Christian Cailleaux
Comic book author, illustrator and poor trumpet player like his hero of Les Imposteurs, Christian Cailleaux lived for fifteen years between Africa, Quebec and France, and began his career as an author in the Génération Dargaud collection before producing two albums alone for the same publisher. Since then, he has continued to travel from country to country, from album to album. Between a novel cover and a jazz record cover, he likes to tell stories of departures, towards Africa, the Indian Ocean, India... and develops a universe between clear lines and graphic freedom. Still about seas and faraway places, he embarks - literally and figuratively - on the grey buildings of the Royale with the man who will become his friend, the actor-writer Bernard Giraudeau, for the album R97, les hommes à terre. Then he enters the prestigious Aire Libre collection of the Dupuis publishing house to evoke Boris Vian by drawing Piscine Molitor with his friend and screenwriter Hervé Bourhis. It was in this same collection that he continued his collaboration with the late Bernard Giraudeau by publishing Les Longues Traversées. He then turned his attention to comic books, recounting his embarkation to the Terres Australes in "Marins d'eaux dures", published in the N° 1 of LA REVUE DESSINÉE, then included in the album EMBARQUÉ (Futuropolis). At the beginning of 2017, the biography of Jacques Prévert, conceived with Hervé, is published Bourhis : JACQUES, PRÉVERT n'est pas un poète (Aire Libre). In 2018, Timothée de Fombelle and Gallimard-BD offer him a magnificent detective novel that flies over the rooftops of the Paris Opera to New York buildings to compose GRAMERCY PARK (Prix des Lecteurs de Charente, nominated for the Eisner Awards and Polar-SNCF at the Angoulême festival), before leaving on a scientific mission for TARA Expeditions and the CAHIERS DE LA MER DE CHINE (Aire Libre).
In 2020, he returned to his roots of the clear line to draw with Étienne Schréder the twenty-seventh episode of the adventures of Blake and Mortimer, Le Cri du Moloch, written by Jean Dufaux.
Bibliography
Le cri du Moloch - Blake and Mortimer number 27 with Jean Dufaux and Etienne Schréder. Éditions Blake et Mortimer, fin 2020
R97, les hommes à terre with Bernard Giraudeau, Réédition Aire Libre/Dupuis, 2020
Piscine Molitor, a drawn biography of Boris Vian with H. Bourhis, reprinted Aire Libre/Dupuis, 2020
Cahiers de la Mer de Chine, Aire Libre, November 2018
Gramercy Park, with T. de Fombelle, Gallimard BD, April 2018
Jacques Prévert n'est pas un poète with H. Bourhis, Éditions Dupuis, coll. Aire Libre, 2017.
EMBARQUÉ, carnets marins dans le jardin du commandant, Futuropolis, 2015
Les Longues Traversées with Bernard Giraudeau, Editions Dupuis, Aire Libre collection, 2011.
Piscine Molitor, a drawn biography of Boris Vian with H. Bourhis. Editions Dupuis, coll. Aire Libre, 2009
R97, les hommes à terre with Bernard Giraudeau, Casterman, 2008
Tchaï Masala, Hindi monologue , [Treize Etrange], 2007
La trilogie Les imposteurs, Casterman, 2003-2005
Harmattan, le vent des fous, [Treize Etrange], 2003
Le café du voyageur, [Treize Etrange], 2002
Le troisième thé , [Treize Etrange], 2001
Haëllifa, Dargaud 1999 (out of print)
In the PRESS
Une gouttedans l'océan, BD-reportage published in La Revue Dessinée #21 in September 2018
Marins d'eaux dure, BD-reportage published in La Revue Dessinée #1 in September 2013
Singapore Sling, BD-reportage published in the summer 2013 issue of the magazine LONG-COURS
Photo credits
© Gary Lafitte