'Chinaman', artwork by TaDuc.
While attending comics courses in his hometown Vincennes, Serge Le Tendre was advised by his teacher, Jean-Claude Méziéres, to abandon his ambitions as and an artist and to focus solely on writing scenarios. In the period 1974-82, he wrote several short stories for Pilote, illustrated by artists Dominique Hé, Annie Goetzinger and Michel Rouge. He also wrote scripts for magazines like Mormoil and Tousse-Bourin. In 1975, he started the series 'La Quête de l'Oiseau du Temps' in Rodolphe's magazine Imagine with Régis Loisel. From 1977 he was also present in magazines like Fluide Glacial, Métal Hurlant, Fripounet and Circus with stories in cooperation with Cabanes, Lacaf and Blanc-Dumont.
La QuÍte de l'Oiseau du Temps, artwork by Régis Loisel
He restarted 'La QuÍte de l'Oiseau du Temps' for Charlie Mensuel and a series of books by Dargaud in 1982. He worked with Makyo on the writing of the first two episodes of 'Jerôme K. Jerôme Bloche' for Alain Dodier in Spirou. After some appearances in Frilouz, Chic and Astrapi, Le Tendre teamed up with Christian Rossi and created 'Les Errances de Julius Antoine' in L'Écho des Savanes in 1985. While still writing for some smaller comic magazines, he created 'Les Voyages de Takuan' with the Italian artist Emiliano Simeoni and later TaDuc in Pilote-Charlie in 1987. Books were published by Delcourt from 1989.
Together with his friend Rodolphe, he created 'Le Cycle de Taï-Dor' in 1987 in cooperation with artist Jean-Luc Serrano and later Luc Foccroulle (albums by Novedi and Vents d'Ouest). Other co-productions are 'Pour l'amour de l'art' with P. Rey (art by J. Béhé and P. Danard, Dargaud, 1991) and 'Labyrinthes' with Dieter (art by Jean-Denis Pendanx, Glénat, 1993). Le Tendre and Rodolphe also co-wrote the highly praised diptych 'Mister George' for artist Hugues Labiano in Lombard's Signé collection in 2003 and 2004.
Tai-Dor, artwork by Taduc
Besides series and magazine work, he has also written several independent stories, published directly in albums, such as 'Le Château de Fontainebleau (with Fabien Lacaf, I.D. Program, 1985), 'Edmond et Gustave' (with Rossi, Futurpolis, 1987), 'L'Oiseau Noir' (with Dethorey, Dupuis, 1992) and 'La Derniére Lune' (with Rodolphe and Parras, Lombard, 1993).
Le Tendre created the "rice western" 'Chinaman' with TaDuc for Les Humanoïdes Associés in 1997. The series is continued by Dupuis since 2001. Starting in the late 1990s, Le Tendre also scripted for Okapi, I Love English and the publishing house Infogrammes. Other creations of the 1990s include 'La Gloire d'Héra' with Rossi (À Suivre, 1995) and 'L'Ami Javin' with Loisel and Lidwine (Dargaud, 1998).
In 2000, he turned to science fiction with the 'L'Histoire de SiloÎ', a diptych in cooperation with Servain for Delcourt. In 2010, he worked with Rossi again on the historical diptych 'Tirésias', published by Casterman. Together with David Mack, he supervised the collective project 'Paroles d'Étoiles', a comics documentary on Jewish children during World War II, publihsed in 2008 and 2009. 'La QuÍte de l'oiseau du temps' was restarted once again in 2007, by now scripted by Le Tendre and Loisel, and drawn by Mohamed Aouamri.
He makes the series 'Le Livre des Destins' with Frank Biancarelli for Soleil since 2004, and the thriller 'Le Paradis sur Terre' with Laurent Gnoni for 12bis since 2011. More recent creations are the historical series 'Golias' with Jérôme Leréculey (Lombard, 2012) and the fantasy series 'Griffe Blanche' with TaDuc (Dargaud, 2013).
Le Livre des Destins, artwork by Frank Biancarelli