Born in Tournai (Belgium) in 1961, Philippe Delaby was a natural born artist. It wasn’t until the age of 8, however, that he discovered his passion for comics, when his father gave him his very first album. Ever since, these stories in speech bubbles have been a major part of his life. At 14 he was accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown, where he fine-tuned his talent. Fascinated by Ingres and the Flemish masters, he got to grips not only with the art of drawing, but oil painting as well. His attraction to comics took over nevertheless, and at the age of 18 he won a competition for young artists that opened to him the pages of the magazine “Tintin.” From the weekly magazine for readers “7 to 77” came “Hello Bédé,” which he illustrated with a script written by Y. Duval, and “Arthur au royaume de l’Impossible” and “Richard Coeur de Lion,” two sagas that earned him a Clio Award at the Paris History Fair in 1993. The same year he illustrated “Bran,” written by J.-L. Vernal, which tells the story of a young Gaul. In 1994, together with novelist L. Delisse he released “L’Étoile polaire,” a medieval fantasy thriller published by Le Lombard. In 1997, encouraged by the scriptwriter Jean Dufaux, he masterfully brought back to life the imperial Rome of Nero in the award-winning “Murena,” published by Dargaud (Europe Comics in English). With his growing success, Philippe Delaby allowed himself to escape into the “Complainte des landes perdues” (“Lament of the Lost Moors,” Cinebook), a fantasy world imagined by his friends Jean Dufaux and Grzegorz Rosinski. Philippe Delaby died on January 29, 2014.