'Overdose' (Pilote #754, 1974).
Jean Vern was a French jazz musician, designer and cartoonist. During the 1970s and 1980s, he made several comic stories in collaboration with scriptwriter Pierre Christin, often using a pop art drawing style.
Early life
Not much is known about Jean Verne's life story. He was born in 1940 in Le Havre, a harbor city in Normandy, and from 1961 on, he studied at the School of Decorative Arts ("École des Arts Décoratifs") in Paris. In the French capital, he plunged into the local jazz scene, playing the saxophone with renowned international stars and designing record covers for labels like Blue Note, Disques Mouloudji and Atlantic. During this period, he also met Pierre Christin - teacher in journalism, comic scriptwriter and, at the time, amateur musician.
'Music Power contre Machine Gang' (1972-1973).
Comic career
By the late 1960s, Vern exiled to Ibiza, but stayed in touch with Christin, AKA Linus. They made their first collaborative comic stories for Total Journal, a promotional comic magazine for Total petrol stations, edited by Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières for Benoît Gillain's advertising agency. From 1970 on, Pilote magazine regularly ran their short stories, as well as the serial 'Music power contre machine gang'. Drawn in a pop art style, these stories combined the authors' shared interest in music and utopian worldviews. In addition, Vern also illustrated a couple of stories scripted by Jacques Lob. Dargaud collected Vern and Christin's short stories in the albums 'En Douce le Bonheur' ("Happiness on the Sly", 1978) and 'Sixties Nostalgia' (Dargaud, 1983).
'Le Mycologue et le Caïman'.
The two men collaborated again on the one-shot comics 'La Maison du Temps qui Passe' ("The House of Passing Time", Dargaud, 1985, first serialized in Charlie Mensuel), 'Le Mycologue et le Caïman' ("The Mycologist and the Cayman", Dargaud, 1989) and the British detective comedy 'Morts sous la Tamise' ("Death under the Thames", Dargaud, 1993). Jean Vern also contributed to collective projects such as Jacques Lob's 'Lob de la Jungle' (Les Humanoïdes Associés, 1980) and Pierre Christin's 'Paris sera toujours Paris(?)' (Dargaud, 1981).
Final years
During the 1980s, Jean Vern returend to Le Havre, settling in the city's historical Saint François district. One of his final projects was a 1998 group exposition in Le Havre's Public Library Armand Salacrou, featuring work by Vern, Edith, Riff Reb's, Alph, Enjalbert and Kokor. Jean Vern passed away in Montivilliers in 1998. He was 58 years old.
'Carnets d'un Anthropologue Frappé de Folie' (Pilote Mensuel 21bis, 1976).