Lewis Trondheim

Lewis Trondheim
Born Laurent Chabosy
(1964-12-11) December 11, 1964
Fontainebleau, France
Nationality French
Area(s) Writer, Artist
Notable works
 Les formidables aventures de Lapinot
Donjon
Awards full list

Lewis Trondheim (born Laurent Chabosy, French: [ʃabɔzi], on 11 December 1964), is a French cartoonist and one of the founders (in 1990) of the independent publisher L'Association. Both his silent comic La Mouche and Kaput and Zösky have been made into animated cartoons. He explained his choice of pseudonym after the Norwegian city of Trondheim as follows: "As a last name I wanted to use a city's name, but Lewis Bordeaux or Lewis Toulouse didn't sound so good. Then I thought about this city, Trondheim… Maybe someday I will publish a book under my real name, in order to remain anonymous."[1]

Biography

Lewis Trondheim was first known as the author of Les formidables aventures de Lapinot (later to be translated to English as The Spiffy Adventures of McConey). He invented the character in the late 1980s as a way to learn cartooning. The result was an initial 500 page graphic novel, Lapinot et les carottes de Patagonie. All the while, he was publishing short stories for the satirical French magazine Psikopat.

After his book Slaloms was awarded what was then called the Alph'Art Coup de coeur (First comic book prize) in 1993, Trondheim was offered to bring his burgeoning series to a major publisher, Dargaud, while he continued churning out more personal books for L'Association and other independent French publishers such as Cornélius. From there onwards, Trondheim began to enjoy a steady rise in popularity.

The following years represented a period of increasing activity, as Trondheim began to work on many different projects. He first created La Mouche ("The Fly") for the Japanese market, and then redrew a French version from scratch, after which the character was adapted as an animated cartoon.

Trondheim's greatest breakthrough after Lapinot is arguably Dungeon (in French, Donjon), an ambitious series which he created with Joann Sfar, and which has enjoyed a fair amount of popular success.

Trondheim's "retirement"

In 2004, after a long and intensive period during which he steadily released new books at a frantic pace, Lewis Trondheim announced he was more or less retiring from the world of comic strips, stating he did not want his passion to become a "job". He did draw and write a few stories within the following year, including a book reflecting on his decision to slow down, though the releases occurred at a much slower pace.

It has long been speculated he used this time partly to create another ambitious work, Le blog de Frantico, which was a comic strip blog published daily on the web for a whole year under the Frantico pseudonym. In interviews and on his web sites, Trondheim alternately admits and denies having written Le blog de Frantico, though another author, Sébastien Lesage eventually stepped up and claimed to be the real author, saying he had asked Trondheim to help him maintain the mystery. To this day however, the true identity of Frantico remains unconfirmed.

Another recent Trondheim occupation is that of editorial director at Delcourt, where he direct Shampooing, a collection of comic books for young readers.

In 2006, Trondheim was awarded the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, arguably the most prestigious award in the field.

Awards

- Inkpot Award, United States
- nomination for the Harvey Award for Best American Edition of Foreign Material[3]
- nominated for Best Long Comic Strip at the Haxtur Awards, Spain
- nomination for the Humour Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival
- nomination for Outstanding Story at the Ignatz Awards, USA
- nomination for the Dialogue Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival
- nomination for the Series Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival
- nomination for the Prize for Artwork at the Angoulême International Comics Festival
- nominated for the Award for Best Youth Comic at the Prix Saint-Michel[8]

Bibliography

Trondheim has written or drawn more than a hundred titles, spanning a large spectrum of genres; some of the most notable are:

About English translations

Two volumes of McConey have been published in English by Fantagraphics in editions close to the original. Fantagraphics has also published a range of shorter pieces by Trondheim in the comic The Nimrod. NBM has published Dungeon, both in comic book and graphic novel formats, as well as Little Nothings, a collection of autobiographical one-page vignettes. English versions of A.L.I.E.E.N. (retitled A.L.I.E.E.E.N.) and Le Roi Catastrophe (retitled Tiny Tyrant) have been published by First Second.

References

  1. ↑ Translated from Trondheim's presentation page (in German) on the website of his German publisher
  2. ↑ Harvey Awards site, 1999
  3. ↑ Harvey Awards site, 2000
  4. ↑ Harvey Awards site, 2001
  5. ↑ Harvey Awards site, 2002
  6. ↑ Eisner Awards 2008 nominations
  7. ↑ "The 2010 Eisner Awards: Eisner nominations". Comic-Con 2010. 2010. Retrieved 9 April 2010.
  8. ↑ "Les nominés 2010" (PDF). Retrieved 2010-09-14.

External links

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