Alberto Aleandro Uderzo (French pronunciation: ​[albɛʁ ydɛʁzo]; Italian: [uˈdɛrtso]; born 25 April 1927) is a French comic book artist, and scriptwriter. He is best known for his work on the Astérix series and also drew other comics such as Oumpah-pah, also in collaboration with René Goscinny.

Uderzo retired from drawing in September 2011.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Picture taken by Christian Koehn (username: fragwürdig) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Charles M. Schulz was born November 25, 1922 in Minneapolis. His destiny was foreshadowed when an uncle gave him, at the age of two days, the nickname Sparky (after the racehorse Spark Plug in the newspaper strip Barney Google).

In his senior year in high school, his mother noticed an ad in a local newspaper for a correspondence school, Federal Schools (later called Art Instruction Schools). Schulz passed the talent test, completed the course and began trying, unsuccessfully, to sell gag cartoons to magazines. (His first published drawing was of his dog, Spike, and appeared in a 1937 Ripley's Believe It Or Not! installment.) Between 1948 and 1950, he succeeded in selling 17 cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post—as well as, to the local St. Paul Pioneer Press, a weekly comic feature called Li'l Folks. It was run in the women's section and paid $10 a week. After writing and drawing the feature for two years, Schulz asked for a better location in the paper or for daily exposure, as well as a raise. When he was turned down on all three counts, he quit.

He started submitting strips to the newspaper syndicates. In the spring of 1950, he received a letter from the United Feature Syndicate, announcing their interest in his submission, Li'l Folks. Schulz boarded a train in June for New York City; more interested in doing a strip than a panel, he also brought along the first installments of what would become Peanuts—and that was what sold. (The title, which Schulz loathed to his dying day, was imposed by the syndicate). The first Peanuts daily appeared October 2, 1950; the first Sunday, January 6, 1952.

Diagnosed with cancer, Schulz retired from Peanuts at the end of 1999. He died on February 13, 2000, the day before Valentine's Day—and the day before his last strip was published—having completed 17,897 daily and Sunday strips, each and every one fully written, drawn, and lettered entirely by his own hand—an unmatched achievement in comics.

Best known as the author of Asterix, Goscinny is

also the talent behind the scenario of Lucky Luke, the hugely popular

comic book of 'the cowboy who shoots faster than his shadow'. Goscinny

was born on 11 August 1926 in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, the son

of Stanislas (Simkha) from Warsaw and of Anna Beresniak from

Khodorkow, a small Ukrainian village. In 1928, his parents took him to

Argentina, where his father, a chemical engineer, had been

seconded. He spent a happy childhood in Buenos Aires, and studied at

the French Lyce just before the Second World War. He had a habit of

making every one laugh in class, probably to compensate for a natural

shyness. He started drawing very early on, inspired by the illustrated

stories which he enjoyed reading. In 1945, he emigrated to the United

States. "I went to the United States to work with Walt Disney" he was

to say later "but Walt Disney didn't know that". He found himself in

New York, jobless, alone and totally broke. The next 6 years, which he

spent in New York, are often considered his formative years. As he

said "It was not so bad...it toughened me up, although I would have

liked it better if others had been toughened up on my behalf". It is

during these years that he met his first friends, some who were to

publish "Mad" in 1945, and others with whom he was to collaborate for

a long time to come. Among these was Maurice de Bvre aka Morris, the

cartoonist and first author of Lucky Luke. He also met Georges

Troisfontaines, the boss of the World Press Agency in Belgium, who

persuaded Goscinny to work for him. He returned to Europe in 1951 for

this purpose, but was fired in 1956 for trying to put in place a

charter to protect the status of cartoonists and scenarist. The years

until the creation of the magazine "Pilote" were years of transition,

when Goscinny's talent matured and he seized upon many

opportunities. Besides his collaboration with Morris on the Lucky Luke

series from 1955 onwards, Goscinny worked on the scenario of "Le petit

Nicolas" (Little Nicholas) in cartoon form with its creator, Sempe. In

1959 the magazine "Pilote" was launched. Goscinny found his place in the

editorial team among some of his faithful friends from World

Press. The aim of "Pilote" was to change radically the way that the

graphic novel ("the BD") would be perceived in France, and competed

with "Tintin" and "Spirou" magazines on their own territories. How best to

go about that task than by inventing an astute little Gaul, give him a

large size sidekick and place their adventures within a little village

of irreducible Gauls whose names all end in -ix? Asterix is born. The

bande dessinee enters adulthood. He married Gilberte Pollaro-Millo in

1967. In 1968 his daughter Anne is born. Many young authors owe their

fame to Goscinny, who opened for them the pages of "Pilote". While

working on scenarios for the television and the cinema and on many

different texts, Goscinny headed Pilote in one capacity or another

until his death on 5 November 1977.

Photo by Peters, Hans / Anefo [CC BY-SA 3.0 nl (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/nl/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons.