Jean-Richard Geurts
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Jean-Richard Geurts, perhaps better known under his pseudonym Janry (born October 2, 1957), is a comics artist. With Tome he created Le Petit Spirou and made several Spirou et Fantasio albums.
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[edit] Biography
Born in Jadotville, currently Likasi, Zaire, he comes to Brussels, Belgium with his parents when he is ten years old, and goes to school in Jodoigne.[1] His main hobby at the time is drawing, especially planes and other technological items.
In 1974, he starts at a comics course where he learns to draw figures, and where he meets Philippe Vandevelde, who has the same age and also goes to school in Jodoigne, although at a different college.
They become friends, and they go to the same Art Academy in Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe to learn how to make comics. There they meet Stéphane De Becker. The three of them make comics together, sharing the roles of author, artists, and colourist, but later they all will more or less specialize, with Janry mainly the artist.
After his studies, Janry starts a professional career by becoming the assistant of Francis for the series Ford T, and later of Dupa for Cubitus. During this period, he also collaborates with Greg and with Turk and Bob de Groot.[1]
Together with Janry, he starts to work for Spirou, where they create the games page Eureka!, signing as J.R. and PH. They later change their pseudonyms to Tome (for Philippe Vandevelde, who used Tom from a very early age) and Janry (from Jean-Richard). This of course was intended as a reference to Tom and Jerry.
In 1981, the friends start with the adventures of Spirou et Fantasio. This is the title series of Spirou magazine, which had been made since 1938 by a succession of authors, most famously André Franquin. The last of those, Jean-Claude Fournier, had abandoned the series at the end of the 1970s, and the magazine was looking for a solution to get the series back in production. Three teams started making stories, but after a few years only Tome and Janry remained. For them, it was a childhood dream, and they showed their first two pilot pages to Franquin to get some advice.[1] They continued making stories until 1998, when after 14 albums they ended their run.
However, in 1988, they had started with Le Petit Spirou, a spin-off relating the youth of Spirou in (mostly) 1 page comics. Since then, they have created 12 albums of this series and they continue making more. After a few years, the series reached a circulation of 500,000 copies for each new album, thus becoming more successful than the original series. [1]
Janry is now mostly the artist, while Tome is more the author of the stories, with Stéphane De Becker as colourist.
[edit] Bibliography
- Spirou et Fantasio, 1984-1998, 14 albums, with Tome
- Le Petit Spirou, 1990-..., 12 albums, with Tome
- Passe moi l'Ciel, 1999-..., 5 albums, with Stuf (Stéphane de Becker) as artist
[edit] Awards
- 1992: Youth Prize (9-12 years) and Humour Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, France, both for Le Petit Spirou
[edit] Sources
(1994) Patrick Mortier: Flash Back. Comic Events.
