Willy Lambillotte
| Lambil | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | Willy Lambillotte 14 May 1936 Tamines, Belgium |
| Nationality | Belgian |
| Area(s) | artist, writer |
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Notable works
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Les Tuniques Bleues |
| Awards | Grand Prix Saint-Michel 2006 |
Lambil (born 14 May 1936) is a Belgian comic-book artist, best known for the series Les Tuniques Bleues, which has been published in English as "The Blue Tunics" and "The Bluecoats".
Willy Lambillotte was born in Tamines, Belgium in 1936. He studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and first presented his drawings at the publisher Dupuis, known for Spirou magazine, when he was 16. He was accepted as a letterer, and got to know the major artists of the magazine of the time like Jijé and André Franquin.
In 1959, he published his first comic, Sandy, about an Australian teenager and his kangaroo Hoppy. The story was written by Henri Gillain, the brother of Jijé, and was the start of more than 20 stories in the same series, which only had a moderate success and did not get published in albums until much later. Lambil even parodied his own series in the irregular funny animal comic Hobby and Koala, about a kangaroo and a koala, and as Panty et son kangarou (see below).
When in 1972 Louis Salvérius, the artist of Les Tuniques Bleues ("The Blue Coats"), unexpectedly died, a successor was sought amongst the Dupuis artists. Lambil was asked to continue the series in collaboration with writer Raoul Cauvin. Whereas Sandy was drawn in a realistic style, Les Tuniques Bleues was comical and humorous, even though it is set during the American Civil War and is rather graphic in its portrayal of battle and its aftermath. Due to the rapid success of Les Tuniques Bleues (which has become a major best-selling series), Lambil had to drop Sandy.
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Wikipedia