Photo Gallery Comics and Killers
An attack on Western values and freedom: The deaths of 12 people in a terrorist attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo outraged people around the world. In Lille, France, protesters gathering on Wednesday held up signs featuring a selection of the magazine's most controversial covers.
The cartoonists killed in Wednesday's terrorist attack against French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo gave voice to both desires and anger and they represented the best side of French culture: argumentative, vivacious, diabolic and warm hearted. Stéphane Charbonnier was the magazine's editor in chief. "I would rather die standing than live on my knees," the cartoonist, aka Charb, had been quoted as saying.
In an eerie coincidence, the final cartoon Charb published on the day of his death showed a mockingly caricatured jihadist, heavily armed, with the caption: "There still hasn't been an attack in France. Just wait, we still have until the end of January to send New Year's greetings."
Also among those killed was Jean Cabut, aka Cabu. Few other countries in the world have a cartoon culture as rich as France, with its insatiable appetite for comics, or Bandes dessinées, as they are called. It's a culture that expresses an incredible understanding of humor -- be its aim contemptuous or educational, exclusionary or inclusive. It was a constant process, one called the freedom of opinion.
Georges Wolinski, 80, like Cabu, belonged to the first generation at Charlie Hebdo. He was a figure cast in the mold of the 1960s. He was hedonistic, libertarian, anarchic and cheerful -- a man who opposed censorship, racism, the war in Algeria, de Gaulle and narrow-minded and dull Catholic France.
Bernard Varlhac, 57, called himself Tignous and once caricatured right-wing populist French politician Marine Le Pen featuring a clown nose with a swastika branded on it.
His brother Chérif, the second primary suspect, also died in the standoff. Neighbors in the town where Kouachi lived said they were shocked he had been involved in the murder of 12 people. .
This week's murderous attack on Charlie Hebdo wasn't the first against the satire magazine. On November 2, 2011, the magazine's former offices, which it had only just moved into, were firebombed.
The 2011 attack happened on the same day a special issue of the magazine hit the newsstands. It featured a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad on its cover along with, "Charia Hebdo," a play on the original French name meaning "Sharia Weekly". It featured the caption: "One hundred lashes of the whip if this doesn't make you die laughing."
French President François Hollande visited the site of the massacre shortly after the killings on Wednesday. The crisis was so dramatic in France that Hollande even invited his political nemesis, ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, and right-wing populist leader Marine Le Pen to his offices for meetings. Sarkozy said of the attacks, "This isn't just about democracy. It's about civilization."
