Edmond Tourriol
Comic book translator and writer Edmond Tourriol co-founded MAKMA with Stephan Boschat. Having graduated in communication, this comic book fan learnt how to read with his mother before the age of five. Indeed, after discovering the adventures of Spider-Man on TV, he wouldn’t stop asking his mom to read him the Marvel magazines which were a huge part of his childhood. Having obtained this new knowledge, he fully committed to discovering Marvel and DC Comics superhero universes. Those reads actually represent the corpus of his real studies!
During the first year of his social communication master’s degree in Bordeaux, he created the W.O.L.F. fanzine which focused on heavy metal. It’s mostly at that moment that he learnt how to handle a team and how to create a page layout. After this publishing experience, he continued by creating the Climax Comics collective, where he published, as editor-in-chief, more than twenty amateur comics. It’s with this experience that he gained his first knowledge when it comes to managing a book project or lettering comics.
His activity as a comic translator led to MAKMA’s rising
In 2001, Edmond Tourriol gathered, with partner and MAKMA’s future president Stephan Boschat, Climax Comics most motivated members in order to launch a real company: Clark System Innovation SARL, whose goals were to publish the creations from the studio’s authors and to sell communication services. After six difficult months, Clark S.I. finally found its feet by beginning what would become its main activity: comic book translation.
Tourriol thus translated hundreds of American comics, and as a result, worked on the heroes who were part of his childhood: Superman, Batman, Teen Titans, Justice League, X-Men, Spider-Man, Avengers, Fantastic Four, Wolverine, Thor, Iron Man. One of the most notable work of his professional fanboy phase: the French adaptation of the famous crossover opposing the Avengers to the Justice League. About this, he admitted: ‘if I had been told as a kid that I would be writing the French dialogues of all of those superheroes, I would never have believed it’.
Nevertheless, it was only the beginning: huge fan of writer Robert Kirkman (Battle Pope, Invincible), Edmond insisted to his publisher to give him a small zombie series … He insisted so much that no one dared to refuse. Today, more than two-hundred issues later, the translator is thankful for his luck: this series was The Walking Dead!
Edmond Tourriol translated Walking Dead but he is also a comic book writer
Not only is Edmond Tourriol at the head of this complete comic translation agency that is MAKMA, he is also a comic book writer. He reminds us: ‘it was for this very reason that I got in this business in the first place’. After publishing a few amateur fanzines, he wrote many stories with eight issues of Mix-Man (youth series), five chapters of Zeitnot (manga published under the Shogun label), the successful humor series Banc de Touche (pre-published in the newspaper L’Équipe), Zlatan Style, Le Réveil des Bleus, Neymar Style, and the mangas Paris Saint-Germain Infinity and Z United.
His specialization in soccer comics (he indeed wrote more than twelve soccer comic books !) even granted him an honorable recognition: he was selected twice to play in the writers French football team (for as many defeats, but it was against Germany so there’s nothing to be ashamed of). Where will he stop?