Melville #2 - 'L'Histoire de Saul Miller' (2016).
Romain Renard is an illustrator, designer, comic artist and musician based in Brussels, Belgium. He has been working as a storyboard artist for films and advertisements, and is (co-)author of comics like 'American Seasons' (2005), the multi-media series 'Melville' (2013-2022), and several graphic novels.
Designer
Romain Renard was born in 1975 and received his artistic education at the Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels, where his father Claude Renard once ran his famous Atelier R. Renard has been mainly active in the field of commercial art and design. Like his father, he has regularly worked as a designer with the Belgian theater director Franco Dragone on shows in Belgium and the USA. Romain Renard also participated in the development of the video game 'Amazonia'. In addition to his work in visual arts, Renard is a musician/songwriter/composer with the Belgian band ROM, of which the debut album 'L'Étoile du Sud' was released in 2007.
Early comics career
Romain Renard made his debut as a comic artist with the first, and only, album in the series 'American Seasons' (Casterman, 2005). The graphic novel, written by Yves Vasseur, is set during the 1960s at the height of the Cold War. Vasseur was also a regular companion of Romain's father and won the Festival Polar de Cognac prize. The plot revolves around an insurance company detective investigating a death in an Ukrainian circus in Maryland. For Casterman's collection 'Rebelles', Renard wrote and drew a comic biography about The Doors frontman Jim Morrison under the title 'The End: Jim Morrison' (2007). It appeared at the occasion of the 40th anniversary of The Doors' debut album. A couple of years later, Renard returned to the medium with 'Un Hiver de Glace' (Casterman, 2011), an adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's mystery drama novel 'Winter's Bone'. In 2013, Renard provided the coloring for '1914 1918 - Les Anges de Mons', a semi-graphic novel about World War I by Xavier Hanotte and Claude Renard.
'Un Hiver de Glace' (2011).
Melville
Renard's biggest claim to fame as a comic author has been the series 'Melville' (Le Lombard, 2013-2022), which can be described as a mix between detective and modern western. Each volume centered around a different resident of an imaginary country town in the USA, and is interlarded with imposing landscapes, surprising plot twists and a strong sense of realism. The first volume, 'L'Histoire de Samuel Beauclair' (2013), about a novelist with writer's block, won not only the Prix Diagonale for best graphic novel of the year in Belgium, but also the Prix Espoir for best story at the Versailles Festival and at the International Comic Festival in Alger. The second installment, 'L'Histoire de Saul Miller' (2016), about a retired professor, won the best graphic novel award in 2016 at the Festival du Polar. The third installment, 'L'Histoire de Ruth Jacob', was a story of true love, about a man who never recovered from his teenage romance with the pastor's daughter, that ended in tragedy. The fourth and concluding volume was 'Les Chroniques de Melville' (2022), presenting the articles of novelist Thomas Beauclair from the first volume.
The author didn't restrict himself to print however. The'Melville' albums came with a special soundtrack album, and Renard also adapted his stories into stage plays. An app called 'Les Chroniques de Melville' was developed for the Apple Store and Google Play, which provides backgrounds and allows readers to submit their own stories about an inhabitant of Renard's own little universe.
Graphic novels
After concluding his breakthrough series, Romain Renard continued to work on stand-alone graphic novels. Still in 2022, he released 'Passer l'Hiver' (Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2022), a sociological story written by essayist and poet Kateri Lemmens. As writer and artist of 'Revoir Comanche', Renard paid tribute to the classic comic series 'Comanche' by Hermann and Greg, presenting an elderly Red Dust, who has to return to the ranch of his earlier expoloits and face the demons of his past. With Oliver Toilet, Renard then scripted the graphic novel 'Off' (Daniel Maghen, 2026), a mix is thriller, disaster film and a family saga, for which the artwork was provided by Patrice Régiat-Vizzavona.
'Revoir Comanche' (2024).