Daniel Goossens is a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 cartoon

Cartoon

A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...

ist born in Salon-de-Provence

Salon-de-Provence

Salon-de-Provence is a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in southern France. It is the location of an important air base.-History:Salon was a Gallo-Roman oppidum well positioned on the salt trade routes between Adriatic, Atlantic and Mediterranean seas, hence its name...

, Bouches-du-Rhône

Bouches-du-Rhône

Bouches-du-Rhône is a department in the south of France named after the mouth of the Rhône River. It is the most populous department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Its INSEE and postal code is 13.-History of the department:...

 on May 16, 1954.

Biography

Goossens began his career in the magazine Pionniers. After a short spell at Pilote

Pilote

thumb|Cover of the first Pilote teaser issue, #0.Pilote was a French comics periodical published from 1959 to 1989. Showcasing most of the major French or Belgian comics talents of its day the magazine introduced major series such as Astérix le Gaulois, Blueberry, Achille Talon, and Valérian et...

, he began contributing to the monthly magazine Fluide Glacial

Fluide Glacial

Fluide Glacial is a monthly French comics magazine and a publishing house founded on April 1, 1975 by Marcel Gotlib and Jacques Diament. During its years of publication it has featured the work of French and international authors and graphic artists such as Jacques Lob, Édika, Claire Bretécher,...

in 1977, and became one of its authors. Later, his work also appeared in Le Petit Psikopat Illustré (ancestor of current Psikopat) and Rigolo.

Apart from his work with comic strips, Daniel Goossens is a lecturer and researcher in artificial intelligence at the University of Paris VIII.

Goossens was awarded the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême

Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême

Every year, the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême is awarded during the Angoulême International Comics Festival to an author for his body of work and/or for his achievement in the evolution of comics....

 in 1997.

Style

Goossens's comics are built on a clash between semi-realistic art and surreal content. He relishes in regurgitating clichéd situations from literature, film and television, and introducing odd twists. (His classic Route vers l'enfer book is a war film pastiche starring Father Christmas). Particular attention is paid to dialogues, which often drag on past all logic, and include much stuttering, mumbling and other noises rendered phonetically. Most of his comic books are collections of short stories, with a loose common thread. Like his mentor Gotlib, Goossens has also often used a mock-encyclopedic tone. Some of his works contain astonishing and disturbing scenes, such as a gang of children stoning Father Christmas, or a woman bringing her baby's skeleton to the doctor.