Sid Ali Melouah, 1949-2007



The great Algerian cartoonist Sid Ali Melouah died June 4.

Melouah helped to found M'quidech, recognized as the first Algerian comics magazine, as a teenager in 1968. He studied at the Academy of Commercial Art in Copenhagen, and graduated in 1975 with the intention of going into commercial illustration. Instead, by 1978 he was firmly established as a cartoonist and journalist.

He split time between childrens' comics and work intended for adult audiences, and was also according to press reports a long-time illustrator for various Algerian publication including the newspaper El Moudjahid. Melouah first published in France in 1982. According to his entry at Lambiek.net, his best known albums were La Cite Interdite (his first album) and 1984's La Secte des Assassins (80,000 copies sold), which grew out of that cultural sweet spot suspended between history and legend. He also created comics for the Algerian government, and the 1986 album Le Grand Tresor for the United Nations. In the early 1990s, Melouah was instrumental in starting the brief-lived (I think) Algerian satirical magazines El Manchar and Baroud, even publishing a best-of collection from the former in 1997 when the magazine's publishers feared reprisal. It looks like another prominent creation of the cartoonist, Inspecteur Bounif, appeared in the Algerian edition of Le Soir. ActuaBD.com wrote this morning that the cartoonist's last album was 2003's Pierrot de Bab el Oued, and other reports indicate he was a prolific contributor to French comics magazines until a few years ago.

He received the Caran d'Ache award at Lucca, but I'm seeing competing reports that this was either in 1982 or 1995 -- I believe that may be a lifetime achievement award, and that he may have been the first to receive it. He received the Crayon de Porcelaine the Salon du Dessin de Presse in St-Just Martel two years later. Two years after that, he received the Premier prix international de la satire politique at the Italian festival at Forte Dei Marmi. He was throughout his career a widely exhibited cartoonist. In 2004, Rome's Expocartoon gave Melouah a Yellow Kid award for best artist.

Melouah made his home in France starting in 1997 because of attempts on his life by fundamentalists for acts as a cartoonist and journalist. According to the date provide by Lambiek, he was 57 years old.
 
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