Benoît Brisefer - 'Le Sécret d'Églantine'.
Pascal Garray was a Belgian comic artist, working for the studio that continued Peyo's comic series 'Les Schtroumpfs' ('The Smurfs') and 'Benoît Brisefer' ('Steven Strong') between 1990 and 2017. He was the main artist of Studio Peyo during this period.
Early life and comics career
Pascal Garray was born in 1965 in Rocourt, a sub-municipality of the city of Liège, and raised in the Angleur district. His father was a foreman at the Cockerill steel and coal company, and his mother a housewife who raised the household's three children. As the eldest child, Garray was subscribed to the weekly comic magazine Spirou, which he then shared with his sister Virginie and brother Eric. As he was always drawing in his notebooks, his high school teachers at the Collège Saint-Joseph in Chênée advised him to pursue artistic studies. He enrolled at the École Supérieure des Arts Saint-Luc in Liège, where among his teachers were the comic artists Olivier Wozniak and Éric Warnauts, and the caricaturist Jean-Yves Stanicel. One of his student friends was the future comic artist Philippe Jarbinet.
One day, comic artist Frank Pé visited the school and asked if one of the students was capable of drawing cars. Pascal Garry was selected, and drew the cars in the third volume of Pé's poetic 'Broussaille' series, 'La Nuit de Chat' (1989).
Studio Peyo
In 1990, Garray joined Cartoon Creation, the studio that produced the artwork with the classic characters created by Peyo. Due to the enormous commercial success of the blue gnomes during the previous few decades, new comic albums with direct participation of Peyo hadn't been published for years. By the late 1980s, Peyo had left his original publisher (Dupuis), and joined his son Thierry Culliford in the production of new comics under the Cartoon Creation banner, initially for the short-lived monthly Schtroumpf magazine (1989-1992). This allowed for a team of writers and artists to join the studio, including Jeroen De Coninck, Alain Maury, Philippe Delzenne, Luc Parthoens and Pascal Garry.
Hired on a three-month trial, Pascal Garry commuted every day from Liège to Brussels. When he was eventually hired, he rented a small student apartment in Ixelles, where he stayed during the week. Among Garray's early assignments were illustrating game pages for the monthly Schtroumpf magazine.
'Benoît Brisefer' - 'La Route du Sud'.
Benoît Brisefer
In addition to new 'Smurfs' comics, older comic creations were dusted off as well, for instance the 'Benoît Brisefer' series (published in English as 'Steven Strong' or 'Benny Breakiron'). The adventures of the superstrong boy who loses his powers whenever he has a cold had been on hold since 1978. With Peyo's son Thierry Culliford and Dugomier as scriptwriters, production of a new episode was started. It took a while before the studio chiefs decided who was to draw these new adventures, Alain Maury or Pascal Garray. But since Garray was more suitable for drawing urban settings, he was picked for 'Benoît Brisefer', while Maury was set to work on the relaunch of the medieval 'Johan et Pirlouit' comic. At that point, Peyo's wife Nine was still in charge of the coloring of both series.
However, Peyo didn't live to see the relaunch of his comic series, as he died in December 1992, when Garray hadn't even started drawing the new episode. 'Hold-Up Sur Pellicule' was released in November 1993. Until 2015, Garray drew six more 'Benoît Brisefer' stories, published on an irregular basis by Le Lombard. As he had joined the studio when Peyo was still around, he had benefited from his personal tips and tricks, so he was able to continue 'Benoît Brisefer' in the spirit of its creator. When in 1992 Cartoon Creation was dissolved, Garray and the rest of the team continued their employment at IMPS in Genval, a company run by Peyo's daughter Véronique Culliford.
'Les Schtroumpfs' 28 - 'La Grande Schtroumpfette'.
The Smurfs
After Alain Maury left the studio, Pascal Garray also became involved in the new comic books with 'The Smurfs'. Together with his colleague Ludo Borecki, Garray drew the 21st volume in the series, 'On Ne Schtroumpfe Pas Le Progrès' (2002). After some additional albums drawn by Borecki and Jeroen De Coninck, Pascal Garray became the lead artist of 'The Smurfs' in 2007. From then on, he regularly worked on new installments in the series, written by Alain Jost and Thierry Culliford. In between, new books appeared with artwork by the team of Jeroen De Coninck and Miguel Díaz Vizoso.
Recognition
In 1995, Garray's 'Benoît Brisefer' story 'L'Île de la Désunion' received the award for "Best Children's Album" at the Koksijde comics festival.
Death
In early 2017, Garray had just finished drawing the 35th Smurfs album ('Les Schtroumpfs et les Haricots Mauves', about bad eating habits), when he suddenly passed away from a brain tumor. He was 51 years old. After his passing, the new main artist of 'The Smurfs' became Jeroen De Coninck.
Pascal Garray.