François Craenhals
François Craenhals (15 November 1926 – 2 August 2004) was a Belgian comics artist best known for the comic series "Chevalier Ardent" and "Les 4 As". Biography. François Craenhals was born in Evere in 1926. He was a fan of American comics by Alex Raymond and Hal Foster, and created his first comic "Karan" in the vein of "Tarzan" at the end of the 1940s. For the weekly magazine "Le Soir Illustré", he made at the same time a medieval comic about a knight. When he presented these comics to "Tintin" magazine, he was accepted as art director and  gradually started making short comics for the magazine. His first main series debuted in 1953: "Pom et Teddy" was a series about a boy and a girl and their pet donkey, and the first stories were gentle stories about a circus. Craenhals soon became one of the main producers of comics for magazines and newspapers, and a number of collaborators joined his studio. He worked for the Averbode magazine "Petits Belges", and published for many years "Primus et Musette" in "La Libre Belgique". He was one of the first comics artists to join Hergé at the editor Casterman, where his  two main series were published: the juvenile "Les 4 As" about a band of four youngsters (three boys and a girl) and their over-the-top adventures; and the more adult, "Prince Valiant"-inspired "Chevalier Ardent" ("The Brave Knight"), about a young knight at the time of King Arthur. Both series were reasonable good selling series, and the latter was a critical success as well. In the 1990s, Craenhals moved to Rivières-de-Theyrargues in the south of France, where he continued drawing his two series until his death in 2004 in Montpellier. Bibliography. His comics have been translated in many  languages, including Dutch, German and Swedish. External links.