MiTacq

Michel Tacq, known as MiTacq, attended the Saint-Luc art school in Brussels beginning in 1942. Six months later, he was forced to put his studies on hold to support his family. He then took technical courses in industrial design at the Aumôniers du Travail in Charleroi. However, he continued to produce a few original comic strips for the Farciennes youth center, where he developed the adventures of the young Tam Tam. Three stories were published: Les Aventures de Tam Tam (The Adventures of Tam Tam), Tam Tam va-t-en guerre (Tam Tam Goes to War), and Allô…Etoile du Matin ? ( Hello… Morning Star?), all with a purely science-fiction theme. 

In 1951, he joined World’s Press, headed by Georges Troisfontaines, for whom he drew about twenty Belles histoires de l’Oncle Paul (The Beautiful Stories of Uncle Paul) and numerous educational pages for the Coin du petit curieux section (The Curious Little One's Corner). Heavily influenced by Joubert, MiTacq sketched out a project for a Boy Scout comic strip, La Patrouille des Castors (The Beaver Patrol), which he pitched to World’s. Although the publisher accepted the idea, he entrusted the script to an experienced writer: Jean-Michel Charlier, who would write the first 21 albums in the series. When Pilote was launched, Charlier proposed a new series to MiTacq: Jacques Le Gall, a teenager who embarks on numerous adventures directly tied to various contemporary issues (Mediterranean traffickers, Nazi treasure, etc.). The series would span six albums. 

In the 1960s, faced with Jean-Michel Charlier’s increasingly frequent delays in writing, MiTacq decided to create the character Stany Derval, a globetrotting motorcyclist. Writers André-Paul Duchâteau, Maurice Tillieux, and Jacques Stoquart contributed to this adventure, which spanned nearly 300 pages. MiTacq continued the adventures of Les Castors (The Beaver Patrol), either alone or alongside fellow writers such as Marc Wasterlain and Jacques Stoquart, until his death in 1994 in Loverval.