Nico - Femmes Fatales
After completing his studies at Saint-Luc in Brussels, Philippe Berthet drew his first stories for French magazines like Le 9e Rêve, Aïe! and Spatial from 1978. In 1981, he joined the magazine Spirou, where he began the series 'Lloyd' together with the writer Andrieu. A year later, he was also present in Circus with the futuristic series 'Le Marchand d'Idées', which he wrote and drew in cooperation with Antonio Cossu. Berthet and Cossu also created several short stories for the magazine, that are collected in the album 'Rêve de Chien'.
Lloyd (1983)
Berthet continued his collaboration with Spirou with some independent stories, such as 'Hiver 51' and 'Été 60', written by Andreas (collected in the album 'Mortes Saisons'), as well as 'L'Oeil du Chasseur' (text by Foerster) and 'La Dame, la Cygne, et l'Ombre' (text by Dominique David).
Le Privé d' Hollywood
He also began the 1930s crime noir series 'Le Privé d'Hollywood', which was scripted by José-Louis Bocquet and François Rivière, between 1983 and 1989. For the collection Aire Libre of Dupuis, he created the graphic novels 'Sur la Route de Selma' with writer Tome in 1991, and 'Halona' in 1993.
Sur la Route de Selma
In 1994, he launched the retro series 'Pin-Up' with writer Yann for Dargaud, of which new installments continue to appear on an irregular base. The series, about 1940s and 1950s model Bettie Page, was an homage to Milton Caniff and his comic 'Male Call'. Berthet cooperated with Foerster again on the western 'Chiens de Prairie', that was published by Delcourt in 1996.
Pin-Up #5 (1999)
In 2004, Berthet and Yann began 'Yoni' in the new Empreinte(s) collection at Dupuis. After two books, the series was dropped and Berthet and Yann continued their collaboration with 'Les Exploits de Poison Ivy' with Dargaud between 2006 and 2008. Berthet worked with Corbeyran on the second installment of the 'XIII' spin-off series 'XIII Mystery', focusing on Irina Svetlanova. With Fred Duval, he launched the science fiction espionage series 'Nico' at Dargaud in 2010. He returned to the detective genre with 'Perico', a series he created with Régis Hautière for Dargaud in 2014.
He was one of several artists to make a graphic contribution to 'Baston Labaffe no. 5: La Ballade des Baffes’ (Goupil, 1983), an official collective parody comic of André Franquin’s 'Gaston Lagaffe’.
Poison Ivy