Simplicius Simplicissimus
Gilbert Bloch was a French artist of newspaper text comics, who worked mainly for the French communist press during the 1950s. He was present in L'Humanité with 'Les Grandes Heures de la Commune' (1954) and adaptations of Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen's picaresque novel 'Simplicius Simplicissimus' (1954, adaptation Raymond Lavigne) and Victor Hugo's 'Notre Dame de Paris' (1956). The latter was also serialized in Le Patriote, L'Echo du Centre and La Marseillaise.
Notre Dame de Paris
He made more adaptations for the Sunday paper of L'Humanité, L'Humanité Dimanche, mostly in the vertical text comics format. These included the Honoré de Balzac play 'Splendeur et misère des courtisanes' (1956), a serial about the life of French 19th century dramatist and poet Alfred de Musset (1957) and the Alexandre Dumas novels 'Une fille du régent' (1957-1958) and 'Le Bâtard de Mauléon' (1959). Another productive comic strip artist for L'Humanité during this period was Pierre Donga.
Le Bâtard de Mauléon