Alexandre Coutelis was born in Paris on 8 February 1949 and started working as a fitter at the age of fifteen. He was a great sportsman and twice participated in French boxing championships, but his dream was to make a success of drawing.
He managed to obtain some pages on current affairs in Pilote in 1971, and then tried his hand at different genres for around ten years: press drawings, daily cartoon strips and complete stories. He briefly appeared in Lire, L’expansion, Le Nouvel Economiste, Pif Gadget, Fluide Glacial and L’echo Des Savanes…
In 1984, at Dargaud, he published “Dampierre et Morrison” with a script by Rodolphe. This cartoon was spotted by Jean-Michel Charlier who was looking for someone to illustrate the story of a private detective… sponsored by Canada Dry! Chuck Dougherty (“L’Ange de la mort”) appeared in L’echo Des Savanes.
Charlier then asked him to succeed Serres on “Tanguy et Laverdure”, but the experience was halted after a single album (“Survol interdit”, 1988) due to the death of the scriptwriter.
He is always ready to take up new challenges and was involved in various adventures at the Vaisseau d’Argent (in one of the parallel series of the “Vagabond des Limbes” with words written by Christian Godard and Bollée), at Albin Michel (“Man, superhéros polyvalent”, written by Setbon in 1991) at Dupuis (the conclusion of the first episode of “Roi vert”, left unfinished after the death of Jacques Armand) and at the Audie publishers (“Bienvenue à Welcomeland” with words by Tronchet in 1998).
Coutelis passes easily from realism to humour and is only missing a major scriptwriter to give him an original and enduring character.
