Peyo

Peyo is the pseudonym of Pierre Culliford (1928 to 1992), a Belgian comics writer and artist born in the Brussels municipality of Schaerbeek to an English father and a Belgian mother. He took the name Peyo early in his career, from an English cousin's mispronunciation of Pierrot. After brief work at the Belgian animation studio Compagnie Belge d'Actualites he drew newspaper strips, including the cat gag strip Poussy for Le Soir, and from the early 1950s worked for the magazine Spirou, where he developed Johan and Peewit and Benoit Brisefer (Steven Strong). His best-known creation, The Smurfs, first appeared in Johan and Peewit on 23 October 1958 and soon won its own series. In 1960 he founded a studio whose assistants included Francois Walthery and Gos, and in the 1980s he supervised the American animated television adaptation made by Hanna-Barbera. Late in life he left Dupuis to found his own publishing house, Cartoon Creation, and he died in Brussels in 1992.