Engineer by day draws by night: Who is Fabien Toulmé?

Born in 1980, the illustrator lived in different countries such as Brazil, Benin, Guyana, and France after studying engineering. After returning to France, his works were published in magazines such as "Spirou". The autobiographical graphic novel "You Wasn't What I Expected" was published in 2019. His three-volume work, "Hakim's Odyssey," was praised at comic book festivals.

Fabien Toulmé is an artist who manages to take a look at our lives through the simplest observations. While working as an engineer during the day, he drew his first comic book 'You’re Not the One I Expected' at night, made a successful entry into the publishing industry, and now continues his life by working full time on his comics.

As we can see in his own life story, his works show how important dreams and our expectations from life are.

Fabien Toulmé was born in Orléans. He studied civil engineering and urbanism. In his last year of studies in France, Fabien was able to do an interchange year, choosing the Federal University of Paraíba, in Brazil, and moved to João Pessoa. He opened an engineering firm in Fortaleza and worked as an engineer in Brazil, Benin, and the French overseas departments of French Guyana and Guadeloupe.

Born in 1980 in France, Fabien Toulmé chose to pursue his profession overseas, such as in Brazil, Benin, Guyana, and Guadeloupe, after completing his engineering education in his country. While in Brazil, where he met his wife, the contacts he established with those in the world of comics pushed him toward this field. Since 2009, when he returned to France, he publishes his drawings online and works for magazines such as Spirou.

In 2013, Toulmé began working on his first comic, when an executive from Delcourt, one of France's leading comics publishing houses, caught the attention of an executive. He completed the autobiographical story You Wasn't the One I Was Waiting for, while continuing to work as an engineer during the day, he drew at night.

Fabien Toulmé, who devoted himself entirely to comics after his success with the book You Are Not What I Expected, published his book Les Deux vies de Baudin in 2017. Toulmé's three-volume series, in which he tells the story of a Syrian refugee, made his fame spread rapidly.

Toulmé narrates the problems and road stories of millions of immigrants with all its simplicity, focusing on the journey of a Syrian young man named Hakim to escape the war.

'Hakim's Odyssey - 1 From Syria to Turkey' is a work that undertakes the responsibility of conveying the problems and road stories of millions of immigrants in all its simplicity. While doing this, he meticulously recounts what happened to a young Syrian named Hakim, without going into personal details, on his journey to escape the war. While focusing on the details of his journey, we find ourselves in a social crisis with the psychology of being a refugee.

So much so that the French artist begins to tell the story of unwanted and despised refugees in a geography like Europe, which is swarming with nationalist delusions; without escaping responsibility, without losing the courage to tell what happened. The main triggering factor that led Toulmé to this work was the hypocritical attitude of the Western public towards human tragedies.

The French artist, who did not want to be a spectator to the suffering experienced and wanted to convey the experiences as much as he could, started to work on the road stories of the refugees. Although he feared that this journey would carry all kinds of difficulties and that he would not be able to accurately convey the stories of the road woven with such intense pain, he rolled up his sleeves. It is clear from the study that he has accomplished this. When we get into Hakim's story, we come to terms with many universal problems. We witness how nationalism makes life unbearable, how capital sees refugees as cheap labor, and how the working class, who are left unemployed and whose social rights are not given by the order, increase in hate speech towards refugees.

THE PAIN OF GEOGRAPHY REFLECTED ON THE PAGES

We have all witnessed Hakim's story closely. It is the pain of this geography that is reflected on the pages. The experiences of millions of people who were displaced from their homeland as a result of war and destruction were a source of great sadness for those who did not lose their conscience. The first moment we saw the baby Aylan, the words got stuck in our throat, the word was over.

Fabien Toulmé is an emotional artist. He is a writer who likes to convey to his reader the problems he has experienced in his personal life and cannot get out of. He did just that in "You’re Not the One I Expected" In 'Hakim's Odyssey', on the other hand, he displays a sensitive and responsible attitude by addressing the common problems that not only he but also humanity does not come out of. It acts with the awareness of its responsibility to record the events without escaping the problems of our age.