Sid Ali Melouah (Arabic: سيد علي ملواح‎), born September 23, 1949 in Algiers and died June 4, 2007 in Créteil, is an Algerian illustrator, comic book author and press cartoonist.

Considered a pioneer and one of the main Algerian comic book authors, Melouah is particularly renowned for his press cartoons, caricatures and satirical comics. He received the "Yellow Kid" prize in Rome in 2003.

Biography

Melouah participated at the age of eighteen, in 1968, in the creation of the first Algerian comic book periodical, M'quidech, and continued his collaboration for two years, until 1970. He created La famille M'barek in this magazine, and took over from Amauri for Richa. He then worked in advertising as a designer, and then graduated from the Academy of Commercial Art in Copenhagen.

Melouaf was interested in both comics and press drawings, and from 1978 onwards attended the main events on both subjects.

His first comic book album, La Cité interdite, from 1982, was published in French and Arabic by the Entreprise nationale du livre, and printed in 40,000 copies. The Caran d'Ache illustrator prize was awarded to him in the same year, 1982, at the Lucques comic book fair. He is also a cartoonist and illustrator in various magazines and publications, notably in El Moudjahid, the Algerian national daily, where he drew a story on football, Jibouha ya louled, and illustrated a novel by Mohamed Arabdiou which appeared in serial form. He also contributed to the magazines Algérie Actualité, Horizon, Afrique-Asie.

His work La Secte Des Assassins was pre-published in 1984 in the Horizon magazine, then published as an album by the National Book Company, for the benefit of the Union of the Deaf and Mute of Algeria. Like La Cité interdite, this work is based on oriental stories and legends. Melouah published Le Grand Trésor, an album for children in North Africa, for the United Nations in 1986. 3,6 His work for children is appreciable, but he is especially renowned for his comic strips for adults.

Considered one of the pioneers and leaders of Algerian comics, Melouah took part in the early 1990s in the founding and launch of the first two Algerian satirical periodicals, El Manchar ("the saw") and Baroud ("the powder"). For the Algerian government's Ministry of the Environment, he created a comic strip about a Tuareg tired of the problems of modern civilization.

His life being threatened by fundamentalists, and having been the object of several assassination attempts, with at least three attacks against him, he went into hiding. When he wanted to publish a collection Les meilleurs moments d'El Manchar, all the publishers feared reprisals, he had to publish it at his own expense.

He took refuge in France from April 1997, and collaborated there on many press titles, notably Charlie Hebdo, Le Nouvel Observateur, La Croix, L'Humanité, and also for Jeune Afrique Économie and Le Soir d'Algérie where he published the adventures of Inspector Bounif. He won the Crayon de Porcelaine in 1997 at the international press cartoon and humor show in Saint-Just-le-Martel, then the first international prize for political satire in 1999 at Forte dei Marmi.

During this period when he devoted himself almost exclusively to press cartoons, he nevertheless produced two comic strip albums, the first being Les moutons de l'Aïd, published in 1998 by Charlie-Hebdo. His last comic strip album is Pierrot de Bab el Oued, published in 2003. It tells the story of a long friendship, started in high school and lasting for thirty years, between an Algerian and a Frenchman.

In 2003, Melouah received the "Yellow Kid" prize for best cartoonist of the year at Roma Cartoon.

He died at the age of 58 on June 4, 2007 in Créteil in Val-de-Marne, during an attempted heart transplant. He had already been operated on in 1984, and had later received a pacemaker.

For Patrick Gaumer, Sid Ali Melouah handles both the realistic style and humor, and builds a committed work while having managed to maintain his intellectual honesty and integrity, despite having gone through one of the darkest periods in his country. His drawing is sober and simple in appearance, but celebrates difference in full tolerance.

Awards

- Caran d'Ache Prize for illustrator, 1995, Lucca comic strip fair;
- Crayon de Porcelaine, 1997, Saint-Just-le-Martel international cartoon and humor fair;
- First international prize for political satire, 1999, Forte dei Marmi;
- "Yellow Kid" Prize for best cartoonist of the year, 2003, Roma Cartoon.

Posterity

Melouah-Moliterni Prize (Aubenas)

Since 2008, the Aubenas comic strip festival has awarded a Sid Ali Melouah Prize to "a comic strip, a scriptwriter or a cartoonist with worked for human rights and/or against the oppressions of our world11". The prize was renamed the Melouah-Moliterni Prize in 2010, a few months after the death of comic book critic and festival founder Claude Moliterni.

Sid Ali Melouah Prize (Algiers)

The Algiers Comic Book Festival has also awarded a Sid Ali Melouah Heritage Prize since its creation in 2008. Abderrahmane Saïd Madoui received it in 2012 and Lamine Merbah and Hamid Djema in 2013.

https://crom.dz/auteur-melouah-sid-ali/