Philippe Delaby

Born in Tournai (Belgium) in 1961, Philippe Delaby was a natural born artist. It wasn't until the age of 8, however, that he discovered his passion for comics, when his father gave him his very first album. Ever since, the stories in speech bubbles have been a major part of his life. At 14 he was accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown, where he fine-tuned his talent. Fascinated by Ingres and the Flemish masters, he got to grips not only with the art of drawing, but oil painting as well. His attraction to comics took over nevertheless, and at the age of 18 he won a competition for young artists that opened the pages of the Tintin journal for him. From the 7 to 77 weekly magazine came "Hello Bédé", which he illustrated with the script written by Y. Duval, Arthur au royaume de l'Impossible and Richard Coeur de Lion - two sagas that earned him a Clio Award at the History Fair in Paris in 1993. The same year he illustrated Bran, written by J.-L. Vernal, which tells the story of a young Gaul. In 1994, together with novelist L. Delisse he released L'Étoile polaire, a medieval fantasy thriller published by Le Lombard. In 1997, encouraged by the scriptwriter Jean Dufaux, he masterfully brought back to life the  imperial Rome of Nero in the award-winning Murena, published by Dargaud (Dargaud/Europe Comics, 2015). With his growing success, Philippe Delaby allowed himself to escape into the Complainte des landes perdues (Lament of the Lost Moors, Cinebook, 2013), a fantasy world imagined by his friends Jean Dufaux and Grzegorz Rosinski. Philippe Delaby died on January 29, 2014.