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Jean-Claude Forest (11 September 1930 – 29 December 1998) was a writer and illustrator of comics and the creator of character Barbarella. Jean-Claude Forest was born in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, a Paris suburb and graduated from the Paris School of Design in the early 1950s and immediately began working as an illustrator. While at the Paris School of Design Forest drew his first comic strip, Flèche Noire (The Black Arrow). After creating Le Vaisseau Hanté (The Ghost Ship) he illustrated several issues of Charlot, a popular French comic book series loosely based on Charlie Chaplin. Forest eventually became the premier cover artist of French publisher Gallimard's leading French science-fiction paperback imprint, Le Rayon Fantastique, also drawing covers for numerous French newspapers and magazines including France Soir. Together with renowned film director Alain Resnais, Forest was one of the founders of the French Comic-Strip Club in the early 1960s.