Presentation
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Name : De Bévère First name : Maurice Nickname : Morris Date of birth : December 1, 1923 Occupation : Scenario writer-draughtsman Main work : Lucky Luke |
Biography
Maurice de Bévère was born on December 1, 1923 in Courtrai (Belgium). When he was 20 years old, he went in a studio creating cartoons, at which he worked with Franquin, Will, Paape... under the direction of Joseph Gillain alias Jijé. At that time, Jijé was to make live a half-dozen of characters and was overworking. Eventually he decided to entrust several of his heroes to the young artists of the studio. They all accepted (Spirou became the work of Franquin) except the small fair one with glasses who proposed to add a cow-boy to the world of the Comics ; a cow-boy with a great sense of humor because the dramatic adventures of Red Ryder, " the red rider ", were already published.
Lucky Luke was born. Maurice had made the demonstration of his humor by creating covers amusing for the Mosquito newspaper. Because the readers enjoyed his illustrations the readers, Maurice de Bévère, now called Morris, was allowed to publish the first adventures of the famous cow-boy in Spirou-Magazine (Mosquito and Spirou belong to the same editor) at the end of the year 1946. The history names Arizona 1880 and counts only one score of pages. The characters refer round because of the cartoons training of Morris (curves were easier to "animate" than the lines). This episode provided a great success to Morris, then he was invited to pursue. "Rodeo" and "the gold mine of Dick Digger" reflected the Lucky Luke success story.
Then, Morris left Europe to settle in New York. With Franquin and Jijé, he undertook to travel throughout the United States, he visited the North, the South, the Rocky mountains, the small towns, the Rio Grande, etc... During these 6 years spent in Manhattan, he became acquainted with a "very funny" young French man who said that he made laugh indifferently in English or French: Rene Goscinny. Together they spoke about the West, cow-boys movies... But also about the future. Morris and Goscinny tandem were now the authors of the adventures of the " poor lonesome cow-boy ". Back in Europe, Goscinny and Morris started their collaboration when they wrote the album " Of the rails on the meadows ". But at that time the job of scenario writer was not really acknowledged, the Co-creation of Lucky Luke by the duet was only officialized when " the rivals of Painful Gulch " were published.
As years went by, Lucky Luke became less and less the " poor lonesome cow-boy ". Of course, the fathers of the hero had become perfect experts of the Far West. Goscinny read a lot of books, biographies, reports... about Western America. Soon he started again, on another subject: the birth of the small Gallic. Then Lucky Luke met famous characters of Far West like Billy the Kid, judge Roy Bean who made " the law in the west of Pecos ", Jesse James, Calamity Jane, Rantanplan (Rintintin re-examined by Morris and Goscinny) and Dalton.
After the death of Goscinny in 1977, the scenario of Lucky Luke was taken again by many authors: Vicq, De Groot, Mow, Léturgie, Hartog Van Banda, Dom Domi and Lodewijk. The lonesome cow-boy was the hero of 3 movies: Daisy Town (1971), the Ballade of Dalton (1978) and Dalton in Mare (1983). The adventures of Lucky Luke were featured at the television. Lucky Luke had to stop smoking, it was rewarded by the OMS (the World Health Organization) within a framework for the World Day without Cigarette to have shown the good example. June 27, 1992, the Academy of the Great Prices confered the Great Special Price on Morris at the 20th Anniversary of the International Show of the Comic strip in Angouleme.
The adventures of Lucky Luke were translated in 30 languages and known throughout the world, as a great classic French comic strip , like Tintin and Asterix. Morris is one of the few authors who dedicated their work to only one hero.
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