Jean-Luc Hiettre has always been fascinated by comics, and it was fellow Breton artist Jean-Claude Fournier who introduced him to Spirou magazine. His first stories where published in the Carte Blanche section of this magazine in 1975, and from 1979 until 1985, he made 'Quentin Foloiseau', partially with Jean-Yves Brouard, for Spirou's French edition, replacing the army advertisements from the Belgian edition. Brouard published one album of the series under his JYB Adventures label in 2000.
Hiettre worked for the Breton magazine Frilouz, for which he created 'Mark Jones' together with Michel Plessix. Under the joint signature of Letrio, he made 'Pôle-Émile, le Petit Eskimo' with the writing duo Gégé and Bélom for Le Journal de Mickey from 1985 to 1987. In 1990, he took on a more realistic style and launched the historic series 'Le Grand Fleuve' with Serge Aillery, which ran in Dupuis' Repérages collection until 1995.