Raoul Cauvin

Raoul Cauvin can be considered to be the leading scenarist in humorous comics for a large audience. After being educated as an advertising lithographer, he discovered that the profession he learned for didn't even exist anymore for about twenty years! So he took on several odd jobs before he started working for the comics publisher Dupuis. For Dupuis' magazine Spirou, he started out doing lettering, as well as writing his first scenarios for artists like Eddy Rysack, Serge Gennaux, Claire Brétécher and Carlos Roque.

The year 1968 marked the real beginning of Cauvin's successful career, when he started the series 'Les Tuniques Bleues', about soldiers in the American Civil War. The artwork was done by Louis Salvérius, who sadly died after only four albums. The artwork was taken over by Willy Lambil and the series has become Cauvin's most successful work to date. Also with Lambil, Cauvin started the parody 'Pauvre Lampil', about the terrible relationship between a comics artist and his scenarist. Cauvin and Lambil themselves were the main characters in this series. In 1969 he stared another series, 'Caline et Calebasse', this time with Luc Mazel.

Raoul Cauvin kept intensifying his activities throughout the 1970s. He took on numerous series, like the gangster series 'Sammy' with Berck and the series 'Boulouloum et Guiliguili', about a mini-Tarzan and his gorilla, again with Mazel. Cauvin also started some gag series, like 'L'Agent 212' with Daniel Kox, 'Le Vieux Bleu' with Walthèry, 'Mirliton' with Raymond Macherot, etc. From 1980 he wrote three scenarios in the 'Spirou et Fantasio' series, illustrated by Nic Broca.

In the 1980s Cauvin continued expanding his comics activities. He started two series in which he could show his sense of black humor: 'Les Femmes en Blanc' (artwork by Bercovici) and 'Pierre Tombal' (artwork Hardy). From 1986 he started yet again successful series, like 'Cédric' with Laudec, 'Les Voraces' with Glem, 'Cupidon' with Malik and 'Les Psy' with Bédu. Although all of his comics appeared in Spirou or at publisher Dupuis, he also did some work for other publishers with artists like Jacques Sandron and Louis-Michel Carpentier.

Cauvin's only attempt to draw his own comic was 'Zotico', which appeared in Spirou in the early 1980s.