Peyo

Pierre Culliford (; 25 June 1928 – 24 December 1992) was a Belgian comics writer and artist who worked under the pseudonym Peyo . His best-known works are the comic book series The Smurfs and Johan and Peewit, in the latter of which the Smurfs made their first appearance.

Early life Culliford was born in 1928 in the Brussels municipality of Schaerbeek, Belgium. He was the son of an English father and a Belgian mother.

Career Culliford took on the name "Peyo" early in his professional career, based on an English cousin's mispronunciation of Pierrot (a diminutive form of Pierre).

After working briefly at the Compagnie Belge d'Actualités (CBA), a small and short-lived Belgian animation studio, Peyo began making comic strips for daily newspapers such as Le Soir shortly after World War II. At the beginning of the 1950s, he brought his character Johan to the magazine Spirou, whom he soon gave a companion, the diminutive Peewit; the strip soon became a staple of the weeklies. Peyo introduced the Smurfs in the Johan and Peewit storyline The Magic Flute in 1958; the characters quickly supplanted Johan and Peewit in popularity and left them behind for their own series.

In 1960, Peyo founded a studio to accommodate his assistants such as François Walthéry, Gos, and and created the series Steven Strong and . Peyo's output diminished in the 1970s, at first due to the time he invested in The Smurfs and the Magic Flute (1976), a film adaptation of the Johan and Peewit story "La flûte à six schtroumpfs"; in the 1980s, he put more time, despite recurrent health problems, into an American adaptation of The Smurfs as an animated television series. After the series concluded, he left his publisher Dupuis to found his own publishing house, Cartoon Creation, and a cartoon magazine, Schtroumpf!, which soon folded due to management problems. He joined Le Lombard in 1992 but died a few months later.

Peyo began work, fresh from his coursework at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, at the (CBA), a small Belgian animation studio, where he met a few of his future colleagues and co-celebrities, like André Franquin, Morris, and Eddy Paape. When the studio folded after the war, the other artists went to work for Dupuis, but Peyo, a few years younger than the others, was not accepted. Johan rides off to defend the meek on his trusty horse, while Peewit gallops sporadically behind on his goat, named Biquette. The pair was driven by duty to their king and the courage to defend the underpowered. Peewit only appeared in the third adventure in 1954 but would stay for all later adventures.

Smurfs The first Smurf appeared in Johan and Peewit on 23 October 1958 in the album La Flûte à Six Schtroumpfs (The Six Smurfed Flute). As the Smurfs became increasingly popular, Peyo started a studio in the early 1960s, where a number of talented comics artists started to work. Peyo himself supervised the work and worked primarily on Johan and Peewit, leaving the Smurfs to the studio. The most notable artists to come out of this studio were Walthéry, , (Gos), Derib, , and .

In 1959, the Smurfs got their own series, and in 1960, two more began: Steven Strong and Jacky and Célestin. Many authors of the Marcinelle school collaborated on the writing, or on the artwork, including Willy Maltaite (aka 'Will'), Yvan Delporte, and Roger Leloup. Peyo became more of a businessman and supervisor and was less involved in the actual creation of the comics. He let his son, Thierry Culliford, lead the studio, while his daughter Véronique was responsible for the merchandising (I.M.P.S. was established in 1985 by her). Peyo's health began to fail. Following Hanna Barbara's decision to include the Smurfs in Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue without his permission, he would sever ties between Hanna Barbara and the Smurfs.

In 1989, after his partnership with Dupuis ended, he established Cartoon Creation to publish new Smurf stories. In late 1991, the company was forced to shut down due to mismanagement. The publishing rights were soon sold to Le Lombard.

Personal life, death, and legacy Culliford married Nine Devroye in 1952 and they had two children. He was also acknowledged to have been a smoker. He died of a heart attack in Brussels on 24 December 1992, aged 64. His studio still exists, and new stories for various series are regularly produced under his name.

Since his death, Peyo's children have continued to promote his work under the brand "Peyo". In the 2011 film The Smurfs, Peyo was included in the plot as a researcher who studied the myths concerning the Smurfs, who were made to be real-life legendary creatures in the film's storyline.

Awards and honours He received the Youth Prize (9–12 years) award 1984 at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, France. The 50th anniversary of The Smurfs and the 80th anniversary of the birth of its creator was celebrated by issuing a high-value collectors' coin: the Belgian 5 euro 50th anniversary of The Smurfs commemorative coin, minted in 2008.