Sad news for comics. Bob de Groot, screenwriter who, accompanied by the cartoonist Turk, enchanted young people with the adventures of Leonard, an old inventor gifted with genius and the parody Robin Dubois, died on Friday, November 17, in Ottignies in Belgium, at the age of 82 years, announced Éditions du Lombard.
Born in the 1940s in Brussels, this pillar of Franco-Belgian comics devoted himself ardently to the genre from a very young age. “Leaving classes as soon as possible to indulge in his passion – even if it initially involves organizing the beach games for the Spirou newspaper. It seems as if offering laughter and escape to children was second nature to Bob de Groot,” write Éditions du Lombard, not without emotion.
Aged 21, he published his first mini-story in the newspaper Spirou before working for its competitor the newspaper Tintin. His sense of the absurd, his anachronisms and his play on words scattered in Leonard and Robin Dubois, made him rich and beautiful in the 1970s.
His plethora of work includes prestigious collaborations and has distinguished himself in different registers. With Philippe Francq in particular (designer of the global success Largo Winch) he departed from humor for a time to write the dark and realistic Des Cities et des femmes. He also knew how to “successfully follow in the footsteps of Goscinny, Franquin or Macherot to write Lucky Luke, Modeste et Pompon or Clifton”, specifies Le Lombard. A talent discoverer, like his mentor Greg who took him under his wing, he was the first to believe in a beginner comedian named…Philippe Geluck, when he was the editor-in-chief of the magazine, L’oeuf .