Laurent Vicomte

Laurent Vicomte (born in 1956) published his first artworks at the age of 19 in La Presse de la Manche, before joining the “Carte blanche” section of Le Journal de Spirou the following year. When he moved to Paris in 1977, he met Jean-Pierre Gourmelen, and later Jean-Michel Charlier, who served as the editor-in-chief of Le Journal de Tintin. There he created his first original series: Edouard et Lucie. But it was his meeting with Pierre Makyo in 1981 that marked a true turning point in his career: together, they conceived Balade au bout du monde (A Walk to the End of the World), which was serialized in the magazines Gomme! and Circus before being published as an album by Glénat. The landscape of comic art was undergoing a major transformation at the time: driven by magazines such as Circus and Métal Hurlant, the medium was breaking free from its juvenile constraints and embracing a more realistic, adult-oriented, and mature style. Success was immediate: captivating the public with the realist nature of Vicomte’s artwork, Balade au bout du monde (A Walk to the End of the World) became a bestseller of the 1980s, with more than a million copies sold. This immense success led Jacques Chirac, then mayor, to present the duo with the Grand Prix of the City of Paris in 1982. 

An extreme perfectionist, Vicomte then took a break for several years before devoting himself, entirely on his own, to writing and illustrating Sasmira. Its first volume, L’Appel (The Call), was published in 1997 by Les Humanoïdes Associés. Hailed as the most accomplished album of his career, it won awards at numerous festivals. Settling in Perros-Guirec, where he co-founded the local comic book festival with Régis Loisel and Jean-Charles Kraehn, he devoted himself almost entirely to this single project. The artist’s painstakingly exacting standards delayed the release of the second volume, La Fausse Note (The False Note), until 2011—fifteen years after the completion of the first volume. The book became one of the most eagerly awaited albums in the history of the Ninth Art—to the point that he ultimately had to entrust the artwork to Claude Pelet. In the end, only 17 pages of this album were entirely created by Laurent Vicomte. He passed away on August 9, 2020, in Paimpol, at the age of 64.