Régis Loisel is one of France’s best-known and prolific comic strip artists, with a large following for his extended series including La quête de l’oiseau du temps (The Quest for the Bird of Time, 1975–2020), Pyrénées (1981–98), Peter Pan (1990–2004), and Magasin général (General Store, 2006 on).

Loisel grew up in Saint-Maixent-l’École in the Deux-Sèvres department in western France, and when he was twenty he  moved to Paris, where his first comic strip was published in 1972 in Les Pieds Nickelés. He attended comic-drawing classes at the University of Vincennes, taught by Jean-Claude Mézières, where he also met fellow artists Patrick Cothias and Serge Le Tendre. They developed links that were both friendly and professional, and their short stories, often with fantastic themes, appeared in magazines including Pilote, Mormoil, Pif Gadget (Capitaine Kergenec), Tousse Bourin, Plop (Norbert le lézard), Fluide Glacial and Métal Hurlant.

In 1979 Régis Loisel founded the Bergame games workshop with Michel Rouge and Olivier Taffin, and has continued to be involved in the design of computer games. In 1989, soon after his marriage to fellow artist Marie-Hélène, he moved to Perros-Guirec in Brittany, where together with colleagues Jean-Charles Kraehn and Laurent Vicomte he founded the Perros-Guirec Comics Festival, which takes place every year in April. The mid-2000s saw another move, this time to Chanceaux-près-Loches in the Indre-et-Loire department of central France, and he and Marie-Hélène now live and work in Montreal in Canada, returning regularly to France.

We are very grateful to our friends Yuri and Volker for suggesting the inclusion of this artist.