French Comics Creator François Corteggiani Passes Away, Aged 69

François Corteggiani was a prodigious French comedian e book author, editor and artist who studied artwork, and labored in promoting and illustration earlier than creating his first comedian in 1974 for SEPP, drawing over a thousand pages for the Lyon writer, after which Mucheroum for Spirou journal. Along with Michel Motti, he drew the BD comedian Pif le chien for the longstanding Pif Gadget comedian e book anthology in addition to creating Disney comedian e book tales for Le Journal de Mickey, writing over 1500 tales for the writer since 1984.

François Corteggiani additionally write many historic comedian books together with Silence et de Sang with Marc Malès, and after the loss of life of Jean-Michel Charlier in 1989, he was chosen to proceed writing the Young Blueberry comedian e book tales with Colin Wilson and Michel Blanc-Dumont for Novedi and Dargaud. And for Soleil Productions, created quite a lot of new sequence together with the  comparable to L’Horus de Nékhen, L’Archer Blanc, Yakuza, Saïto, Les Ombres de la Lagune and aviation western Thunderhawks, along with his Young Blueberry artist Colin Wilson, in addition to Crin Blanc, Tatiana Ok, Les Bonheurs d’Agathe, Raimond le Carthare, Simon Nian and Francis Falko for different publishers.

François Corteggiani was made editor-in-chief of the relaunched Pif Gadget journal in 2004, created many new Pif tales for the journal, and labored on quite a lot of tales for the comedian writer. In 2015, he was convicted for having caricatured Hervé de Lépinau, a lawyer and native consultant of the National Front occasion, as a rabbit, after a satirical newspaper was printed and distributed domestically – solely 85 copies –  two days earlier than the municipal election. Supported by Charlie Hebdo and L’Humanité, he was fined 7500 Euros for breaching electoral regulation. He died on the finish of September the day after his 69th birthday.

Jean-Marc Lofficier of Hexagon Comics tells me “Somewhat unfairly, the only story of his published in English, as far as I know. the return of the Bronze Gladiator, was published by Hexagon Comics and translated by yours truly for our Strangers 0: Omens & Origins collection. François wrote that story in the early 2000s, but I had met him a few years before when he had more than capably stepped into the late, great Jean-Michel Charlier’s shoes to pen the continuation of the Young Blueberry series, illustrated first by Colin Wilson, then Michel Blanc-Dumont. I confess I don’t know if I would have dared to tackle such a challenge, and I’m 100% certain that not only did François do a much better job than I would have done, but he did it better than virtually any other writer I can think of. For Hexagon Comics, François also wrote a few Zemblas, but his favorite series of mine was when he took over Gallix with artist Cebe, and crafted a truly wonderful epic story. Gallix being in effect a dead serious Asterix without the magic portion, that wasn’t such an easy job either, and he pulled it off remarkably. You can — should — check François’ vast bibliography on Wikipedia, it is an amazing and prodigious list. He was also a very funny writer and a talented cartoonist. In 2015, he even got into trouble for writing and drawing a vitriolic strip about a local far-right politico. Bold, brave, funny, prolific, a born storyteller, François will be greatly missed by everyone in the French comics industry.”