Through his own work and the magazines he co-founded, L'Écho des savanes and Fluide Glacial, he was a key figure in the switch in French-language comics from their children's entertainment roots to an adult tone and readership.

[2] In 1942 his father was deported and died at Buchenwald after their building's concierge obligingly helped policemen to find him, a scene which made a strong impression on young Marcel.

In 1965 Gotlib submitted strips to Pilote magazine and was greeted with open arms by its influential co-founder and editor, René Goscinny of Astérix fame.

[1] However, the trio's complete lack of business training meant the magazine went deep in the red and they were forced to sell it to a publishing concern.

Gotlib's contributions to the magazine were published in album form as Rhââ Lovely (named after a rapist's line in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy) and Rha-Gnagna.

Those stories are mostly concerned with smashing taboos and feature much sexuality and other bodily functions, as well as cod-psychoanalysis and pot shots at authority figures of all kinds including divinities.

To do this, he enrolled childhood friend, Jacques Diament, as administrator and another Pilote veteran, Alexis to help with the creative direction, and founded Fluide Glacial and parent publishing company 'Audie', a comically misspelled acronym of "Amusement, Umour, Derision, Ilarité Et toutes ces sortes de choses".

Fluide Glacial launched the career of a number of unknown or little-known cartoonists, most of whom were influenced by Gotlib in the first place: Édika, Goossens and Dupuy & Berberian.

Alexis died of aneurysm rupture in 1977, leaving Gotlib and Diament in charge, though he is credited to this day as "Director of conscience" of Fluide Glacial.

Superdupont is a French, highly patriotic answer to US super-heroes who wears a vest and beret and fights a secret organisation called Anti-France.

However, he resuscitated Gai-Luron in 1986 when the back-catalogue was re-published by Audie and needed promoting; he drew enough new stories for a final album, La Bataille Navale.

Rhââ Lovely , Rhâ-Gnagna and Pervers Pépère are series exclusively dedicated to sex satire, but sexual matters are also present in Hamster Jovial.