2020 is the year of comic books! To celebrate this event, the Alliance Française de Jersey hosts an exhibition about a young comic book author, Guy Delisle, born in Québec (Canada).

GUY DELISLE, A GULLIBLE PERSON IN THE LAND OF AUTOFICTION

Guy Delisle has made his mark over the years as an observer full of emotion and astonishment but always without judgment. A master of serious lightheartedness, his work brings together, more than that of others, little snapshots of everyday life which speak volumes about humanity.

BIOGRAPHY

Born in 1966 in Quebec (Canada) Guy Delisle was fascinated as a child by classic Franco-Belgium comic books including Astérix, Tintin, Blake and Mortimer, and more particularly Lucky Luke, so he decided to become an author of comic books himself! In Quebec, however, the market for comic books was almost non-existent and no school taught aspiring cartoonists about the subtleties of sequential art. Guy Delisle therefore became involved instead with animated film and learnt the basics of this at Sheridan College in Toronto before leaving for Europe in 1988. This was the start of a career in animation lasting about 10 years during which time he worked with the Folimage team in Valence. Already a passionate traveller he taught animation for a year in La Réunion. In 1994 he collaborated with Michael Dudok de Wit on Le Moine et le Poisson (The Monk and the Fish) which was premiered at the Annecy Festival. After this Guy Delisle was involved with Papyrus, Les Contes du chat perché and La Mouche (The Fly) by Lewis Trondheim. His experience as a supervisor of animation in China gave him the subject matter for Shenzhen, a travelogue recounting the amusing story of an animator faced with the Chinese system of production. Guy published the majority of his works with the publishers L’Association, notably Aline et les Autres (Aline and the Others) followed in 2001 by Albert et les Autres (Albert and the Others). While he was drawing the humorous series Inspecteur Moroni with Dargaud publishers, he also published Pyongyang in 2002, another travelogue linked to his work as an animator, this time in North Korea, an invaluable account of life in the most secretive country in the world. Using his sharp but benevolent view of foreign culture, Chroniques birmanes (Burma Chronicles), is the next in the series of works dedicated to his travels in Asia. With Chroniques de Jérusalem (Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City) in 2011 he used the style of a travel journal again to set out his experiences in Israel. The album won the Fauvre d’Or for the best album at the Angoulême Festival in 2012 and sold 250,000 copies. Guy Delisle has been successful worldwide and his work has been translated into some 15 languages. In 2013 he published another humorous comic, Le Guide du mauvais père (A User’s Guide to Neglectful Parenting) and volume 1 has already sold over 85,000 copies.

Photo credits: ®Olivier Roller