Mathieu Lauffray

Mathieu Lauffray is a French comic artist, illustrator, and concept artist who was inspired from an early age by American comic artists such as John Buscema and Neal Adams, as well as illustrators like Drew Struzan and J.C. Leyendecker. After earning his high school diploma, he enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, where he became friends with Denis Bajram and Frédéric Contremarche. In 1995, with Contremarche writing the script, he published his first comic, Le Serment de l'ambre (The Amber Oath), with Delcourt. He then devoted himself to illustration, creating some thirty covers for Dark Horse Comics' Star Wars series, while also working for the press and the video game industry, notably for the studio Darkworks. In 1997, his meeting with director Christophe Gans marked the beginning of a long collaboration in film: after the unproduced project Nemo, he played an active role in Pacte des loups (Broherhood of the Wolf, 2001), designing sets and storyboards, before reuniting with Gans on Fantomas in 2010. In 2000, he returned to comic art with Prophet, initially co-written with Xavier Dorison and later written entirely on his own, published by Les Humanoïdes Associés. Between 2003 and 2005, he served as art director on the Siegfried project led by Alex Alice, and later worked on Roland Emmerich’s international production 10,000 BC. In 2007, he began his most iconic series with Dorison, Long John Silver (Dargaud), a loose adaptation of Treasure Island praised for the graphic power of its maritime settings. In 2013, he published the artbook Axis Mundi, chronicling his career, and then concluded Prophet in 2014, with the volume De Profundis. In 2017, he collaborated with Wilfrid Lupano on a tribute to Valérian. Since 2020, he has been working solo on the Raven series at Dargaud, thus embarking on a new adventure as a complete creator.