photo: Bogdan Iordache, Cultura la Dubă
In 1959, a 4 year old boy from Bucharest, living in a part of the city with nice houses, between Popa Nan and Hala Traian, decided to leave home and go searching for Pif, the famous comic book dog.
He had discovered the Pif universe in the Vaillant magazines, that an aunt had given to his older brother. From that moment on, he has dedicated his life to his passion for comics.
“Being impressed by this magazine, very beautifully colored and big, I badly wanted to go to Paris and meet the characters in real life, because I really believed that they existed.
I packed a small suitcase in which I managed to put a pillow and a blanket. I put on a nice velvet suit, with bloomers and suspenders, I was proud of myself and had a clear plan, to take the bus to the train station and then take a train to Paris.
I was found by an aunt on the street and taken back home”
Mircea Arapu/ photo: Bogdan Iordache, Cultura la dubă
That is how Mircea Arapu’s story begins, now 68 years old. He lives in Paris for more that 40 years and is a French citizen. He met us in Saint-Michel, a neighbourhood dear to him ever since arriving in the French capital.
He is one of the most well-known Romanian comic book creators, and his career is tightly bound to the history of Pif Gadget, where he has published more than 30 episodes of Arthur, the crime fighting ghost and others with Pif and Hercule, or Placid and Muzo.
Already a fan of the Vaillant magazine, at 8 he discovered Pif at a friend from the street.
“The characters were the same, but the magazine was different, it was smaller. I found out that I could buy more issues at an old book store and I went immediately and bought them. I would read up to 20 issues a week and at some point I realized that I had started thinking in French.”
Along with his love for the Pif universe, he discovered his passion for drawing. In high-school, with other colleagues, he made his own comic magazines. He then tried his luck at a contest in the Cutezătorii magazine, along with other Romanian illustrators, and the creator of Pif, Cabrero Arnal was in the jury. Although he only got a mention at the contest, it gave him the courage to continue on that path.
He created a board with his own comic strips and proposed it to the Cutezătorii magazine, but got rejected. Then he planned to get into the Plastic Arts Faculty and prepared for admission with the painter Zamfir Dumitrescu, a former student of Corneliu Baba.
He was rejected 6 times and gave up on the idea of college, but not his desire to draw.
That’s how he followed his dream in Paris, where he migrated in 1978 along with his family, leaving with one of the last Orient Express trains, exactly like his childhood plan.
“My first memory from Paris in Gare d’Est, where I saw Pif at a news stand, but my first more serious memories are from Saint Michel, where I would walk around a lot. I liked it because there were many book stores specialised in comics.”
In 1980, along with other Romanians who shared his passion – Sorin Anghel, Valentin Tănase, Traian Marinescu – he published the first issue of „Peur”, the first comic magazine with Romanian authors, edited in French. That got him the invitation to show his original boards at the International Festival in Angoulême and at Maison des Artistes – Paris.
Mircea Arapu then wrote the chapter on Romania in the History of The Comic Book.
And his path led, naturally, to to Pif Gadget magazine.
“I went to the editorial office of Pif with a catalogue of drawings, to show them what I could do and they proposed that I started working in a big team of illustrators that were only doing Pif, the main character. I refused to be lost in a sea of different illustrators and started working on Arthur, the ghost, which was very complicated. At first it was difficult, for 6 months I drew unpaid, just to practise.
I worked at Pif from 1981 until 1988, when the magazine wasn’t doing very well, and I had to find work somewhere else, because I had to pay my apartment. That is how I ended up working in advertising.”
Even in advertising he used his passion for drawing and tried to pitch comic strips to clients.
Then, in 2005 and 2009 he returned to Pif, and he is presently at his third collaboration with the magazine. More than that, this year he was invited to do an anniversary album, on Pif’s 75th birthday, and has won the contest launched by the French Post to draw a special stamp with Pif.
“The new director of the magazine looked me up, precisely because he liked my initial drawing of Pif. Then, for the stamp, I used a strip. I think it was a world premiere, to have a comic strip on a stamp.”
Looking back, Mircea Arapu wouldn’t change anything in the destiny that brought him here. He speaks about comics as passionately as he did as a child and continues to spend his time drawing.
Given all the refusals that he hit in his youth, his story seems to be the perfect example of perseverance in reaching your goal, eventually leads to success.
In Romania he collaborates with the magazine Fabulafia, where, since 2019, he is drawing a comic series for children aged 8 to 10, called Enciclo-pe-tub, educational adventures of Oana and Brazil, who are vloggers.
In Paris he continues to walk the streets next to Saint Michel boulevard, in search of the charm that he discovered in his youth. He sadly finds that many of the bookstores that he knew have since become banks or shops.
“Given my desire to draw and to pursue this career, I am sure that I would have made it in Romania, but there weren’t as many magazines, the same competition. During communism, comic artists were very few and very well paid in Romania, but controlled by the party. With the money they earned they could buy a Dacia.
That wasn’t the case here. I wanted to do this work so that I could develop my drawing skills. Drawing was what I did best and as I worked more, I could draw better.”
-What kept you in this passion this whole time?
-The belief that if you like it, there are chances that someone else will like it. In the same time, I noticed that drawing has always kept me on the surface, whatever I did, drawing has been a constant in my life.”
***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.
