Jacques Martin (cartoonist)

Jacques Martin is a French comic book creator (writer and drawer), born in Strasbourg, France on 25 September 1921. He is one of the classic artist of the Journal of Tintin magazine, alongside with Edgar P. Jacobs and Hergé, of whom he has been a longtime collaborator. He is best know for his Alix series.

Biography

After being initially forced into engineering studies as a young man, Jacques Martin began in 1942 to draw his first comic stories. In 1946, following the end of the War, he travelled through Belgium in search of an editor for his work. Soon afterwards meeting Georges Remi Hergé with whom he collaborated on several albums of The Adventures of Tintin (and more specifically on Tintin in Tibet and The Red Sea Sharks) while working on his own albums.
In 1948, he created Alix his most famous series, published in the magazine Tintin, whose adventures - extremely-well documented - occur in Roman antiquity. This historic comic soon became one of the most popular of the genre and went on to be published in several countries worldwide.

Later, Martin went on to create other characters, the journalist Lefranc in 1952, Jhen in 1978 and finally Orion in 1990.
In 1998, due to failing eyesight, he left the drawing of Alix to Rafael Morales . Alix continues running with great success.