2. Achdé (Born 1961) - Lot 2

2. Achdé (Born 1961) Lucky Luke, illustration for greeting card. India ink on paper, signed. 24.7x29.5 cm. Achdé was born in 1961 to a family repatriated from Morocco. He grew up in the garrigue of a ZUP (urban development zone) in Nîmes, in the heart of a mix of communities and cultures. "I lived 'La Ribambelle' every day," he says of his youth. "And when I wasn't playing outside, I spent my time drawing or watching the Sunday movie on TV. It was either a Western or a movie about knights. I preferred the former: the cowboys impressed me, whereas the knights looked like dorks in their tin cans!" says this admirer of John Ford's film "The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance". Attracted by the great outdoors, in 1983 he embarked on a Jack Kerouac-style voyage of initiation to North America! He gathered his (meagre) savings and hid money in his socks to escape government exchange controls. He spends a month between Canada and the United States, and, alas, the French army comes calling... Achdé - who was thinking of spending a year and a half working in Yemen, in memory of Henry de Monfreid's books - returned to France to study at Aix-en-Provence! He joined the armed forces health service, and when he was discharged, he returned to his job as an electroradiology technician. But this comic-book enthusiast was also keen on drawing, and as an avid reader of the legendary 'Mad' magazine, he left his sketchbooks lying around the waiting room at his practice. It has to be said that he fell into the world of comics as a child. The "fault" lies with Morris, Lucky Luke and the mythical poker duel scene in the album "Le Juge", as well as the "Asterix" that his mother used to read on the side! At the age of 7, Achdé bought his first "Lucky Luke" album with half the money he collected for church every Sunday! But moralists need not worry: the day he took over the series, he returned to the site to put the equivalent of the money in the collection box! The rest is history. It belongs to the contemporary history of comics: after years of hardship, the creation of an advertising agency, the first drawings published in 'Midi libre', the signing of a contract with Dargaud on his 30th birthday, success with the series "CRS = Détresse", "Les Damnés de la route", "Les Canayens de Montroyal", and finally, consecration with the revival of "Lucky Luke". "When I first started out, I used to go up to Paris once a year to present my dossier... which all the publishers refused, on the most varied pretexts. One of them, very famous, said to me: "The big nose is finished...". I think it was my tenacity that kept me going," says Achdé. Indeed, he never gave up, not even when he lost everything during the floods in Nîmes in 1988. In any case, as early as kindergarten, his future was written. The day the teacher asked him what he was going to do when he grew up, his answer came as swiftly as a cowboy drawing his six-shooter: "I want to draw Lucky Luke! In 2024, he returned to his passion for medicine with the publication of "Aïe ! La douleur se traite aussi avec humour" (Fluide Glacial), in which, in the company of rheumatologist Patrick Sichère, he takes us into the confines of pain in all its forms, with humor and erudition. (Text © Dargaud)