artwork by Mounier
Frank Giroud was one of the most successful writers of contemporary French comics. He has worked with many artists, and is the author of many series. Among his most remarkable works are his concept serials like 'Le Décalogue', 'Destins', 'Sécrets' and 'Quintett', for which he cooperates with another artist for every album or storyline.
Born in Toulouse, Frank Giroud showed an early talent for drawing. He won a writing contest at age 10, but began his career as a history teacher, before returning to writing in 1979. Throughout his career, Giroud has combined his historical knowledge with his passion for writing. His first credits include the collections 'La DÈcouverte du Monde en Bandes Dessinées' and 'L'Histoire du Far West', for which he wrote short stories for artists such as Alarico Gattia, José de Huescar, Pierre Frisano, José Bielsa and Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri. His stories were also published in magazines like Circus, Vécu, Nitro, Spirou and Tintin.
Frank Giroud reached a larger audience and turned to fulltime writing in the 1980s, after gaining his first success with the series 'Luis la Guigne', that he created with Jean-Paul Dethorey for Vécu in 1982. From then on, Giroud expanded his activities, and created new, mainly historical, series, like 'Le Chaman' with Ab'Aigre (Ice Crimm's, 1984), 'Les Patriotes' with Fabien Lacaf (Glénat, 1988-1992), 'Missouri' with Daniel de Carpentrie (Dupuis, 1989-1991), 'Jackson' with Marc-Renier (Lombard, 1989-1991).
For Lax he started writing political thrillers, in which he heavily critisized the French soldiers in France's former colonies. These albums, 'Les Oubliées d'Annam' (1990-1991), 'La Fille aux Ibis' (1993) and 'Azrayen' (1998-1999) were published in the prestigious Aire Libre collection of the publishing house Dupuis. The 1990s also brought new series like the detective thrillers 'Eva K.' and 'Mandrill' (with Barly Baruti) and new historical works like 'Pieter Horn' (with Norma) and 'Louis Ferchot' (with Didier Courtois).
In January 2001 the first volumes of Giroud's ambitious project 'Le Décalogue' was published by Glénat. This series contains 10 albums drawn by different artists, like Joseph Béhé, Giulio de Vita and TBC. It was the story of a mysterious new book called Nahik, that contained a new and unknown religious decalogue dictated by the prophet Mohammed. Each book in the series was situated in another part of history. After completing the main series, Giroud made follow-ups called 'Le Légataire' (with Josep Béhé and Camille Meyer) and 'Les Fleury-Nadal' (with Rollin, Hulet, Courtois and Mezzomo) between 2006 and 2010.
Following 'Le Décalogue', Giroud started two smiliar projects in the collection Empreinte(s) of Dupuis from 2004. 'Secrets' is a collection containting several sub-series, that all deal with family secrets. Artwork was done by Milan Jovanovic, Michel Faure, Marianne Duvivier, Ruben Pellejero and Magda, while Florent Germaine and Virginie Greiner have participated in some of the writing. In 'Quintett' (2005-2007), the whereabouts of a band with French soldiers in Alergia were told, with each of the five books telling the story from the perspective of another character. The art was done by Giulio De Vita, Cyril Bonin, Paul Gillon, Steve Cuzor, Jean-Charles Kraehn and Giancarlo Alessandrini.
Between 2010 and 2012 set up and edited 'Destins' for Glénat, a collective project of thirteen artists and twelve writers, that followed several possible timelines for the two main characters after a failed hold-up. New regular series include 'L'Expert', that is drawn by Brada for Glénat since 2003. He returned to detective thrillers at Albin Michel with 'Le Cercle de Minsk', that is drawn by Jean-Marc Stalner since 2006. Since 2010, Giroud has created 'Les Champs d'Azur', a saga about a family of aviation pioneers, with Luc Brahy for Glénat. He turned to historical fiction with the 'Galkiddek' trilogy, of which the first volume, drawn by Paolo Grella, was published by Delcourt in 2013.
