Jean Charles Kraehn

Jean-Charles Kraehn is a French writer and comic artist, one of the leading figures in Franco-Belgian comics, capable of exploring a wide range of worlds, from historical narratives to contemporary thrillers. After starting out as a self-taught artist, he enrolled at the École Estienne in Paris, where he studied graphic design and met, among others, Patrice Pellerin and illustrator Pierre Joubert, both of whom had a lasting influence on his approach to drawing. He became an illustrator in the early 1980s for the Scouts de France and Hachette, before publishing his first comic books in 1982 with ID Program. His career truly took off in 1986 with Les Aigles décapitées (The Decapitated Eagles), a medieval series he initially illustrated based on a script by Patrice Pellerin. He later continued the series on his own before handing the artwork over to Michel Pierret up until the thirteenth volume. In 1990, he established himself as a complete creator with Bout d’homme (Scrap of a Man), which he wrote and illustrated entirely himself.

In 1993, he shifted his focus more toward writing with Tramp, a maritime saga illustrated by Patrick Jusseaume, and then in 1996 launched the detective series Gil Saint-André, set in the Lyon region—one of his most popular works—illustrated successively by Sylvain Vallée and then Chrys Millien. In the early 2000s, he took on multiple projects: he contributed to Didier Convard’s Triangle secret, created Ruistre—which he produced on his own—and wrote the script for Myrkos, illustrated by Miguel. In 2006, he collaborated on Frank Giroud’s Quintett. As co-founder of the Perros-Guirec Comic Book Festival alongside Régis Loisel, he resumed writing the script for the famous Barbe-Rouge (Redbeard) series in 2019, illustrated by Stefano Carloni, marking the return of the character originally created by Jean-Michel Charlier and Victor Hubinon.