Georges Colomb

Under the pseudonym Christophe (playing on "Christophe Colomb", the French name for Columbus), Colomb created comics that were popular among the French intelligentsia, yet were published in Le Petit Français illustré, a children's paper.

His popular L'idée fixe du savant Cosinus (1893–1899) featured a brilliant, absent-minded scientist.

His other comics included La Famille Fenouillard (probably the first French comic, 1889); Le Sapeur Camember (1890–1896); Les Malices de Plick et Plock (1893–1904); and Le Baron de Cramoisy (1899).

Images to him were more vital than words in communicating with children (the dialogue and Colomb's editorial remarks were always outside the picture frame).

Novelist Marcel Proust was a student of Colomb in his youth, and seems to have taken an interest in botany from him—Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) presents botanical knowledge and speculation to such an extent that botany "constitutes an alternative lens through which the human world of the novel can be viewed.