André Jobin, better known under the pseudonym Job, has flown into eternity. Éditions du Lombard, his publisher, announced in a press release his death on Tuesday in Nîmes, where he had lived since 1999. He died at the age of 96.
Co-creator of the album series Yakari with his friend Derib, alias Claude de Ribaupierre, Job was born in a house on the Route de Moutier in 1927, in Delémont.
He was not really predestined for a career in the 9th art. A graduate in journalism, he is an editor at Paysfor which he covered political and cultural news for several years. He also has the fight for the autonomy of the canton firmly in his heart, he who is involved in the steering committee of the Jura Rally.
Educate young people while entertaining them, his mantra
In 1959, he founded the magazine Saturday-Jurawhich stops prematurely. He leaves Delémont this year and works for The Montreux Journalbefore radically changing its audience. In 1964, he created The Spectacled Toadweekly aimed at schoolchildren in French-speaking Switzerland. In his magazine, the Delémontain has the idea of instructing his readers while amusing them, like his colleagues in the newspaper Tintinby offering comics.
In 1967, he learned that Claude de Ribaupierre had returned to Tour-de-Peilz, after having worked on a Smurfs album, in Brussels. He approaches him to present his project. This is how a very long collaboration of almost 50 years began between the two men who first launched The Adventures of Pythagoras and Co.. In 1969 Yakari was born, a young Sioux from the Lakota tribe, a character that Derib took out of his boxes.
