Jacques Hurtubise / ZYX (1958 – 2015)

(follow the link above for a biography in French)

Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007

Jacques Hurtubise, who uses the pseudonym Zyx, founded the Coopérative des Petits Dessins in 1972 a group of young Canadian comic strip artists who offered daily strips to French Canadian dailies in the seventies. Le Jour, a political daily published his strip about the bad guy ‘Sombre Vilain until the paper folded in 1976. This series was later continued in the popular satirical monthly magazine Croc (1979-1995), which Hurtubise founded with Hélène Fleury and Roch Côté in 1979. Several other «Bandes Dessinées» magazines and albums were published during the eighties by Hurtubise ( Titanic, Anormal, Mad Quebec, Red Ketchup) but they never reached the popularity of Croc.

Because of his talents in graphics and because of his entrepreneurial exploits, Zyx was on of the driving force of the Canadian «Bandes dessinées » movement and one of the big names among Canadian artists of the 1970-1990 period.

Hurtubise largely left comics behind for a career in technology, eventually serving as an executive with multimedia giant Quebecor.

Jacques Hurtubise passed away on Friday, December 11 after suffering a devastating heart attack.