Louis Salvérius

Louis Salvérius, who mostly signed his work Salvé, is known as the initial artist of the successful series 'Les Tuniques Bleues' in Spirou. After his military service, he began working at the art studio of the publishing house Dupuis in 1955. His first illustration was published in Risque-Tout, and since then, he provided countless realistic and humorous illustrations for Spirou. He did the lay-outs for pocket book collections like 'Les Merveilles de la Vie' and 'Gags de Poche', and he also worked as a cameraman at the animation department TVA for a while.

After a while, Salvé also turned to comics, starting with a center-folded mini-book scripted by Yvan Delporte. He specialized in comical western series, initially for the mini-book section. Throughout the 1960s, Salvé made various mini-books with characters like 'Tim et Tom' and 'Petit Cactus', cooperating with scriptwriters like Rosy, Devos and Deliège. For Spirou's normal pages, he made the Indian gag series 'Whamoka et Whikilowat' with Devos (1963-67), and later on, 'Ginarino le Sicilien' with Gavazzi (1967-68). In addition, he cooperated with Jamic on the illustrations for western books in the Carrousel collection.

In 1968, Salvérius started working with scriptwriter Raoul Cauvin. Together they created the popular series 'Les Tuniques Bleues', a comical series about the American cavalry during the Secession War. Initially a series of short stories and gags, Salvé and Cauvin eventually made longer continuing stories, that were also published in albums by Dupuis. Unfortunately, Salvérius died after four albums, and never experienced the present-day success of the series. The artwork was taken over by Willy Lambil.