Reno Lemaire

Reno is an author from Montpellier. Self-taught, he has been expressing himself in boxes and speech bubbles since the age of 7. His discovery of manga when he was 15 completely changed the way he told his stories. The graphics, dynamics, format and cutting constantly stimulated his imagination, and he kept writing pages and series on his school desk. In 2004, at the age of 24, he submitted Dreamland, which he wrote in 1 week, to Pika Édition, and it was pre-published in 2005.

Reno formed his graphic language around Capcom fighting games, JRPGs, Petit Spirou comics, Asterix and Lanfeust, Walt Disney’s The Lion King, Dragon Ball manga, Bastard, and Dragon Quest (Dai’s quest) and Goldorak anime, Knights of the Zodiac, Cosmocats and Olive and Tom. Dreamland is his first title to be published. With the success of the series, Reno has gained a reputation unheard of in France for an author. His ever-innovative graphic style and sense of storytelling are the main reasons for this. But he has also made a name for himself thanks to the many hours he spends signing his books at fairs and other festivals. His constant good humour, his infectious passion for his work and the regularity with which he releases his books have won him an ever-growing loyal audience with each new release!

He was one of the first to set up a ‘Japanese-style’ studio with assistants in France. Salim Kafiz and Romain Lemaire (author of everdark) assisted him from volume 1 to 15. Since volume 20, he has had 2 new assistants, Pierre Etienne and géo. The Dreamland series in a few figures: 22 volumes of 230 pages, 222 chapters, an Artbook of 400 pages, a completely redesigned Remaster edition of the first 10 volumes, the first French manga published and still being published, 800,000 copies sold and a print run of 25,000 copies for each new volume. An anime series is also in the pipeline, along with a host of goodies and figurines.

In 2018 he published a one-shot on Osamu Tesuka’s King Leo in the Japanese magazine Tezucomic. He designed France Culture’s first audio manga, Doruido. In September 2024 Dreamland is published in Japan by Euromanga. October 2024 saw the release of his new series, Freequest, for which he wrote the script and storyboard, with Neo as the artist.