Paul Deliège

Paul, or "Pol", Deliège was a productive artist/writer for Spirou magazine from the 1960s throughout the mid 1990s. A representative of the so-called "School of Marcinelle", Deliège is best known for his series 'Bobo' and 'Les Krostons'. Born in Olne, he worked in a textile factory from 1957 while taking a correspondence art course from the ABC in Paris. He had already published his comics 'Félicien et les Romanis' and 'Le Père Bricole' in the Belgian daily Le Soir in 1955.

He joined the Dupuis art studios in 1958, where he was mainly engaged with the lettering for Robbedoes, the Flemish edition of Spirou. He made his debut in Spirou magazine that same year with two short stories starring his earlier character 'Félicien'. It wasn't until 1960 that he started his first continuing series, 'Théophile et Philibert'. The series lasted for three episodes until 1962, the last two stories were written by Vicq. By 1963 he was making his own shortlived gag series 'Hercule et les autres'.

Deliège established himself as one of the main artists of Spirou's "mini-books" in the 1960s. His most notable creation for this section of fold-in mini-books was the prisoner 'Bobo', who debuted in 1961. The stories were written by Maurice Rosy with whom Deliège also created the mini-book characters 'Sosthène' (1961) and 'Félix' (1965) as well as 'Bébert' (1963) for the magazine's regular pages.

Deliège remained one of the most prominent authors of "mini-récits" until the 1970s with new characters like 'Cabanon' (1965-67) and 'Superdingue' (1967-72). He was also a productive scriptwriter for other artists, including Lagas ('Sam et l'Ours', 1968-75), Salvérius ('Pétit-Cactus', 1968-69), Noël Bissot ('Youk et Yak', 1968-70), Raymond Macherot ('Sibylline', 1972-76) and Mittéï ('Bonaventure', 1980).

In addition to his work for Spirou, Deliège made new 'Félicien' stories for the children's section of newspaper Le Soir between 1960 and 1967. He was also present in Bonux-Boy, the advertising mini-comic for Bonux washing powder in 1961, using the penname Célestin.

Deliège teamed up with fellow artist Arthur Piroton in 1968 to create 'Les Krostons', a new series about three small creatures determined to rule the world after coming to life from an artist's drawing board. Deliège and Piroton wrote and drew the first episode for Spirou under their joint signature Max Ariane, and the series was continued solely and on an irregular base by Deliège between 1969 and 1983. Despite being collected in only four books, this series has gained a certain amount of notority that by 2011 a 3D motion picture is being prepared.

Although Deliège has worked on a great variety of comics, it was the character of Bobo and his ill-fated escape attempts that gained him most fame. Appearing on a regular base in Spirou's normal pages from 1973, the comic has been collected in 16 books by Dupuis. Deliège did both script and artwork from then on and added a colorful cast of new characters to the universe of Bobo's prison Inzepocket.

Deliège, who was always a regular illustrator for Spirou's editorial pages, made an editorial strip called 'Le Trou du Souffleur' from 1987 to 1994. In the final stages of his career, he worked with David Deth on a humorous comic starring the alien 'L'envahisseur' from 1994 to 1996. Pol Deliège continued 'Bobo' until his retirement in 1996, setting his prisoner free in the final episode in Spirou issue 3057. Several years after retiring from an admirable comics career, Paul Deliège died on 7 July 2005 at the age of 74.