Derib

Born on August 8, 1944, in Switzerland, Claude de Ribaupierre—known as Derib—left his native country at the age of nineteen to settle in Belgium. He joined the prestigious Peyo Studio, where he trained under the great masters of the Marcinelle School. There, he quickly became friends with Jijé, whose realism he admired, as well as with Franquin and Rosy. He helped create the artwork for Les Schtroumpfs (The Smurfs) and soon began publishing his work in the pages of Spirou, Tintin, and Pilote magazines. At twenty-two, he created the character Yakari, who truly came to life thanks to the work of the scriptwriter Job in 1969. Three years later, he launched Buddy Longway, an unconventional and deeply personal Western spanning twenty volumes that follows the life of a white trapper married to a Native American woman, whose hero ages and dies over the course of the story—a first in the history of comic art. In 1981, he began the major realistic saga Celui qui est né deux fois, dedicated to Native American culture, followed by its sequel, Red Road. A Swiss pioneer of Franco-Belgian comics, he paved the way for Swiss authors such as Cosey and Zep.