According to news agencies, the disaster, which was triggered by an avalanche and rock slide in the Himalayas, has claimed at least 1,400 lives. More than 6,000 people are still missing.
The comic artist Cosey draws heavily on his own experiences in the region and the people he has met there for his stories. The disaster was “actually no surprise” to him, he told Keystone-SDA, having last traveled through the area between Tibet and Nepal in 2019. In eastern Tibet, he had personally witnessed landslides and collapsed roads.
Cosey, born Bernard Cosendai in Lausanne in 1950, created the character Jonathan and the comic series of the same name for the Belgian magazine *Tintin* in 1975. The hero, a young Swiss man from the Vaud Alps, explores the Himalayas in adventures that soon brought the comic artist fame. A year later, in 1976, Cosey himself traveled to the high-mountain regions for the first time.
During his visits over the years, he has noticed signs of climate change, particularly the thawing of the permafrost, which is destabilizing the slopes. “There are more and more rockfalls, and mountain roads are collapsing or being washed away,” he observed.
The artist also recalls his visits to Ladakh—the first in 1976, and then again in 2017. Above all, he observed a social transformation there that went hand in hand with the development of tourism. At the time of his first visit, he says he encountered only two or three other travelers there.
His view of the mountains is strongly shaped by daily life in the Vaud Alps, where he lives. As he explains, he closely monitors the retreat of the Trient and Diablerets glaciers. When asked about a possible commitment to environmental causes, he says he doesn’t think much of political labels, but emphasizes that a connection to nature and respect for the environment are ultimately in people’s own best interest.
Tibet appears repeatedly in Cosey’s comics, though he draws a distinction between personal experience and fiction. After all, as a Swiss citizen, he did not suffer under Chinese rule. He says, however, that he has witnessed the suffering: “Tibet is an occupied country.”
Cosey also explores this theme in *”The One Who Leads the Rivers to the Sea”* (“Celui qui mène les fleuves à la mer”), in which he reunites with his hero Jonathan in 1997 after a long hiatus. Inspired by people he met on his travels to Tibet, this twelfth volume of the “Jonathan” series tells the story of the fate of the Tibetan people and denounces the Chinese occupation.
The comic artist is currently working on a new volume, which is scheduled for 2028 and is expected to be about 90 pages long. He is handling the research, the storyline, the artwork, and the coloring himself. The mountains will also play an important role in it. After dedicating a large part of his career to the “Jonathan” series, he is now focusing primarily on standalone stories. He therefore announces that his next comic will be a “completely different” work.
