Champagne - c'est la planche N° 69

Patrick (Pat) Mallet was born in Marseille and raised in Paris. He studied at the School of Applied Arts for Industry and Commerce in Paris at the same time as Moebius and Mézières. Mallet went on to create the adventures of 'Pegg le Robot' and the two goofy martians 'Xing & Xot' for Spirou, and soon afterwards another martian called 'Zoum', for Pilote. Patrick Mallet eventually became a successful cartoonist, devoting his entire career to crafting hilarious gags about "little green men", which earned him the Grand Prix Internationale de la Caricature in Montreal in 1972 and 1978. His 'Les petits hommes vertes' were originally published in the French men's magazine Lui, for which Mallet also made cartoons. His green men were also well-known in Germany and Holland, where they were published in Panorama. Mallet has drawn for advertising campaigns of Renault, Rank Xerox, Brand beer and Fernet-Branca, and for magazines like Paris-Match in France and Der Stern and Die Zeit in Germany. For the German women's magazine Bild der Frau, he made the weekly strip 'Nina'. Mallet, who had been deaf since the age of 9, has also produced a lot of artwork for a school for the deaf in Paris. He passed away in the night of 29 en 30 September 2012.