After studying at the
École supérieure des arts décoratifs de Strasbourg, Blutch was discovered through a competition organized by the monthly magazine
Fluide Glacial. He got his nickname from a classmate for his physical resemblance to Corporal Blutch, one of the characters of the comic series
Les Tuniques Bleues. His first strips appeared in Fluide Glacial between 1988 and 1993 (Pecos Jim, Waldo's Bar, Mademoiselle Sunnymoon). From 1993 he was part of the circle of cartoonists working for the independent comic book publisher
L’Association. In 1996 he joined
A Suivre magazine, where he designed the historical
Péplum series.
Rancho Bravo (with Jean-Louis Capron) and
Blotch (two issues), a satirical portrait of Fluide Glacial magazine and its illustrators, appeared in the late 1990s. He underlined his versatility with the two-volume autobiography about his childhood in
Le petit Christian (1998/2008) or with the comic novels
Vitesse Moderne (2002) and
La Volupté (2006). In 2002, Blutch received the
Prix international de la Ville de Genève pour la bande dessinée for Vitesse Moderne, and in 2009 the Grand Prix de la Ville d’Angoulême: that made Blutch president of the Angoulême comic festival in 2010. == Awards ==