Jean-Michel Charlier
Jean-Michel Charlier (; 30 October 1924 – 10 July 1989) was a Belgian comics writer. He was a co-founder of the famed Franco-Belgian comics magazine "Pilote". Life. Charlier was born in Liège, Belgium, in 1924. In 1945 he got a job as a draughtsman in Brussels with World Press, the syndicate of Georges Troisfontaines, which worked mainly for "Spirou" magazine. The following year he and artist Victor Hubinon created the four-page comic strip "L'Agonie du Bismarck". Charlier wrote the script and also drew the ships and airplanes. In 1947, Charlier and Hubinon began the long -running air-adventure comic strip "Buck Danny". After a few years, Charlier stopped all work on the drawings and concentrated only on the scenarios, on the advice of Jijé, then the senior artist at "Spirou". Unable to support himself writing comic scripts at a time when Dupuis concentrated almost solely on the magazine and albums were few and far between, Charlier qualified for a pilots license in 1949 and briefly flew for the airline SABENA. However the following year Charlier returned to comic strips, collaborating with Hubinon once again to create "Tiger Joe" for "La Libre Junior", the weekly comics  supplement to the journal "La Libre Belgique". Charlier also continued to supply scripts for "Spirou" magazine, collaborating with Eddy Paape on the strip "Valhardi" and, in 1955, with future "Asterix" artist Albert Uderzo on the comic strip "Belloy". Together with Hubinon, he also created some biographical comics like "Jean Mermoz" and "Surcouf". Other long-running series he started for "Spirou" in the early 1950s were "La Patrouille des Castors" for Mitacq, and in 1951 "Les Vraies Histoires de l'Oncle Paul" (Uncle Paul's true stories), a weekly comic of four pages telling a true story. The latter series was continued  from 1954 on by Octave Joly, and was a place where many young talents published their first comics, including Jean Graton, René Follet and Hermann Huppen. Charlier, Hubinon, Uderzo, and comic-strip writer René Goscinny founded the comics agency Edifrance and the magazine "Pistolin" in 1955, and the influential magazine "Pilote" in 1959. Charlier was editor-in-chief and also wrote two stories for the first issue: "Redbeard" with Hubinon and "Tanguy and Laverdure" with Uderzo - these latter two characters would later get their own TV series as well: "Les Chevaliers du Ciel", featuring Tanguy and Laverdure, was made by  ORTF between 1967 and 1969, an English-dubbed version of the show being released under the title "The Aeronauts". Of seminal importance for the cultural phenomenon "bandes dessinée" turned out to be Charlier's initiative as publishing co-editor to start a line of comic book books for Dargaud (which bought out "Pilote" in 1960), collecting the stories as serialized in "Pilote", becoming in effect Dargaud's first comic book releases. The first title in the series, coined "La Collection Pilote", was the first adventure of "Asterix" from Uderzo and Goscinny, a runaway success right from the bat, followed by  16 comic titles from the magazine, with the first "Blueberry" adventure, "Fort Navajo", becoming the last to be released in 1965. After that, the collection was suspended and each comic hero hitherto featured therein, spun off in book series of their own. In order to give these releases a more "mature" image, the books were from the very start executed as hard cover editions for France, though they were, somewhat ironically, executed in soft cover for Charlier's own native Belgium. More than favorably received however, the collection has attained a mythical status in the world of Franco-Belgian comics . Charlier visited the United States in 1963 and a tour of the American West inspired him to create "Fort Navajo", a western series, for "Pilote". He chose as artist Jean Giraud (Moebius), then a commercial illustrator who had briefly worked with Jijé on "Jerry Spring", a popular European western strip. "Fort Navajo", later renamed "Blueberry" or "Lieutenant Blueberry" after its main character, became a popular and innovative graphic novel. In 1972 friction among the staff at "Pilote" caused Charlier to give up his editorial position and he worked in French television until 1976. He then worked as editor-in-chief  for two years at "Tintin" magazine. He continued to write "Blueberry" and "Buck Danny" stories. Jean-Michel Charlier died in Saint-Cloud, France, in 1989. His main series are all continued by other writers, often chosen by Charlier himself. References. Footnotes