophane Boulon (published as Aristophane, the French name of Aristophanes) was a Guadeloupe-born cartoonist. A graduate of the French schools École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and the European School of Visual Arts, he began work "preoccupied with evil and frailty as viewed through the lives of demons and mythological creatures."[1]
His first work to receive attention was his 300-page graphic novel Conté Demoniaque ("Demonic Tale"): an epic set in hell inspired by Dante's Inferno, Paradise Lost, the philosophy of Max Stirner and the artist Gustave Doré.[2] 50 of its pages were exhibited in the "Angels and Demons" during the 1994 Angoulême comics festival in the Centre National de la Bande Dessinée et de l’Image.[3][4]
Sometime during 1998 Aristophane suffered a domestic accident that left him severely burned on the face and hands,[4] he was hospitalised in Nantes.[5] Following this accident he burned all the original art of his breakthrough work Conté Demoniaque and Faune, which he considered blasphemous after converting to Hinduism.[4][6] His last published work during his lifetime was the story "La Sentinelle" ("The Sentinel") in Ego Comme X no. 6 in 1999.[7]
His 1996 graphic novel, Les sœurs Zabîme, is about children in Guadeloupe and considered a "small masterpiece."[1] It was his final completed major work.
In school he had been told, "In painting, everything has been explored. The future belongs to comics."[8][6][9]
Works
Short works and Faune in Lapin no. 2, 4-5, 8-9 and 11 (1992-1996)[10]
