Janry

Jean-Richard Geurts, better known as Janry, was born in Jadoville, in former Belgian Congo. He studied Industrial Design in Brussels for two years, before he became the assistant of Francis. He worked mainly on the 'Pichelsteiner' series for the German Kauka Verlag. He then worked with Dupa, whom he assisted on 'Cubitus' and 'Chlorophylle'. During this period, he met Philippe Vandevelde (Tome), with whom he started a longtime collaboration. They assisted Turk and De Groot on 'Léonard', 'Robin Dubois' and 'Clifton', before they joined the magazine Spirou in 1979.

There, they started out with the game page 'Jeuréka'. They eventually took over the magazine's title comic 'Spirou et Fantasio' from Jean-Claude Fournier in 1980. Alternating at first with Nic Broca and Raoul Cauvin, Janry and Tome soon became the series sole artists. Their run on the series was very popular with the readers, since their work was strongly reminiscent of André Franquin's. At first, they collaborated on both scenario and artwork, but after a while, Janry became the artist and Tome the writer.

In addition to the main series, Janry and Tome took on 'Le Petit Spirou' in 1987, a parodying gag series about Spirou's childhood. Starting in 1990, Janry took on the writing of the gag series 'Passe Moi l'Ciel' for artist Stuf. In 1998, Tome and Janry restyled the classic 'Spirou' comic for the new millennium, making the characters and the storyline more mature. However, they handed over the restyled comic after only one episode to Munuera and Morvan in 2004.