It has been announced that Belgian comics artist and writer Bob de Groot has died.
When I was growing up in France, his series
"Leonard" was one of my favourites. This was the adventures of an inventor (inspired by Leonardo da Vinci) and his long-suffering assistant, or "Disciple". Leonard comes up with all sorts of inventions, the building and testing of which results in the Disciple ending up covered in injuries of all kinds. De Groot wrote the scripts and the series was drawn by Turk, pen-name of Philippe Liégeois.
Turk & De Groot's other work included "Robin Dubois", a parody of Robin Hood which was published in
Tintin magazine. In this series, Robin would rob from the rich and spend the money on rounds of drinks at the local pub. Among the drinkers was the Sheriff of Nottingham, provided that he could get away from the castle and his disapproving wife and her rolling-pin!
Sadly, neither of these series have been published in English, but another,
"Clifton", has been and is available at
Amazon.
This detective series was originally created by Raymond Macherot for
Tintin magazine and has continued to appear even after the weekly magazine ceased publication. Turk & De Groot's version made the stereotypical English Colonel more irascible and bad-tempered but he has still proven very popular.
De Groot also wrote scripts for the cowboy series
"Lucky Luke" for the artist Morris after the death of Rene Goscinny.
Another great contributor to Belgian comics who should be better known in the English-speaking world passes on.
