The Swiss comic book writer André Jobin, known as Job, who imagined the character of Yakari, died on Tuesday at the age of 96, Le Lombard editions announced on Wednesday. Born in Delémont in the Swiss Jura, trained in journalism, he had the idea of a weekly for young people launched in Montreux in 1964, Le Crapaud à spectacles. His first series of comics, in 1967, tells the life of an owl, in “The Adventures of Pythagore and Co”, drawn by Derib (Claude de Ribaupierre, who is now 80 years old).
5 million copies sold
The duo then created Yakari, a child from the Lakota tribe in the northern United States. “Yakari took his first steps in black and white on December 12, 1969. The two authors could not then imagine the immense success to come,” explains Le Lombard. This character escapes the western: he does not meet settlers or cowboys, and he interacts with the animals. Yakari will give his name to another weekly, which will have 256 issues between 1974 and 1996. And he will be the hero of 38 albums for which Job wrote the script, between 1973 and 2014.
André Jobin has spoken very little in the media throughout his career. To write Yakari, he told Swiss radio RFJ in 2017, “I researched a lot. I am a journalist, I remain a journalist. I documented a lot about the Redskins (Editor’s note: term used in the past to designate Native Americans), from the Lakota tribe, and I was amazed by these people, children of Mother Earth.
The comic gave rise to an animated series broadcast from 2005 on the France Télévisions and RTBF channels in Belgium. Job won the youth prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival for two Yakari albums, in 1982 and 2006. He lived in the Nîmes region, in the south of France.
