Inspector Canardo
| Inspector Canardo | |
|---|---|
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Casterman |
| Format | Graphic Novel |
| Publication date | 1979 |
| Number of issues | 19 |
| Main character(s) | 1 (Inspector Canardo) |
| Creative team | |
| Writer(s) | Benoît Sokal |
| Artist(s) | Benoît Sokal |
Inspector Canardo is a comics series created by the Belgian artist Benoît Sokal. He was named after the French noun canard, which means "duck" or "drake".
Sokal created the character Inspector Canardo after graduating from Institut Saint-Luc, at the age of 20. He first drew his comics for the magazine À Suivre but after the comic became popular, they were published as albums by Casterman.
The eponymous character and the protagonist of the series, Canardo is an anthropomorphic duck who has a career as a private investigator. While he is seldom seen on paid assignments, he tends to end up in dangerous situations everywhere. He is also often used as a pawn in bigger schemes because of his expendability. He suffers from severe personal problems, including vast consumption of beer to forget the unfortunate events he has gone through. While Canardo is quite skilled both in armed and unarmed combat, he is more of an everyman than a traditional hero.
Interestingly, Canardo has died, at least seemingly, several times. Most of these happen in the comics written for À Suivre. In the first incident, Canardo is about to be lynched by an angry crowd when he falls in a pit filled with urine, where he supposedly drowns. In the next comic, he is alive and well. Later, he is shot to death after being tricked by Clara. Canardo jokingly refers to this incident in the next comic, claiming that the "blood" was actually tomato sauce. In the last short comic, Canardo commits suicide, although this presumably happens chronologically after all other adventures. In the album La Fille qui rêvait d'horizon (1999), Canardo's Cadillac collides with Rasputin's motorbike, causing an explosion that is implied to have killed both Canardo and Rasputin.
One of the first recurring characters in the series, Clara is a femme fatale whose lust for power has led her to do extreme things. In her first appearance, she uses Canardo to kill a mobster cat named Fritz, resulting in Canardo being shot. Despite the hostility between the two, they apparently have romantic feelings for each other, although this is less evident in Clara's later appearances. Like Canardo, Clara has survived several evident deaths.
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Wikipedia