Until recently, Randall Casaer seemed to be one of Belgium’s best kept secrets. He is an excellent illustrator and cartoonist, a wonderfully poetic humorist, and he coaches acclaimed comedians amongst which Wim Helsen and Wouter Deprez. The press release for Slaapkoppen reads: ‘Randall Casaer (1967) would love to live like people say he draws comics – dashing, consummate, nimble, poetic, funny, deceptively simple, searching for sorcery and full of compassion. His illustrations appeared in a.o. Humo and De Standaard. He won a handful of important awards as coach and director of top comedians.’ But what I admire most about him is that he is kind to a fault and – I hope he’ll forgive me this archaic description – a truly upstanding man.
Scene from ‘Sleepyheads’ – Hunger in my eyes and hunger in my members.
I met Randall at KASK, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Gent, where we both followed Applied Arts (everything from product design to illustration to graphic design to art direction – there wasn’t a dedicated Graphic Design department back then). From the onset it was self-evident that he was a tremendously talented draughtsman, illustrator and cartoonist with a highly original voice. His art was imbued with an undeniable poetry and a liberating, slightly absurd sense of humour. I remember spending one evening with my younger brother, flipping through Randall’s sketchbook and bursting with laughter at the wacky drawings and delicious word-play. By the last pages we were literally on the floor, tears running down our cheeks.
Upon graduating Randall and I kept in touch, occasionally recommending each other to our clients whenever I could use cartoons or illustrations or he needed some graphic design or typography. After a couple of years Randall branched off into comedy, putting to good use his imaginative and poetic sense of humour. In 1998 he formed Vrolijk België with Wim Helsen and that same year they won the jury award in the bi-annual Humorologie competition. After two-and-a-half years the duo disbanded, but Randall continued to work with Wim Helsen as co-writer and director of his shows. In 2004 Wim Helsen won Neerlands Hoop, the Dutch cabaret award for the most impressive performance of the season. Randall also started directing and coaching a number of successful comedians like Wouter Deprez – winner of the jury, audience and press awards at the 2000 edition of Humorologie and winner of the Humo Comedy Cup 2003 and the jury award for the Amsterdams Kleinkunst Festival 2004 – and Begijn Le Bleu – winner of the jury and audience award at the Cameretten cabaret festival 2005.
Scene from ‘Sleepyheads’ – Let’s use only verbs today, shall we?
All this time Randall kept drawing cartoons and illustrations for a variety of clients and publications. Yet, deep inside he had known since he was a little kid that he was destined to be a comic artist. He warned his childhood sweethearts at primary school that they would always come second, because comics were his true love. One day about two years ago Randall eventually started doodling in the corner of a page. That doodle evolved into a drawing, the drawing into a panel, the panel into a full page, and slowly but steadily a graphic novel started to take shape. Randall faced the life of a hermit and earlier this month Slaapkoppen – ‘Sleepyheads’ – his highly-anticipated* first graphic novel was finally released.
* Slaapkoppen was listed in quality newspaper De Standaard as one of the thirty most anticipated cultural expressions to be expected in 2007.
The 112 page graphic novel is an Alice in Wonderland-like trip, a road movie full of poetry, absurd humour, philosophical musings and good old-fashioned action and adventure. The summary on the back reads:
‘You know what I dread the most in the whole wide world? That I would accidentally end up in a dream so deep and so well documented that I would believe it to be reality.
And then I would go to sleep in this dream, and dream again, and take a nap in this new dream too.
And so on a couple of more times, until I lose count after a while, so from then on when I wake up I won’t be able to tell ever again what is true (and what is fiction).’
Don’t expect a straight-forward, cookie-cutter story. You might sometimes get lost along the way, but you’re guaranteed to have a wonderful time losing yourself in the wondrous universe spawn from Randall’s rich imagination. The sumptuous drawings are vibrant and full of life, as they all are ‘first takes’. Instead of sketching, refining and inking his drawings to death, Randall prefers to – whenever necessary – redo his drawings from scratch to retain their freshness. The digital colouring works with beautiful monochrome – but certainly not monotonous – schemes that differentiate the chapters and settings. All this amounts to an engrossing reading experience, a graphic novel that invites to be revisited time after time.
Scene from ‘Sleepyheads’ – And, comrade? What now?
To paraphrase the two Russian comrades from Sleepyheads – ‘And, comrade? What now?’ I’m persuaded this graphic novel deserves to be translated, definitely in French and possibly in English, so it can reach a wider audience. I hope the publishers take note of the potential this truly original graphic novel shows. For now, I’m looking forward to collaborating with Randall on the typography for his next project. But that’s a story for another day...
Interview in Mezzo on Belgian national radio Radio 1, December 20th 2007
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