Philippe Vandevelde

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Philippe Vandevelde, working under the pseudonym Tome or Philippe Tome (born February 24, 1957 in Brussels), is a comic strip script writer. With Janry he works on Spirou et Fantasio and Le Petit Spirou, and with Luc Warnant and Bruno Gazzotti on Soda. He also makes comics together with Ralf Meyer (Berceuse assassine), Philippe Berthet, and Hardy.

[edit] Biography

An operation left him blind for a short while at the age of five. His first experience with comic strips was at that time, when Tintin's 'King Ottokar's Sceptre and Corentin are being read to him.

Under the pseudonyms "Phil" and "Tom", he publishes his first illustrations and comics for the school magazine Buck (made by Thierry Groensteen) from 1972 to 1974. His first comic is a medieval parody Estrel, le troubadour.

In 1974, he meets Janry at a course of comics drawing. As they both go to school in the same city, they become friends.

After high school, Tome goes to the Art Academy in Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe, where he gets some established comic artists like Raymond Reding as teacher. Janry and their later colourist Stéphane De Becker are his classmates there, and together they start making comics where they combine all roles (sketching, inkting, story, ...).

Tome starts his professional comics career in the studio of Dupa, the author of Cubitus. Simultaneously, he starts his career at Spirou with his friends as creators of Eureka!, a page of games.

In 1981, they create their first story for Spirou et Fantasio, the iconic series of Spirou magazine, previously created by a succession of authors including the famous André Franquin, but now since a few years absent from the magazine. At first, three different teams all create stories for the series, but a few years later only Tome and Janry are left.

Tome and Janry have abandoned Spirou et Fantasio in 1998 after 14 albums, but they continue making Le Petit Spirou, a series about the youth of Spirou, for which they have made 12 albums since 1990.

Tome more and more focuses on writing stories, not only for Spirou et Fantasio but also the new series Soda for artist Luc Warnant, and some one shots.