Cliff Burton, artwork by Frederic Garcia
Rodolphe D. Jacquette is one of the most successful and productive contemporary French comic scriptwriters. His oeuvre contains several genres, such as adventure, fantasy and police stories. Rodolphe has a large imagination, and a good sense of mise en scène. After obtaining his degree in Literature, Rodolphe Jacquette became a teacher and afterwards a librarian.
Besides being a comic writer, Rodolphe is also a poet, a critic and an organizer of expositions. He is the author of a great many novels, a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, several children's stories, studies on comics with Patrick Gaumer and books about rock music.
When he met Jacques Lob in 1975, he started writing stories. That same year, he wrote the first episode of 'Le Conservateur', illustrated by a debuting Jean-Claude Floc'h. In the second half of the 1970s, Rodolphe worked for famous magazines like Pilote, À Suivre and Métal Hurlant. Here, he worked with artists like Annie Goetzinger, Jacques Ferrandez and Michel Rouge.
In the early 1980s, he launched such series as 'Raffini' (with Ferrandez) and 'Les Écluses du Ciel' (with Michel Rouge and later François Allot in Circus and Vécu). He wrote mainly comics for Circus (with Ferrandez), Vécu (with Cordonnier), Métal Hurlant (with Didier Eberoni) and Charlie Mensuel (with Picotto and Alexandre Coutelis). His longtime cooperation on short stories with Jacques Ferrandez resulted in two albums in 1986, 'Outsiders' and 'Le Vicomte'. He also launched the 'Cliff Burton' series with Frédéric Garcia and later Michel Durand. In the later 1980s he created albums with Jacques-Henri Tournadre and André Juillard.
From: Petit Dictionnaire de Mon Enfance, a book containting memories of the 1960s
In 1990, Rodolphe wrote 'Blaireau' for Boëm and 'Melmoth' for Marc-Renier. A year later followed the 'L'Autre Monde' saga with Florence Magnin. Rodolphe co-wrote the 'Taï-Dor' series with Serge Le Tendre (artwork by Jean-Luc Serrano and Luc Foccroulle). Again with Le Tendre, he launched 'La Dernière Lune' in 1992 (artwork Antonio Parras).
In 1994 he was present in Astrapi with 'Les Aventures de Moineaux', drawn by Louis Alloing. For Dargaud, he worked with Florence Magnin on the diptych 'Mary la Noire' in 1995. He scripted 'Das Reich' for Claude Plumail at Soleil in the following year. He was subsequently present at P&T Productions/Joker with 'Master' (with Mounier) and 'Les 4 Morts de Betty Page' (with Alain Bignon).
From 1998 he began new series for Éditions Le Téméraire, starting with 'Gothic' with Philippe Marcelé, which was followed by 'Les Teutoniques' with Bernard Capo. In the early 2000s, he wrote two Raffini novels for the collection Le Grand Cabaret Noir ('Les Petits Meurtres', 'Étrangère au Paradis'). He worked with Nathalie Berr on 'La Maison Bleu' (Albin Michel, 2001) and with Léo on 'Kenya' (Dargaud, 2001).
He took over the scriptwork of 'Arlequin' for Dany from Jean Van Hamme, and also finished the script of Michel Greg's final 'Comanche' story. In 2002 he worked with Alain Bignon on the series 'La Voix des Agnes' at Dargaud. He co-scripted 'Les Échaudeurs des Ténèbres' with Pierre Alary at Soleil, and worked with Le Tendre again on the script of 'Mister Georges' in the collection Signé of Lombard (art Hugues Labiano).
Rodolphe launched new series in 2004, such as 'London' with Isaac Wens (Glénat), 'Frontière' with Bertrand Marchal (Lombard) and 'Angie' with Antonio Cossu (Casterman), as well as a reprise of 'Raffini' at Albin Michel. In the following years, Rodolphe created one-shots like 'Le Dernier Visiteur de George Sand' (with Marc-Renier, Ed. du Patrimoine, 2007), 'Faust' (with Raymond Poïvet, Le Seuil, 2007), 'Le Gardien des Ténèbres' (with Isaac Wens, Glénat, 2007), 'Sur les Quais' (with Georges van Linthout, Casterman, 2008) and 'Scrooge, un chant de Noël' (with Estelle Meyrand, Delcourt, 2008).
New series include 'Mary Céleste' with Marc-Renier (Albin Michel, 2007), 'Moonfleet' (Laffont, 2007) and 'Le Secret du Mohune' (Delcourt, 2010) with Dominique Hé, 'La Malédiction d'Edgar' with Didier Chardez (Casterman, 2008), 'Le Village' (Bamboo, 2008) and 'Memphis' (Glénat, 2013) with Bertrand Marchal, Assassins' with Jeanne Puchol (Casterman, 2009), 'Si Seulement' with Lounis Chabane (Bamboo, 2011), 'La Ville d'Ys' with Raquel Alzate (Dargaud, 2013), 'Le Baron Fou' with Michel Faure (Glénat, 2015) and 'Robert Sax' with Louis Alloing. He has also worked on one-shot graphic novels with artists such as Georges Van Linthout ('Mojo', 'Celui qui n'existait plus'), Annie Goetzinger ('Marie Antoinette, La Reine Fantôme', Philippe Marcelé ('Markheim') and Vink ('Le Temps Perdu')
Rodolphe has been working with Léo on the scripts of 'Namibia' (since 2010), 'Centaurus' (2015) and 'La porte de Brazenac' (2014). He has also written a comics biography about Edgar Pierre Jacobs, called 'La Marque Jacobs' (artwork by Louis Alloing, 2012), and a romanticized comic about Robert Louis Stevenson with René Follet (Dupuis Aire Libre, 2013)..
Gothic, by Rodolphe and Philippe Marcelé