Gilles Bertin’s extraordinary fate, a punk figure of the 1980s, retraced in a comic strip – RTS.CH

With Camera Silens. Meanwhile, the French punk group he created in 1981, Gilles Bertin (1961-2019) oscillates between turbulent concerts, rock springboard and small combins. For example, Until the day he spoke nearly 12 million francs to the Deposit of the Brink’s, a fundraising company. Furthermore, His accomplices are quickly caught up, but Gilles manages to escape by passing the Pyrenees. However, A run of several decades begins then.

Uncompromising in the 1980s, Gilles Bertin published a successful autobiography, “Thirty years of Cavale”. Therefore, Adaptation in comics of this one. Therefore, “the heroes of the people are immortal” relates gilles bertin’s extraordinary fate, punk their journey in the form of redemption since the years Punk and AIDS, as well as his run until this day of 2016 when he leaves Spain, where he lives with woman and children, to go to the police.

For the love of punk – Gilles bertin's extraordinary fate, punk

Author and press designer, we owe to Stéphane Oiry “Les Passe-Murailles”, “Pauline and Les Loups-Garous” or the series “Maggy Garrisson”. In addition, If he decides to devote a comic book to Gilles Bertin. it is because it is important for him to talk about punk. “Nothing has gilles bertin’s extraordinary fate, punk ever been the same again from the moment when I started to listen to this music. I was looking for a subject that would allow me to restore this era. this musical current,” he said in the Vertigo show on June 26.

One day. Stéphane Oory comes across a France Culture radio program telling the story of Gilles Bertin’s rider: “He was still alive and he was himself who testified to his run. Listening to this show. I was seized by this voice because I was listening to Camera Silens when I was gilles bertin’s extraordinary fate, punk a teenager, and I was still in mind a fairly rawful voice. Dignity. and this story touched me “.

At the end of the biography of Gilles Bertin in 2019. Stéphane Oory rushes into bookstores and reads the work in a single go. Immediately after. the author contacts him via social networks to tell him that he wishes to do a comic strip in his story.

A stabbing

Gilles Bertin welcomes the project with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, before they can meet, Bertin sinks into a coma from which he will not come out. In “The heroes of the people are immortal”. the author is silent the-bracket, a narrative spring which allows him to question him in a sort of conversation, but also to express his own emotions in the face of the extraordinary situations which mark out the destiny of Gilles Bertin.

The comic book recounts the beginnings of the Camera Silens group. the gilles bertin’s extraordinary fate, punk drugs devouring, the crimes, the flights and, in 1988, the robbery. Described as a gang very well organized by the media of the time. Stéphane Oory tells a different story: that of a nickel -plated feet with uniforms found in flea: “They don’t even really have weapons, so surprisingly, it works, but it works in the cheek. And that is very punk”.

A man like everyone else

This robbery will mark the end of camera Silens. During his run, Gilles Bertin became “Monsieur Tout-le-Monde”. “He will even start a family. So we are far from the image of punk,” says Stéphane Oory.

When Gilles Bertin goes. after thirty years of run, it was to find his identity and for his son, because he did gilles bertin’s extraordinary fate, punk not want to impose this life for him. From Spain, the man goes to the French police, on foot. It is on this episode of life that “the heroes of the people are immortal” ends “.

Interview by Anne Laure Gannac

Web adaptation: Lara Donnet

Stéphane Oory, “The heroes of the people are immortal”, Dargaud. May 2025.