Boulet (comics)

Boulet, the pen name for Gilles Roussel, is a French comic book creator and cartoonist born 1 February 1975 in Meaux, France. He was among the first French cartoonists to become famous by publishing a blog BD, starting in July 2004.

Biography
Roussel studied art at the Graduate School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg. In 2001, he published his first comic strip, Raghnarok. He then started a cartoon blog on the internet in July 2004, which made him well known in France. Since then, he has worked for French comics strip magazine Tchô ! and Psikopat, and on many others as an author or cartoonist. He replaced Lewis Trondheim as cartoonist of the comic strip Donjon Zénith.

The popularity of his blog allowed him to become the first "Godfather" of the newly created Paris Comic Strip Blog Festival (Festival des blogs BD), in 2005.

The drawings from his blog were first published in 2008, entitled "Notes". Eleven volumes have been published as of November 2021.

Roussel participated in the French-speaking 24-hour comics day in Montreal in 2008.

He started an English version of his blog in November 2009, where he republished all of his posts from the French blog from its start in 2004 in chronological order, at the rate of three posts per week.

In 2017, Boulet started a collaboration with the publisher Delcourt in order to produce Project Octopus, a collection of scientific comic books evoking subjects as diverse as the exploration of Mars to philosophy. Four to five books a year are planned to be released under this project. These books are written and drawn by artists such as Florence Porcel, Erwann Surcouf, and Héloïse Chochois, but are edited by Boulet.

Other books

 * Soupir with Laureline Michaut, Erwann Surcouf, Cha, Arthur De Pins, published by Nekomix, 2006
 * Nekomix 7 : spécial Cinéma with Erwann Surcouf, Phicil, Drac, Tomatias, Amandine, published by Nekomix, 2008
 * Erik le Viking, (cartoonist), author Terry Jones, Fantasy collection, published by Bragelonne, 2008 ISBN 2-35294-234-9
 * Zach Weinersmith, Augie and the Green Knight, 2015.
 * Neil Gaiman, Par bonheur, le lait, published by Au Diable Vauvert, 2015. ISBN 2846269688
 * Pulsions : un spectacle graphique (cartoonist) with Kyan Khojandi and Bruno Muschio, published by éditions Albin Michel, 2019 ISBN 978-2-226-43833-1.
 * Le joli Coco est un joli Coco (cartoonist) with Capucine, published by Lapin Éditions, 2020 ISBN 978-2-37754-081-5
 * Zach Weinersmith, Bea Wolf, 2023.

Interviews

 * An interview with G. Roussel
 * interview at the Paris book festival (Salon du livre de Paris)