René Pellos

René Pellos, born René Marcel Pellarin on January 22, 1900 in Lyon and died on April 8, 1998 in Cannes, is a French comic strip writer and artist.

Of Savoyard parents, the young René Pellarin, the future Pellos, was born in the first arrondissement of Lyon on January 22, 1900. His parents tried to get him to train at the Geneva School of Fine Arts, which he left after the first lesson. Pellos therefore learned his trade "on the job". His "kick" allowed him to enter at the age of 16 as a press cartoonist in a Geneva satirical newspaper: Guguss', a magazine by Louis Bron, famous for its commitment to the prohibition of absinthe, then in other regional newspapers.

In 1930, he moved to Paris and began his career in both general and specialist sports periodicals. His work as a sports illustrator, published in numerous periodicals, was "first rate." Quickly adopted by the public, he was offered the opportunity to follow the Tour de France, for which he became the favorite press cartoonist and caricaturist for many years. Pellos' career was prolific in comic strips and, even if it was not his major work, his production of around a hundred albums of the Pieds Nickelés (a comic strip series created by Louis Forton) in 30 years, after the Second World War, left its mark on the world of comics. Pellos took it up again in 1948 and continued until 19812. Less well-known, but undoubtedly more original, he revolutionized the science fiction style with Futuropolis, a futuristic comic strip published in Junior from 1937 to 1938, in which he multiplied aesthetic audacities. He also proposed numerous creations in youth periodicals.

Pellos died on April 8, 1998 in Cannes at the age of 98, when he was the oldest French comic strip artist.