Mister George - Volume 2

Serge Le Tendre was born in Vincennes on the 1st of December, 1946, and discovered in the '70s, after a few small illustration jobs, that he was definitely better at scriptwriting than illustrating. So he abandoned the career he had always dreamed about to start producing scripts for magazines such as Pilote, Antirouille, Fluide Glaciale, Métal Hurlant, Formule 1, Fripounet, and Circus, taking advantage of the drawing skills of Dominique Hé, Annie Goetzinger, Alain Voss, Michel Rouge, Loisel, Max Cabanes, Michel Blanc-Dumont and many others to improve his own craft and style.
This long apprenticeship began to bear fruit in the '80s with "La Quête de l'oiseau du temps" (Dargaud; "The Quest for the Time Bird, " Titan) illustrated by Loisel; an opportunity to collaborate on the first episodes of "Jérôme K. Jérôme Bloche" with Makyo and Dodier; the series "Errances de Julius Antoine" for Christian Rossi; and finally "Takuan" with Emiliano Simeoni, and then TaDuc, with whom he subsequently created the series "Chinaman, " published first by Humanos and then by Dupuis (Europe Comics in English 2017).
At the same time, this prolific and versatile scriptwriter pursued his forays into any and all magazines he could: Frilouz, Chic, Astrapi, Je Bouquine, I Love English, etc. He would go on to create the long saga "Taï-Dor" alongside Rodolphe and Serrano (published by Novedi and Vents d'Ouest), and was included in the prestigious Aire Libre collection in 1992 with "L'Oiseau noir, " illustrated by Jean-Paul Dethorey.
More recently, the author has put out such acclaimed series as "Griffe Blanche, " a trilogy published by Dargaud ("White Claw, " Europe Comics 2018), and "Le Projet Bleiberg, " also with Dargaud ("The Bleiberg Project, " Europe Comics 2017), alongside artist Frédéric Peynet. After "La Gloire d'Héra" (Dargaud, 2011) and "Tirésias" (Dargaud, 2011), Le Tendre decides to work on another Greek tragedy and teams up with Peynet to create "Pygmalion" (Dargaud, 2022; Europe Comics in English). A scriptwriter for "great masters" such as Raymond Poïvet or René Follet, Rodolphe has collaborated with a number of great authors of the 9th art: Léo, Jacques Ferrandez, André Juillard, Annie Goetzinger, Max Cabanes, Griffo, Vink and Michel Faure! Many times nominated in Angoulême and winner of several awards, he has also worked in the children's book sector, writing the scripts for "Tom-tom et Nana" and even "Mickey." Aside from comics (numbering over 150 titles), he has also worked in YA novels and thrillers as well as books dedicated to rock music and the '60s. Dargaud has recently celebrated his crossing the threshold of 100 thousand sales for his series "Kenya" (also published in English by Cinebook), illustrated by Léo.
In another partnership with Léo, he has also worked on the "Trent" series, recently re-published in English by Europe Comics and Cinebook (2017-2018). Hugues Labiano was born in Bayonne in 1963, but has always been somewhat fascinated by all things American. Yet it is actually through Spain that he began his career with "Matador" (Glénat, 1992), a series written by Gani Jakupi. He then returned to his true passion when he created "Dixie Road" (Dargaud, 1997, Europe Comics, 2017) with Jean Dufaux, and "Mister George" (Lombard, 2003), with Rodolphe and Serge Le Tendre.
It is difficult to pin him down to one genre. Even though his illustrations lean towards a certain realism, he aims to distort them slightly in order to better accentuate the emotion of a face or try out unusual framing. After ten years of drawing the United States of yesterday and today, Labiano decided on a change of scenery. It didn't take long. In 2005 Stephen Desberg asked him to explore the best of both worlds through "Black Op" (Dargaud, Europe Comics in English), a series focusing on CIA agents, whose work takes them from India to Afghanistan via Russia.
The adventure came to a close in 2010 with the publication of the sixth volume, but it resumed with a second cycle in 2014. In 2012, Labiano went solo and created two episodes of "Quatre coins du monde" (Dargaud). A few years after that, he had the honor of taking over for Enrico Marini on the series "Etoile du désert" (Dargaud; "Desert Star, " Europe Comics), illustrating volumes three and four of the series.
Most recently, he has illustrated "Le Lion de Judah" (Dargaud; "The Lion of Judah, " Europe Comics), teaming up again with Stephen Desberg.