lit a candle 3h ago80. never heard of him until today
Their story
Brice Tarvel, the pen name of Jean Pol Laselle, was a French novelist, short story writer and comic book scriptwriter whose long career ran through fanzines, children's magazines, crime and horror paperbacks and the continuing adventures of Bob Morane. He died in the night of 6 to 7 October 2026,…
Brice Tarvel, the pen name of Jean Pol Laselle, was a French novelist, short story writer and comic book scriptwriter whose long career ran through fanzines, children's magazines, crime and horror paperbacks and the continuing adventures of Bob Morane. He died in the night of 6 to 7 October 2026, aged 80.
He was born in Reims, in the Marne department, on 5 August 1946. From his youth he loved popular and fantastic literature, and he counted Henri Vernes, creator of Bob Morane, and the Belgian writer Jean Ray, author of the Harry Dickson stories, among his strongest influences.
He began by publishing his own fantastic fiction, issuing a single number of the fanzine Necronomicon in September 1972 with a cover by his Reims friend Patrice Sanahujas, before placing stories in other fanzines and in the American horror magazine Creepy. Around 1978 his comic scripts, written under his real name, were drawn by Sanahujas for the Fleurus magazine Djin, and he also wrote for Okapi and Fripounet, notably with the artist André Juillard. He used a long list of pseudonyms, including François Sarkel, Roseline Joncel, François Dargny and Nicolas Olsagne.
After a period devoted to novels, he returned to comics in the early 1990s, scripting fantasy series published as albums, among them Les Contes de Mortepierre, Sylve and Les Traîne-ténèbres, with artists such as Édouard Aidans, Christian Verhaeghe and Mohamed Aouamri. In the same decade he wrote crime, science fiction, adventure and gore novels for Fleuve noir, Vaugirard, Trash and Rivière blanche, mostly as François Sarkel. Boogy et Rana won the youth prize for ages seven to eight at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 1997.
From around 2009 he turned increasingly to short fiction, writing Les Dossiers secrets de Harry Dickson, which were later adapted into comics with Christophe Alvès. From 2014 he was one of the authors who carried on Henri Vernes's hero Bob Morane, a character who had fascinated him since boyhood. Friends in the French science fiction and comics world remembered his humour, his comradeship and above all his smile. He was survived by his wife, Danièle Laselle, and their daughter.
Biography adapted from French and English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), ActuSF (7 October 2026) and Stripspeciaalzaak (7 October 2026). Wikipedia ↗
Photos
1Brice Tarvel at Imaginales 2014
by People Forever
