Peyo (Pierre Culliford)

Of English and Belgian heritage, Culliford adopted the pen name Peyo and joined Spirou magazine in 1952 with his medieval chivalric comic Johan and Peewit. On October 23, 1958, in the storyline The Flute with Six Smurfs, he introduced a tribe of tiny blue gnomes living in mushroom houses.

The Smurfs became an unprecedented global phenomenon, spawning independent comic albums, Hanna-Barbera animated television series broadcast in over 100 countries, and blockbuster feature films. Peyo also created the boy superhero Benoît Brisefer (Steven Strong).