Soda 13 - 'Résurrection'.
Dan Verlinden, who signs with only his first name, was the longtime assistant of Tome and Janry on their gag comic 'Le Petit Spirou'. Since 2015 he is the third artist to draw Tome's crime comic 'Soda'.
Early life and career
Born in 1972 in Charleroi, Verlinden enrolled at the Art Academy in Gilly in the hope to learn the finer points of the comics profession. There he however understood that the comics workshops held by Vittorio Leonardo at the Academy of Fine Arts in Châtelet were more suitable for his needs. He finished this six-year education in three years time and saw his first comics page published in a collective album dedicated to the 20th anniversary of François Walthéry's air hostess 'Natacha' in 1990. Shortly afterwards he was hired to work in Vittorio Leonardo's coloring studio as a printing platemaker. As Leonardo was assisting Morris on his 'Lucky Luke' artwork, Verlinden had the opportunity to illustrate some 'Lucky Luke' and 'Rantanplan' displays as well.
Assistant to Tome & Janry
He was subsequently employed by Éditions Dupuis as a letterer and revisor, while also making some editorial illustrations and headers for Spirou. In 1993, he joined Tome and Janry in their atelier in Woluwé-Saint-Lambert, which was also frequented by Bruno Gazzotti and colorist Stéphane De Becker. As a test he was asked to draw one of Tome's scripts for the duo's gag series 'Le Petit Spirou', while Janry would do the same. The team-up was a match, and the young artist became the regular assistant on this gag comic about the mischievous younger years of Spirou's titular hero. He participated in the pencilling, inking and plotting until 2012. Instead of being an anonymous co-worker, Dan was credited for his contributions from the start. Whenever Dan provided the core part of the art duties, his name appeared in the credit byline before Janry's. He also inked some backgrounds in Tome and Janry's 'Spirou et Fantasio' stories 'Luna Fatale' (1995) and 'Machine qui rêve' (1998).
Soda
During the 2010s, Tome wanted to revive his hardboiled crime comic 'Soda', which had been on hiatus since 2005. Gazzotti, the series' artist, was by now however too busy with the hit series 'Seuls', so a new artist was needed. Verlinden offered his services to Tome, and the two men began working on a new episode, aptly titled 'Résurrection' (2014-2015). Verlinden maintained the dynamic action sequences of his predecessors Luc Warnant and Gazzotti, but turned to coloring the spaces between the panels black, to add to the story's dark post 9/11 theme. The first album produced by Tome and Verlinden, the thirteenth installment in the series, appeared in 2015.
Prior to cooperating on 'Soda', Verlinden and Tome created the first installment of a science fiction saga about animals, called 'Rages'. It was meant for the now defunct Cosmo collection of Éditions Dargaud, and has remained unpublished.
'Le Petit Spirou'.