The French illustrator Bernard Dufossé grew up in the eastern Paris suburb of Le Raincy, and studied applied arts at the École Estienne, graduating in 1956. He began his career in advertising, then in 1964 he began drawing for Fleurus publications, including Fripounet, Lisette and Djin. The following year he began his regular collaboration with the Bayard Group, notably by creating the ‘Nathalie’ series for the newspaper Record, which ran until 1974.

In 1976 Dufossé created the science fiction series ‘Mémory’ with text by Jean-Marie Nadaud, and two years later he launched the science fiction series ‘Tärhn, Prince des Étoiles’. Between 1979 and 1987 nine albums of Tärhn were published by Glénat. In the 1980s he illustrated four stories from the Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series. During the 1980s he also illustrated a number of promotional and educational comics on a range of subjects, including countries (Gabon, Saudi Arabia), personalities (Hassan II of Morocco, Baden Powell, Saint Vincent Pallotti), and companies (Total, Elf).

Having been actively involved in scouting since a teenager, he published the series ‘La Patrouille des Mouflons’ in the magazine Scouts, and the series ‘Pierre et la meute’ (under the pseudonym Jek) in the magazine Louveteaux. From 1989 to 2001 he was the official illustrator of the Scouts de France, and from 2006 to 2010 collaborated with the Scouts Unitaires de France, illustrating the magazine Woodcraft and several educational manuals.

Then, at the turn of the millennium, when Dufossé was in his mid-sixties and thinking of retiring, his erotic imagination suddenly erupted, and in the course of the next eight years he produced some of his best, most complex, and most transgressive comic strip work. Using the pseudonym Hanz Kovacq, he collaborated with the magazine Bédéadult to produce four volumes of Hilda and two of Diane de Grand Lieu, harnessing key periods of violence in France’s history to imagine the lot of women experiencing – mostly overcoming and sometimes perversely enjoying – extreme humiliation.

Bernard Dufossé was married to Chrystelle Dufossé-Delannoy, and had two children and two step-children.