Born in 1956 at Port-Liautey in Morocco to a father in the military and a mother who was a teacher, Pierre-Yves Gabrion’s childhood was split between Nice and French Guiana before, as an adult, becoming a journalist for the local press and the regional FR3 studio.
He was introduced to the world of comics via several related jobs: illustrator for storybook magazines, typographic designer for AMIS-COOP where he produced his first comic strips, and regular contributor to Pistil, Fripounet, L’Étudiant and even Le Point. He produced scripts for the Mickey Journal under the pseudonym of Gabs, and transformed the adventures of Ulysses, the mascot dog of “Le Club d’Ulysse,” into a comic strip for FR3.
He began to make a name for himself at Spirou magazine in 1983 with the “Pensionnaires” and started writing scenarios for “Tahoré, le petit Tahitien” for Curt Ridel at Fripounet, working with Frédéric Garcia, then Claude Lacroix and Régis Loisel.
Éditions Milan published his first series of adventure books, “Les Mémoires du capitaine Moulin.” He continued in this direction with the saga “L’Homme de Java” at the publishing house Vents d’Ouest, before creating “Phil Koton” for Casterman.
For his first anthology of “Sales petits contes,” containing a revision of the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Yann invited him to illustrate “La Reine du X,” a surreal fantasy.
His latest work is the futuristic police comic “Karma City,” published in 2016 with Dupuis (Europe Comics 2017).
Whether writing or illustrating, he is gifted with a prolific eclecticism and handles humor just as well as adventure stories. Talented and versatile, deftly manipulating any style, Gabrion still manages to surprise any lover of the graphic arts.
