Serg
Gallery
Esther Verkest Duchateau’s best known series is ‘Esther Verkest’, which debuted on 27 September 2000 in P-Magazine. Created as a parody of other female comic characters, Esther is a sexy red-haired heroine, often appearing nude or having sex. Since P-Magazine was a men’s magazine, she was designed as a pin-up, but otherwise she is far from a passive sex object. More than that, Esther is arrogant, commits adultery and always wins in the end. Most of all, she is the perfect excuse to create the absurd comedy Duchateau craves. Stumbling upon the comic under the impression that it’s an erotic comic, readers quickly discover that jokes are weird and not sexy at all. Esther lives in an absurd world full of freaks, disturbing fairy tale characters and gnomes. Duchateau originally intended these gnomes to appear only for a few episodes, but at the request of his editors he kept them as a running gag, and they became part of his signature style.
The infamous ‘Esther Verkest’ island gag that became an Internet meme.
Compilations Oogachtend has released several collections with Kim’s work, starting with ‘Unne en andere vingerkrampen’ in 1999. This was followed by several other books, including ‘Uitzonderlijk Zwaar Vervoer’ (2001, which had a foreword by ), ‘De Vlucht van de Kloothommel’ (2003), ‘Herman, de Lichtrode Ridder’ (2003, a gay parody of ‘s ‘De Rode Ridder’, drawn by ), and the ‘Esther Verkest’ series. In 2009, Oogachtend released Kim’s first full-length comic book, the pantomime and black-and-white ‘Antisol’, a tragicomical story about the sun turing into the Antichrist. Under its Matsuoka imprint, Ballon Comics released Kim’s ‘Tinderstruck!’ (2017), an absurd social satire/surrealist self-help book on love and sex in the days of online dating.
Recognition Kim’s book ‘Esther Verkest Deel 3 – Van de Hak op de Tak’ won the 2006 Stripschapspenning (“Stripschap Badge”) for “‘Best Adventure and/or Entertainment Comic”. In 2007, he won the Bronzen Adhemar, the most prestigious Belgian comic award. In 2020, Duchateau received the second prize during the Press Cartoon Belgium Festival in Knokke-Heist for one of his BRUZZ cartoons. The drawing shows the Ministry of Migration using an image of genocidal Belgian king Leopold II to scare off potential immigrants.
Cartoon depicting four possible people who’d like to stick their hand inside Kim’s character Esther Verkest’s bra. The first one is Jos Ghysen, a Flemish radio host who in 2012 was accused of having sexually harrassed his secretary in the 1970s. The second Walter Capiau, a former Flemish radio and TV host, who in the same year confessed molesting boy scouts in the 1960s. The third person is N-VA politician Pol Van Den Driessche who in 2010 was also accused of sexual intimidation. The final caption of potential bra grabbers reads “Jullie allemaal” (“All of you”).
