André Juillard

Juillard studied in the School of Decorative Arts of Paris (l'école des Arts décoratifs de Paris). Juillard became one of the most prolific artists of historical comics in France. He started his career 1974 in the popular magazine Formule 1, drawing La Longue Piste de Loup Gris, a Western story with scenario by Claude Verrien. He then adapted Roméo et Juliette for the magazine Djin. In 1976, he began his first long series, featuring the knight Bohémond de Saint-Gilles, based on a text written by Verrien, published in Formule 1. During this period he also started Isabelle Fantouri based on texts by Josselin, for Djin, as well as Les Cathares with Didier Conrad for the same publication. He wrote several short stories with Jean Ollivier and this creator for the magazine Pif Gadget. With the latter, he developed the series Masquerouge from 1980, a series of initially 16 short stories about a masked swordsman in Paris in the 1620s. When the editors of Pif Gadget discontinued Masquerouge in 1982 as part of a reorientation of the magazine, Cothias and Juillard took up the material and created the series Les Sept Vies de l'Épervier (The Seven Lives of the Falcon), set in the time of the French King Henry IV, as a kind of prequel for a more adult audience. Together with writer Yves Sente he worked in his later years on Blake and Mortimer.