French cartoonist Jean-Jacques Sempé, best known for creating the Le Petit Nicolas (Little Nicholas) children’s books with René Goscinny (Asterix), died Thursday just a week before his 90th birthday. The news was reported to Agence France Press by the artist’s wife, Martine Gossieaux Sempé.
Centering on a mischievous but scrappy schoolboy, Little Nicholas has been adapted into a trio of live-action films as well as a 2009 animated series (produced by Method Animation) and, most recently, the 2D animated feature film Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be, which won the Annecy Cristal for Feature Film. The 2022 film is directed by Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre and co-written By Goscinny’s daughter, Anne.
Known professionally as simply “Sempé,” the beloved artist was born in Pessac, near Bordeaux, on August 17, 1932 and, sadly, endured a troubled childhood. After being expelled from school, he worked odd jobs until he finally joined the French army in 1950 by lying about his age — where he sometimes got in trouble for drawing while he was supposed to be on watch. The young man’s age was discovered and he was discharged from the army, whereupon he moved to Paris in 1953 and fatefully met Goscinny in the offices of the World Press.
Sempé has already created the Little Nicholas character for World Press publication Le Moustique. When the publisher asked him to expand his kids’ POV comics into a full-length strip, he turned to Goscinny for help with the storyline. The pair worked together on the strips from 1956 to 1958, when they left Le Moustique and began creating the classic illustrated books. The first Petit Nicolas short story, L’œuf de Pâques (The Easter Egg) was published in the Sud-Ouest Dimanche in 1959, which continued to publish the comics alongside Pilote until 1965.
Outside his collaboration with Goscinny on Little Nicholas, Sempé built an early reputation on the Franco-Belgian comics scene, publishing cartoons in Paris Match for many years and becoming known for his distinctive flair for telling a full story with his signature watercolours and sketches and limited character dialog. He won his first award in 1952. He is also well known for his over 100 cover illustrations for The New Yorker, which bring the same loving detail to New York City as his other work lends to his longtime Paris hometown.
Sempé was married to and divorced from artists Christina Courtois and Mette Ivers, with whom he had a daughter, before marrying his former agent, Martine Gossieux, in 2017.
Here is the trailer for the Annecy Prize-winning feature Le Petit Nicolas: Happy As Can Be movie, which will be released in France on Oct. 12.
[Source: Deadline]
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