Arq #3, Mémoires 2
Andreas Martens is a German-born Belgian comic artist best known for his science fiction serials 'Rork', 'Arq' and 'Capricorne'. Born in Weißenfels, East Germany, Martens studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf. He eventually ended up at the Brussels Saint-Luc Institute, where he studied with young ambitious comic artists like Berthet, Foerster and Cossu. Adapting his first name as his pseudonym, his first work appeared in the Saint-Luc magazine Le 9e Rêve, and subsequently created 'Udolfo' in cooperation with his teacher Eddy Paape in Tintin. In the same magazine, he embarked on the philosophical fantasy comic series 'Rork' in 1978. The series was collected in books by Le Lombard between 1984 and 1993 and in between his work on the 'Rork' stories, Andreas published many genre one-shot comics, which cleverly expanded the limits of the comics medium.
Rork
À Suivre published several of the short stories he made with scriptwriter François Rivière, that were later collected in the album 'Révélations Posthumes' in 1980. From the early 1980s, he expanded his activities with 'Cyrrus' and 'Mil' in Métal Hurlant, 'Cromwell Stone' (Deligne), 'La Caverne du Souvenir' (Lombard), as well as an adaptation of 'Jane Eyre' for Je Bouquine. After publishing 'Raffington Detective' with Lombard in 1989, Andreas began an association with the publishing house Delcourt.
Cromwell Stone
Delcourt reprinted all his non-Lombard albums, and published new works like 'Coutoo' (1989), 'Dérives' (1991), 'Aztèques' (1992), and 'Le Triangle Rouge' (1995). Andreas has also published his ongoing sci-fi series 'Arq' with this publisher since 1997. In that same year, he returned to Lombard however for starting another sci-fi serial based on a secondary character from his 'Rork' series, 'Capricorne'.
Capricorne
Andreas teamed up with Philippe Foerster in 1995 and created 'Le Styx' for the collection Signé of Lombard. He joined the magazine Brazil in 1994, where he drew 'Les Lettres' in cooperation with Jamsin and Antonio Cossu. Andreas has illustrated the third installment of the series 'Donjon Monstres' for Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim in 2002, and he created the adventure one-shot 'Quintos' with Isabelle Cochet for Dargaud in 2006. As a scriptwriter, Andreas has cooperated with Berthet ('Mortes Saisons', Dupuis) and Christian Durieux (the detective series 'Mobilis', Delcourt 1999-2002) .
He was one of several artists to make a graphic contribution to ‘Pepperland’ (1980), a collective comic book tribute to the store Pepperland, to celebrate its 10th anniversary at the time.
Arq #15 - Lune