- published: 17 Apr 2014
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Jean Roba (28 July 1930 - 14 June 2006) was a Belgian comics author from the Marcinelle school. His best-known work is Boule et Bill.
Jean Roba was born in Schaerbeek, Belgium. In his youth, he was a reader of French magazines like Robinson and Mickey, which featured mainly American comics. One of those that was especially influential on Roba was Katzenjammer Kids. After working as an illustrator for different magazines and publicity agencies, he started to work as an illustrator for Spirou magazine in 1957, where he made small cartoons for the front page for a few years. He also worked on Bonnes Soirées, another magazine from the same publisher Dupuis, where he continued the series Sa majesté mon mari after Albert Uderzo stopped. For Spirou, he made a few short stories with Yvan Delporte and collaborated on different stories of Spirou et Fantasio with André Franquin, who taught him the basics of making comics, before starting his own main series Boule et Bill in 1959, initially with stories by Maurice Rosy. Next to this series of mainly one-page comics, he started in 1962 La Ribambelle about a group of kids from various countries and racial backgrounds.