Rene Goscinny was born in Paris in 1926. After growing up in Argentina, he came to America where he shared a studio with future Mad magazine co-founder Harvey Kurtzman and collaborators Will Elder and Jack Davis. In 1959, he founded the magazine Pilote which premiered what was to become the most successful comic series anywhere: Asterix. He died suddenly cardiac arrest in 1977 at the age of 51. Albert Uderzo was born in France 1927 to Italian Immigrants. In 1959 Goscinny and Uderzo became editor and artistic director (respectively) of Pilote magazine. Their creation, Asterix became a runaway success. After Goscinny's death in 1977, 26 volumes of Asterix were complete, Uderzo continued to write and illustrate the Asterix books on his own, publishing 8 volumes. The cover credits still read "Goscinny and Uderzo." He retired in 2011 but still oversees Asterix and the current publications by Jean-Yves Ferri and Didier Conrad. Like Asterix, Didier Conrad was born in 1959 - in Marseille. His first comic book, Jason, was published in 1978. He then started work illustrating the top-of-page graphic sequences for Spirou magazine, working with the writer Yann, with whom he went on to create the legendary Les Innomables. This was followed by a succession of humorous creations with Wilbur; these included Bob Marone (1980), L'Avatar (1984), Le Piège Malais and Donito (from 1991 to 1996). In 1996, Didier Conrad moved to Los Angeles to work on visual development and storyboarding for the feature-length animation The Road to El Dorado (released in 2000) produced by Dreamworks SKG. He then returned to comic books two years later with further outings of Les Innommables, and he continued his collaboration with Wilbur for Tigresse Blanche (2005- 2010), the RAJ series (2007-2010) and Marsu Kids (2011- 2012). He has been illustrating the Gaulish adventures since Asterix and the Picts (2013).