Marcel Gotlib | |
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Born | Marcel Gottlieb 14 July 1934 Paris, France |
Died |
4 December 2016 (aged 82) Le Vésinet, Yvelines departement, France |
Area(s) | comics artist, writer |
Notable works
|
Gai-Luron Les Dingodossiers Superdupont Rubrique-à-Brac Hamster Jovial. |
Signature | |
www |
Marcel Gottlieb (14 July 1934 – 4 December 2016), known professionally as Gotlib, was a French comics artist/writer and publisher. Through his own work and the magazines he co-founded, L'Écho des savanes and Fluide Glacial, he was a key figure in the switch in French-language comics from their children's entertainment roots to an adult tone and readership. His series include La Rubrique-à-Brac, Gai-Luron, and Superdupont.
Marcel Gottlieb was born on 14 July 1934 in Paris to parents of Hungarian Jewish descent. His father, Ervin, was a house painter and his mother, Regine, a seamstress. In 1942 his father was deported and died at Buchenwald after their building's concierge obligingly helped policemen to find him, a scene which made a strong impression on young Marcel. His mother sent him to hide for the rest of the war on a farm, where he was poorly treated.
At 17, he left school to work for a pharmaceutical agency while taking art classes in the evening. This led to a job as a letterer at Opera Mundi, a French publisher which translated and published US strips. After his 28-month military service, Gotlib settled as a freelance letterer and illustrator. His first comics were accepted by Vaillant, a magazine for children later renamed Pif-Gadget. His one long-running series at Vaillant started as Nanar, Jujube et Piette, which was renamed Nanar et Jujube then Gai-Luron for the supporting character who had by then taken centre stage. Gai-Luron is a dog heavily influenced by Tex Avery's Droopy, who almost never laughs or displays any emotions and is incorrigibly somnolent.
In 1965 Gotlib submitted strips to Pilote magazine and was greeted with open arms by its influential co-founder and editor, René Goscinny of Astérix fame. Together they created Les Dingodossiers, a series of mock lectures on random subjects which Goscinny wrote and Gotlib drew. In 1967, Goscinny, who worked on many strips simultaneously while editing the magazine, asked Gotlib to continue the series alone. Gotlib instead launched a new one, Rubrique-à-Brac, which was similar to the Dingodossiers in format but progressively acquired a more adult and less formal tone. Leftover pages from both series were later published in album form as Trucs-en-vrac.