After studying at the Angoulême comics art school, Lyon-born Nicolas De Crécy made his debut in 1987 with 'Bug Jargal', an adaptation of a work by Victor Hugo in cooperation with Sylvain Chomet. He then worked with the French Walt Disney Studios for two years. Meanwhile, he found the time to make the highly acclaimed album 'Foligatto', scripted by fellow Angoulême school artist Alexios Tjoyas. This utterly surreal story about a castrato opera singer in a seemingly eighteenth-century Italian city, immediately made De Crécy one of the most important young comic authors of his generation. His baroque, Klimt-like drawings and unusual use of color gave 'Foligatto' its uniquely haunting atmosphere.
He teamed up with Chomet again and created 'Léon la Came' in magazine À Suivre 1995, a masterful satire of the post-industrial society and neo-liberal madness. The first of the trilogy, 'Léon-la-Came' was followed by 'Laid, Pauvre et Malade' and 'Priez Pour Nous', which also feature not only De Crécy's hallmark hallucinatory monochrome images, but storylines of increasing absurdity as well. De Crécy also worked on Chomet's feature film 'La Vieille Dame et les Pigeons' (1998).
Bibendum Céleste
De Crécy has since experimented with several genres and styles. He is the author of the playful black and white 'Monsieur Fruit' series (Seuil, 1995-1996), the baroque full-color fantasy 'Bibendum Céleste' (Les Humanoïdes Associés, 1994-2002), the pantomime comic 'Prosopopus' (Dupuis, 2003) and the absurd anthropomorphic series 'Salvatore' (Dupuis, 2005-2010). He made the futuristic 'Période glaciaire' for Futoropolis and the Louvre Museum in 2005. Futuropolis also published his travelogue 'Journal d'un fantôme' in 2007.
Journal d'un Fantôme