Frank Pé


Frank Pé, often signing solely as Frank, was a Belgian comic book artist, best known for Broussaille and Zoo.
WWW frankpe.com

Life and career

Frank Pé was born in Ixelles on 15 July 1956. After studying sculpture for three years at the Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels, he began to create comics and illustrations for Spirou magazine, specializing in articles about animals. The fictional presenter of these stories, an adolescent named Broussaille, later got his own series, putting Pé in the limelight.
In the meantime, he also created L'élan, a moose whose aim in life is to have his own comic and his own albums. His first album was the one-shot Comme un animal en cage, written by Thierry Martens, then editor-in-chief at Spirou. Beginning in 1994, he worked on his two main series: Zoo, planned as a trilogy, and Broussaille. Zoo is a romantic and nostalgic series, while Broussaille is contemporary, allowing the author to intertwine it with his own life – featuring adventures in Brussels and in countries he has visited, such as Japan.
Pé was a slow worker, having only published 10 albums in 22 years. Over that time, he also contributed to the Warner Bros. Animation movie Quest for Camelot, but not much of his work was kept in the final film. He also made sculptures in bronze, and produced many illustrations for Scouting calendars. In 1993, he developed the series Matur for Kodansha.
As his main influences, Pé cited comics artists like André Franquin, Dany and Wasterlain, but also different artists like the sculptor Auguste Rodin, the painter Egon Schiele, and the film director Andrei Tarkovsky. Apart from art and comics, Pé's main interest was animals. He raised 50 reptiles, including 16 crocodiles.
Pé died on 29 November 2025, at the age of 69.

Awards

In 1991, a mural painting of Broussaille'' was unveiled in Brussels. It was the first in a long series of now over 30 murals celebrating comic heroes in the city.