Frank Le Gall

Born on September 23, 1959, in Rouen, Frank Le Gall showed a passion for drawing and comic art from the age of eight. He joined the team at Journal de Spirou at a very early age, where, starting in 1981, he illustrated the adventures of jazz saxophonist Valry Bonpain—short detective stories with a film noir atmosphere, written by Alain Clément. In 1984, he created his most iconic character: Théodore Poussin, a young office worker from Dunkirk who, against his better judgment, finds himself swept up in adventures in interwar Asia. The character was directly inspired by the author’s grandfather, Théodore-Charles Le Coq, who left for Indochina in 1927; his diary and travel accounts provided the basis for the plot. At the same time, he worked on a second series, Yoyo, written by Yann, and illustrated classic texts for the magazine Je Bouquine. In 1989, the third volume of Théodore Poussin, Marie Vérité (Mary Truth), co-written with Yann, won the Best Album Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. The series’ first major cycle concluded in 1993 with Un passager porté disparu (A Passenger Missing and Presumed Dead), which won the Audience Award at Angoulême that same year. The seventh volume, La Vallée des roses (The Valley of Roses), a nostalgic look back at the hero’s childhood in northern France, was honored with the first “Totem” award for children’s comics at the Montreuil Book Fair. As a writer for other artists, he collaborated notably with Michel Plessix on Là où vont les fourmis (Wher the Ants Go, Casterman, 2016). After a thirteen-year hiatus, he returned to Théodore Poussin in 2018 and, the following year, received the Grand Prix from l'Académie Victor Rossel de bande dessinée (the Victor Rossel Comic Art Academy) for his entire body of work.