Jo-El Azara, the author of the comic strip Taka Takata died at the age of 85, this Tuesday, February 7. Pillar of the Eauze comic strip festival, he had lived since 1979 near Seissan, in the Gers.
Gers readers of La Dépêche du Midi knew Jo-El Azara well. Very often, he rewarded them with one of his cartoons for Christmas, New Year’s Day or a significant event. Jo-El Azara left to join his friends Hergé, Franquin, Peyo or Goscinny, in paradise for comic book designers. He worked alongside everyone, and often with them.
Born in Belgium in 1937, his real name Joseph Franz Hedwig Loeckx, he drew his favorite hero, Taka Takata, created in 1965 until the end of his life. Former student of the famous Institut Saint-Luc in Brussels, a veritable nursery Belgian comics talent, Jo-El Azara entered this universe in 1953, before joining the Hergé Studios in 1954. For 7 years, he worked on the development of Tintin albums. There he met Josette Baujot, colorist, his wife, to whom he dedicated an exhibition in Auch in 2019.
Jo-El Azara on the occasion of an exhibition organized in 2015 at the Hôtel de France in Auch.
Multicard, Azara multiplies the collaborations, in the comic strip newspapers of the time. He is one of the stars of the weekly Tintin, where the adventures of Taka Takata, a pacifist Japanese soldier – and myopic as a mole – of the Pacific War, make readers aged 7 to 77 laugh every week. He also knows how to draw for advertising, where his simple and direct line appeals to advertisers. Texaco, IBM, Total, or Novotel are on his list, which will earn him honors at the Angoulême festival.
comic book memory
The designer Ernst, who also left Belgium to settle in Eauze, remembers a “very professional, very talented” artist. He was present at the Eauze comic book festival since its creation. The two men often met around the pleasures of the table, because Azara had acquired a taste for good food in Gascony. A friendship born on the discovery of computers by Azara at the age of 65, in which Ernst had accompanied him… and often helped out!
“My greatest regret will be not having been able to record this incredible mine of memories, of anecdotes, says Ernst. Azara had a fantastic memory, and he was inexhaustible on Studio Hergé, as was his wife Josette. But none of these two privileged witnesses will agree to entrust their memories to the microphone. Steeped in respect for Hergé, of whom he often spoke, Azara takes with him a bit of the golden age of the 9th Art.
