'Canale' (Pif #488).
François Corteggiani was one of the most prominent contemporary French comic writers. He has written stories in many genres and styles, from adventure serials in the tradition of Charlier to humor comics in cooperation with artists like Pierre Tranchand, Philippe Bercovici, and Giorgio Cavazzano. Although mainly known for his writing activities, Corteggiani started his career as an artist.
After some small projects in his birth town Nice, he began his professional career in Paris in 1972. He worked in advertising and illustration, and produced over 1,000 pages for SEPP, a publishing company from Lyon, during a period of two years. He made his appearance in comic magazines like Spirou with 'Mucheroum', and especially in Pif Gadget. He was one of the artists of the title comic 'Pif le Chien', mostly in cooperation with Michel Motti. He also wrote and drew the feature 'Pastis', but eventually focused more and more on scriptwriting.
'Vivent les Vacances!' (Pif #489).
While writing 'Pif' stories for such artists as François Dimberton, Louis Cance and Yannick, he created several series with Pierre Tranchand from 1979. Starting with 'Chafouin et Baluchon' in Djin, they developed 'Marine Fille de pirate', 'Bastos et Zouky', 'Smith et Wesson' and 'L'École Abracadabra' for either Pif, Djin or Le Journal de Mickey throughout the 1980s.
'Bastos et Zakousky' and 'Smith et Wesson'.
Another artist with whom Corteggiani worked a lot from the late 1970s was Giorgio Cavazzano. He took over the writing of the 'Peter O'Pencil' ('Silas Finn'), that Cavazzano had created for the German magazine Zack with Tiziano Sclavi, and also of 'Capitan Rogers', that Cavazzano had originally made with Giorgio Pezzin for Il Giornalino. Cortegianni and Cavazzano also launched 'Timothée Titan' in Le Journal de Mickey through Strip Art Features. François Corteggiani created more humorous series with Philippe Bercovici, such as 'Robinson et Zoé', 'Testar le Robot', 'Grand Panic Circus', 'Téléfaune' and more.
François Corteggiani is additionally one of the main writers of Disney comics for Le Journal de Mickey since 1984. He has written over 1,500 stories and gags with characters like 'Mickey Mouse', 'Ellsworth', 'Supergoof' and the Ducks for both Hachette in France and Egmont in Denmark. His stories have been drawn by Claude Marin, Daan Jippes and many Spanish and Italian studio artists.
'Timothée Titan' and cover for Le Journal de Mickey.
By the mid-1980s, François Corteggiani proved to be a talented writer in the realistic genre as well in the pages of magazine Vécu. For this magazine and the collection of the same name by Glénat, he has created a great many historical comics during the following decades. These include the long-running series 'De Silence et de Sang' with Marc Malès (and later Jean-Yves Mitton, and Emmanuele Barison) and one-shots and shorter projects like 'Le Casque et la Fronde' (with Walter Fahrer), 'Le Bossu' (with Norma), 'Sundance' (with Michel Suro) and 'Sécession' (with Rachid Nawa).
'De Silence et de Sang' and 'La Jeunesse de Blueberry'.
Following the death of Jean-Michel Charlier in 1989, Corteggiani has continued 'La Jeunesse de Blueberry' with Colin Wilson and later Michel Blanc-Dumont for Novedi and Dargaud since then. He has also worked on a regular base for Soleil Productions from 1989 throughout the 1990s, creating series like 'L'Horus de Nékhen' with Georges Ramaïoli, 'L'Archer Blanc' with Jean-Yves Mitton, 'Yakuza' with Emanuele Barison, 'Saïto' with Norma and 'Les Ombres de la Lagune' with Giulio De Vita. Soleil also published Corteggiani's aviation western 'Thunderhawks', that he created with Colin Wilson and later Michel Suro for Strip Art Features. Besides these publishers, Corteggiani created 'Crin Blanc' with Michel Faure for Hachette, and 'Francis Falko' with Victor de la Fuente for Novedi.
'Yakuza' and 'Tatiana K.'
Dargaud has published Corteggiani's thriller series 'Tatiana K.' between 1998 and 2004, for which the artwork was provided by Félix Meynet and Emanuele Barison. He wrote the children's series 'Les Bonheurs d'Agathe' with Caroline Leboucq for artist Claire Le Grand for Milan (2002-03), and made 'Raimond le Carthare' with Michel Suro for the same publisher in 2004. In 2005 he created another humor comic with Yves Rodier for Glénat: 'Simon Nian'.
Corteggiani was also active for the Italian press with several short stories for Playboy, Topolino and Il Giornalino. In 2004, he became editor-in-chief of the relaunched Pif Gadget magazine, for which he wrote many new 'Pif' stories, but also features like 'Kid Franky' and 'Monster Hôtel' (art René Mazyn) and 'Forg' (art Dominique Cèbe) under the pen name Pujol. In addition, he has been working on stories with classic characters like 'Zembla' (with Dominique Cèbe, 2006), Raymond Macherot's 'Sybilline' (with André Taymans, 2009), Jacques Martin's 'Alix' (with Marco Venanzi and Mathieu Barthélémy, 2012) and 'Les Pieds Nickelés' (with Herlé, 2012).
In 2020 Corteggiani and Dirk Stallaert completed an old unfinished 'Suske en Wiske' script, 'De Sonometer', that Willy Vandersteen had created for Tintin magazine in 1959, but never completed beyond eight sketched out pages. Stallaert stated he wanted to mimick Vandersteen's graphic style from that particular period as close as possible. On 29 August 2020 'De Sonometer' was prepublished in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.
Corteggiani also contributed to 'Les Enquêtes de leurs Amis' (Soleil, 1989), a collective tribute album to Maurice Tillieux' hero detective 'Gil Jourdan'.
François Corteggiani passed away in 2022, a day after his 69th birthday.
'Simon Nian' and 'Forg'.